Amstrad GX4000 (1990)

Introduced September 1990

During the late 1980s Amstrad had been on a roll. The Amstrad CPC range had taken a respectable share of the home computing market, the cheap all-in-one PCW wordprocessor had been a remarkable success for small businesses and home users, the PC-compatible PC1512 and PC1640 had sold in huge quantities and Amstrad had bought out arch-rival Sinclair to produce their own take on the iconic ZX Spectrum micro.

Not everything had been a success. The deeply strange portable PCs – the PPC 512 and PPC 640 – proved to be a high-profile flop. Worse still, the next-generation PC2000 series which had been launched to great acclaim ended up as a disaster with a batch of faulty hard drives significantly damaging Amstrad’s reputation.

Amstrad’s success had been built on offering quality devices at bargain prices, typically by exploring ways to drive down costs. The CPC computers were a good example, a home computer, monitor and storage device starting at £399, all inclusive. Amstrad leveraged their relationships with makes of TV tubes and cassette players to give them a price advantage, the inclusion of the cheap-but-capable Z80 processor drove down costs further. Amstrad chose to use the CPC platform for their next venture.

Amstrad GX4000

The Amstrad GX4000 was essentially a games console version of the CPC. Stripped of the cassette drive, TV and keyboard, the GX4000 used cartridges and hooked up to a domestic TV. Still running a Z80 with 64Kb of RAM the console was modestly specified even by 1990’s standards… but at just £99 it was really cheap.

It was an elegantly packaged device, with two slightly creaky games controllers attached and video output via RF, SCART or and Amstrad DIN connector for a CPC monitor. You could add a light gun or an analogue joystick took, but expansion options were pretty limited. Still, it was pretty capable for an 8-bit platform and the related CPC had a huge variety of good quality games available for it. So, it should have been a success? Not exactly.

By 1990 the 8-bit era that had dominated the 1980s was at an end. 32-bit home computers such as the Commodore Amiga had been established for some time, and the games console market itself was in the process of moving to 16-bit platforms such as the Sega Megadrive. But technological obsolescence had never been a problem for Amstrad - a company that shipped CP/M computers well into the 1990s – where instead they were interested in value-for-money. And the GX4000 certainly seemed to have that.

But the GX4000 was a massive failure, and perhaps the key problem was games. CPC games on cassette cost a few pounds where a GX4000 cartridge for the same game cost £25 (a quarter of the price of the console). Only a couple of games were available at launch, and a combination of manufacturing delays and high costs means that just 27 games of varying quality were launched. The 8-bit CPC platform that the GX4000 ran on wasn’t something that gamers could be excited about either.

Perhaps if the GX4000 had been released a few years earlier with more (and cheaper) games plus better designed hardware, it might have been a success. As it was, the GX4000 was discontinued in 1991 having sold just 15,000 units. Of course, that makes this console quite collectable today with prices for ones in good condition going for up to £200 which would be a lot more than was paid for it in the first place..

Image credit:
Evan-Amos via Wikimedia Commons - Public Domain

2018: things that didn’t quite make the cut

We’ve covered a range of stuff this year, as far back as 1888 and through to 1928, 1938, 1948, 1958, 1968, 1978, 1988, 1998, 2003, 2008 and 2013 (phew!). But quite a few things also had anniversaries this year. Here are some that we didn’t get to cover.

If you like spicy food, then there’s a good chance that you own some Tabasco sauce. The tabasco peppers the sauce contains originally came from the Mexican state of the same name, but the Tabasco branded sauce you typically see comes from Louisiana where both it and the McIlhenny Company were created in 1868.

One thing that you could put a dash of Tabasco in would be a Cup Noodle. Introduced by Nissin into Japan in 1958, the Cup Noodle eventually spread throughout the world, inspiring other very similar brands such as Pot Noodle in the UK.

Tabasco Sauce (1868), Cup Noodle (1958), Pepsi Cola (1898)

If you were looking for a beverage to wash your spicy Cup Noodle down with, Pepsi-Cola was invented in 1898 or you could try some Vimto, invented in Manchester in 1908 and popular with members of temperance societies who didn’t drink alcohol. Vimto also because a hit in many Muslim countries for the same reason.

