Do you have a working CPC

[Tony]

Just a few days ago I found out that the kid (at the time) that I had given my good ol' 6128+ away to, has dumped it!! (and for what ? for a new PC ? @&#$*% !)
8(


But I intend on getting a couple of them, if only for nostalgia's sake!




@demetre:

"... my disks lost their data ..."

All magnetic storage medium (like hard drives or diskettes) lose their ability to store one's and zero's as time goes on because their surface gets gradually "demagnetised". The first symptom of this on modern (hard) disks may be corrupted files, bad sectors errors, etc.

This is a permanent situation - the medium loses it's ability to store information, any kind of information.

I have tried in the past to reformat (mostly DOS) disks that have such bad sectors, but the format was never propriate, the bad sectors could never be reclaimed. At those specific points of the disk surface (or all of it as is your case) the floppy drive could not read or write any information at all.

So I think that trying to reformat those disks won't make any difference. (or am I wrong ?)

Anyway, for a working CP/M disk you also have the option of downloading a .DSK file of such a disk from the net and transferring it to the CPC.

[Frick]

I have an CPC 464. Lovely thing. I think it's still functional, but it needs some ... fixing. One of the ports on the back (video, I think) is totally not-so-stable. It's loose. But I think I can bring it back to life. Hopefully.

[HeroMiro]

Hi! Everybody!
I used to use my ZX Spectrum in the past (almost medieval for me)... But now I've found that exists something so good made like CPC464 and CPC6128!
I've bought them on an auction in Poland and now I'm searching for tapes for CPC464 (or files working with any emulator).
Want to see how it works on real hardware.
Does anybody can help me to find some games/utilities(copiers) ?
[e-mail]

[Tony]

Hello!

You could find real tapes on Ebay if you search
for something like "Amstrad tapes" or "CPC tapes".


You may find several transfer utilities for tapes,
diskettes and separate files here
faqs.jmas.co.jp/FAQs/amstrad8bit-faq

Look for section A1.2)



About 3500 CPC games ready for use in emulators
may be found here, along with some other stuff:

ftp.nvg.ntnu.no/pub/cpc/

This site may be slow initially, so you must have patience
until you get connected.


But before you start downloading you may have a look
here:
www.cpcgamereviews.com/

and here:
tacgr.emuunlim.com/downloads/reviews.php

Both of these sites have many hundreds of Amstrad
games reviews!!

Also here is a WWW front-end of the FTP site mentioned
above:

tacgr.emuunlim.com/downloads/downloads.php


Look for "NVG DOWNLOADS". I haven't said earlier but
all games on "NVG" are in ".dsk" format, in other words
you may use it as an emulated diskette in an emulator or
you may transfer it on a real disk to play on a real Amstrad.

The "ADATE DOWNLOADS" you see on the same page is
a quite big collection of mostly "dumped" tapes. In other
words you may transfer it on real tapes if you wish.

Unfortunately original CPC tapes is hard to find and original
diskettes almost impossible... Although there are some
real bargains sometimes.



Ways of transfering games to the Amstrad
========================================

a) I would personally prefer diskettes instead of tapes.
Because the speed of tapes is up to 100 times slower
than a diskette! You may find bunches of used 3 inch
diskettes on this site:

www.pcwking.freeserve.co.uk/cpc.html

Look in the box entitled "3 INCH BLANK DISCS."
You will also need a special cable, there used to be one
on ebay. That guy said he would make more of them if
anyone was interested. Or you can make one yourself
if you know how (I don't):

andercheran.aiind.upv.es/~amstrad/docs.html

Look for "The parallel transfer cable"

I suppose if you ask someone that has done it before (you may
find some sites with CPC hardware projects) they might be happy
to make one for you, at least if you pay a few $ for the
materials. It has been done by several people.


b) An other way to play the ".dsk" files on the real Amstrad is to
get a 3.5 inch external disk drive for the Amstrad. This uses
the same disks like the PC. This way
you put a "normal" diskette in your PC, you write a ".dsk"
game with CPDWrite and you put that diskette in the
Amstrad external drive. BUT, you should make sure that
this external drive can work as an A: drive, in other words
it should substitute the internal drive and not work as a
secondary drive, because most games don't like that.


c) Some people have even replaced the internal disk drive
of their Amstrad with a common 3.5 inch disk drive that
can be found everywhere. It's relatively easy to do.
And you can find such 3.5 inch diskettes everywhere.


d) And of course you could transfer ADATE "tapes" using
your PC and your Stereo and then put that tape to
your Amstrad and it should play if you do it right! Maybe
this is the cheaper and easier thing to do. Of course
a tape will take from 5 to 45 minutes (depending
on the game) to load. Diskette games take very little time
to load, like from 15 to 40 seconds (depending on
the game). Finally, tapes are not very reliable.



Emulation
=========

Some of the transfer utilities mentioned at the beginning
and also one of the best Amstrad CPC emulators for Windows
may be found here

www.caprice32.cybercube.com/downloads.php

The emulator is CaPriCe 3.61


Another great emulator is Winape and you can get it here:

winape.emuunlim.com/

This one also emulates the unsuccessful CPC Plus, also
known as CPC 6128+ and CPC 464+ (These where the
two computer models. There was also a gaming console
called GX4000 designed to play the exactly same
games. The console had only two ports for joysticks, one
or two buttons and a cartridge slot. It could be hooked up
on any TV set.)

Less than 30 game cartridges where made for these
systems. Some of these cartridges may be found at

ftp.nvg.ntnu.no/pub/cpc/games/cartridg/

and used with the Winape emulator.


Have fun!

PS: You can find out how to use these emulators if you
read some of my previous posts.

[Brueggi]

I´m using:
CPC 6128, 720K 3.5" B-Floppy (ParaDOS), 2 GB Harddisk (own AMSDOS-Compatible DOS-ROM), 1084S, RAM-ROM-Box.

[thorbs]

Hej jeg ryder op på mit loft iøjeblikket og har en gammel cpc 6128 som er på vej på lodsepladsen. Hvis nogle gerne vil have den så skynd jer at kontakte mig på [e-mail]

Mvh.