Amstrad PCW8256
System Specification
Custom Amstrad Integrated Green Screen VDU and CPU
Z80 8 bit Processor
3 inch 180K disk drive
Expansion cartridges
80 Key Keyboard
9 pin Dot Matrix Printer
Now THIS was not a games platform. An interesting Machine though. Basically a green screen monitor, with a keyboard plug on the side, a printer plug in the back, and 1 3 inch (yes, I did say 3 inch) disk drive in the right hand side of the screen front.
256K of memory, expandable with “addon RAMpaqs”…never had one though. This PC never had a mouse..it never needed it. You switched it on and got a green screen and a whirring disk drive.
Put in your disk of choice and it would load it…The word processor (LocoScript), Spreadsheet (SuperCalc), or any of the text based games on it. Not worth it for the games really. The word processor was like DOS…attempts at graphics were lines and boxes..but that was it…you could have one font on screen-normal. It would print out several styles though.
It was a nice machine for all that..never crashed, never whinged, never lost work, never cocked up. It got me through secondary school with flying colours, and saw more than it’s fair share of 3AM homework panics.
You typed, you saved, you printed. To a 9 pin dot matrix printer..so printing at 3AM was a nightmare! Good printer though. A simple, no fuss, “does it all well” machine. It’s “programmers” OS was CPM/+…I never did get the hang of it really…it was the forerunner to MSDOS..and it wasn’t that friendly.
It also had LOGO on it..which I used to be good with..;) This machine has gone now..given to a needy cause. A good end for a reliable and trusted friend, that tried to “outPC the PC”, and lost. The 3inch disks were an oddity..but for all that it was a sound machine.