1958 saw a peculiarly American take on a Scandinavian favourite with the launch of Swedish Fish. A brightly-coloured remake of the salty liquorice original, Swedish Fish remain popular in the United States today, although they contain no actual fish. Similarly, Jelly Babies contain no actual babies, but are also squishy and brightly coloured. Bassetts launched their well-known take on Jelly Babies in 1918.

Vimto (1908), Swedish Fish (1958), Jelly Babies (1918)

Back in Sweden, 1978 saw the launch of perhaps the most recognisable SAAB automobile, the SAAB 900. Spending 15 years in product, the 900 was an understated yet rather desirable car that showed Swedish engineering at its finest… and most quirky. One thing that drivers of the SAAB 900 would find interrupting their otherwise enjoyable journey were traffic lights, first introduced in London in December 1868. This gas-powered traffic light was short-lived however, as it exploded the following month. It took another half century or so for the idea to gain popularity… but my goodness, it did.

More entertaining than traffic lights, the LP record was launched by Columbia Records in 1948. Starting a familiar pattern of trying to squeeze more entertainment into a physical format, technologies such as the LaserDisc, CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays really just followed the LP’s lead.

SAAB 900 (1978), Traffic Light (1868), LP Record (1948)

1918 saw the creation of the electronic flip-flop, a bistable circuit that can be used to save a 0 or a 1, and is therefore an important step into creating modern computing.  Three-quarters of a century later this led to the not exactly awe-inspiring Atari Jaguar and Amstrad Mega PC consoles, plus the Apple MessagePad PDA. But apparently there was a lot of other stuff along the way too.

Flip-Flop (1918) plus Atari Jaguar, Amstrad Mega PC, Apple MessagePad (1993)

In the online world, the process of connecting computers together to share information was given a boost by the invention of the modem in 1958, allowing computers to communicate over plain old telephone lines. 30 years later this allowed many Internet-connected computer users to talk to each other using Internet Relay Chat, and 5 years after THAT - in 1993 -  these technologies had grown into the nascent World-Wide Web and the world’s first recognisable search engine was born… no, not Google but something called JumpStation.

Modem (not actually a 1958 model), Jumpstation (1993), Internet Relay Chat (1988)

What can we look forward to next year? We see the anniversaries of such diverse products as TiVO, the Intel 486, Sinclair ZX80, Lunar Lander and... err, the Toyota Crown S130. Not all breakthroughs are as obvious as you would think. In the meantime, enjoy a mince pie - first introduced into Europe in the 13th Century.

Image credits:
g4ll4is via Flickr
Rainer Zenz via Wikimedia Commons
Qirille via Wikimedia Commons
Wapster via Flickr
Swedennewyork via Flickr
Sam Greenhalgh via Flickr 
Huynh Phuc via Wikimedia Commons 
Raysonho via Wikimedia Commons
Sheila Scarborough via Flickr
Turbojet via Wikimedia Commons
Evan-Amos via Wikimdia Commons
Association WDA via Flickr
MKFI via Wikimedia Commons
Frederik Ramm: Recherchieren und Publizieren im World Wide Web
Darkbear via Wikimedia Commons

Amstrad PPC 512 / PPC 640 (1988)

Amstrad PPC 512

Launched January 1988

In the late 1980s, British company Amstrad was enjoying huge success, first with a range of home computers, then some esoteric low-cost business computers, followed by a massively popular range of IBM-compatible PCs. Feeling confident from its growing sales, Amstrad decided to use its expertise to tackle a new market – portable computing.

In January 1988, a top-of-the-range portable computer such as the Compaq Portable III would have cost about $5000 or £2700 at the time (and about twice as much in modern money). Amstrad set off to create something that could do much of the same thing, but at a fraction of the cost.

Initially the Amstrad PPC 512 was shown at CES in Las Vegas in January 1988. Costing about a quarter of the price of the Compaq, the PPC 512 was indeed a computer that you could move about from place to place and it even had its own integrated LCD monitor. And it was about a million miles away from what we would consider to be a portable computer today.

The hardware was largely based on the existing PC1512 and PC1640 desktops,  but where they had a compact 85-key keyboard the PPC (portable PC) went for a full 102 keys which is essentially the same full-sized keyboard you’d see on a PC today (with a few extra buttons). Given that you couldn’t even fit a 102-key keyboard to the desktop PCs, it was an odd design decision.

Odder still was the tiny 9” LCD screen perched on the very left edge of the case, meaning that whoever was typing on the huge keyboard would always find it annoyingly offset. The display itself was pretty poor even by the crummy standard of late 1980s LCD screens, but you could hook an external CGA monitor up if you wanted.

The PPC 512 had 512KB of RAM, the PPC 640 had 640KB and a built-in modem in a darker case. Both machines were available in single or twin-floppy configurations, although frustratingly for Amstrad users these were superior 3.5” 720KB drives rather than the 5.25” 360KB drives on the desktop machines. Power could be provided by an external PSU, a whopping set of 10 C-cells (for one hour’s run-time) or from plugging it into an Amstrad proprietary monitor. Amstrad made a large carrying bag that it would all fit into.

An optional expansion box could provide a hard disk and expansion cards, but in those days most people could fit the operating system, application and data on a single floppy with some work. Hard disks were fearsomely expensive in those days as well, and 1980s-era hard disks were notoriously fragile and could suffer catastrophic failures if the heads were not parked prior to transport.

Sinclair PC200

Weighing 5.4Kg, the PPC was quite luggable and the built-in modem in the PPC 640 made it very appealing for certain types of customer. But overall the PPC range was not a success despite a creditable attempt to build something useful with the available technology at a price people could afford. An attempt to repackage the PPC as a home computer (the Amstrad PC20 and Sinclair PC200) again came up with an interesting but commercially unsuccessful design.

The PPC and its derivatives are rare and quite collectible today, with prices for complete systems running into several hundred pounds. Amstrad tried to break into the portable computing market a couple more times with the ALT in 1990 and ANB in 1991, but ultimately this was one market that they never managed to crack.

Image credits:
W3ird N3rd via Wikimedia Commons
Marcin Wichary / Ubclue via Wikimedia Commons
ITU Pictures via Flickr

Amstrad PC1512 (1986)

Amstrad PC1512

Launched Autumn 1986

By 1986 the IBM PC had been around for five years, and that machine and those compatible with it had largely taken over the business microcomputer market. But the home market was different, with companies such as Apple, Atari, Commodore, Acorn, Sinclair and Amstrad holding the bulk of the sales with a variety of mutually incompatible machines.

Om paper, Amstrad was the least technically innovative, but probably the most business-savvy. The Amstrad PCW had been launched the year previously, based on a combination of new and old technologies which created a very useful and exceptionally good value machine that had become a surprise hit for home users.

After the PCW, Amstrad turned its eye to IBM PC compatibles. But instead of looking at business users, Amstrad was interested in tapping into the home market. It seems obvious today that you can play games and do work on the same computer, but home ownership of PCs worldwide was still very low. Perhaps the time was right for Amstrad to change that.

Launching in the autumn of 1986, the Amstrad PC1512 immediately caused a shockwave in the markets that it was launched in. Following the example of the PCW, the PC1512 combined new and old elements and packaged it up in a smart box with a rock-bottom price. The most basic PC1512 (monochrome display with a single floppy disk) cost juts £399 plus VAT (sales tax). Various options were available, and at the top of the range a colour version with a hard disk cost £949 plus tax. That was still a lot of money in 1986, but even the most basic IBM PC XT would set you back at least £1500.

Inside was an Intel 8086 (launched in 1978) clocked at 8 MHz, nearly twice that of the IBM version. 512KB of RAM was standard (expandable to 640KB via an expansion card) plus a tweaked CGA adapter. Cleverly the power supply for the PC was actually in the monitor which handled the necessary conversion from AC to DC and saved on the cost. This also meant that the PC didn't need a fan anywhere as the monitor cooled by convection and the heat dissipation from the main board was minimal.. but it also meant that you always had to use an Amstrad monitor. The PC1512 could output greyscales on a monochrome monitor which was useful for those on a budget.

A set of brightly-coloured floppy disks came with MS-DOS 3.2 plus GEM and GEMpaint from Digital Research, along with Locomotive Basic (an Amstrad favourite). GEM was the most-used application after DOS, providing a rudimentary but useable graphical environment. GEM could be used with the rather rat-like proprietary Amstrad mouse which was included in the bundle.

In the back were three expansion slots that could be easily accessed via a slide-off cover rather than by using a screwdriver. A joystick could be plugged into the proprietary keyboard and - perhaps as a nod to Amstrad's roots in audio equipment - there was a volume control knob for the internal speaker. Despite the proprietary nature of some of the components, the PC1512 also came with a standard serial and parallel port.

The PC1512 was a huge sales success for Amstrad, topped only by the PC1640 launched in 1987 which has 640Kb RAM as standard and upgraded EGA graphics, but this lost the useful greyscale capabilities of the PC1512. The PC1640 addressed most of the shortcomings of the older version and was an even bigger success, and it managed to break out of the home market into schools, colleges and small businesses. The PC1512 and PC1640 sold in the millions.

Amstrad PC1640 with 20MB hard disk

Part of the sales success wasn't just that it was cheap, but it was also very well built and extremely reliable.. despite rumours circulating otherwise (possibly put out by competitors). The PC1640 represents Amstrad's computer business at its peak, but unfortunately this success was not to last.

Even though it was cleverly packaged, there was no doubt that the PC1512 and PC1640 were pretty old hat. Amstrad then set to work on the PC2000 Series, comprising of a low-end 8086-based machine, a midrange 80286 and a high-end 8086. Launched in 1988, this was a much more modern design, and these should also have been a huge success.. but they had a fatal flaw.

The problem was the hard disks - a batch of faulty Seagate drives led to an unacceptably high failure rate followed by a product recall that seriously damaged Amstrad's reputation. Amstrad later sued Seagate and won millions of pound worth of damages, but Amstrad's reputation never fully recovered. Amstrad kept going in the PC market, launching the PC3000 through to PC7000 ranges until the early 1990s along with some portable PCs. Amstrad's final PC product was the unusual Amstrad Mega PC which also had a Sega Megadrive built in.

Today the Amstrad PC1512 and PC1640 are quite collectible, with prices going up to £650 (€720) or so for a top-of-the-range unit in good condition. Old computers take up a lot of space, so survivors are uncommon. Of course, you can get a pretty decently specified modern PC for that sort of money too.. but nothing else quite has the same retro appeal of Amstrad's finest.

Image credits: Marcin Wichary via Flickr and Maurindaco via Wikimedia Commons.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128 (1985)

Launched September 1985

Let's be honest here.. the ZX Spectrum 128 is not the most memorable computer launched by Sinclair Research, but it is significant as it is the last ever computer produced under the "Sinclair" name as an independent company, announced 30 years ago this month.

The original Spectrum had been launched in 1982 to huge success, but by 1985 the market had moved on significantly with 32-bit rivals such as the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST taking the high end, and arch-rivals Amstrad competing head-on with Sinclair with the likes of the CPC 6128.

Sinclair's attempt at a next-generation computer with the QL had failed (and had cost the company a lot of money on the way), so the only thing that was really selling was a warmed-over version of the original Spectrum, the ZX Spectrum+.. but this was still limited to just 48KB of RAM and was looking increasingly dated underneath.

Created in partnership with Investrónica of Spain, the ZX Spectrum 128 was an attempt to bring some evolutionary upgrades to the Spectrum platform. More RAM theoretically meant more powerful applications could run, but it was tricky to access all the memory. The Spectrum 128 had better audio than the miserable tinny speaker in the original Spectrums, had a much better keyboard and a cleaner, more modern design.

It was a modest success, but Sinclair were still wedded to the idea of selling the computer by itself and having the user supply the cassette recorder (for loading programs) and TV by themselves, where Amstrad would sell you the whole lot in a bundle.

But Sinclair was in deep trouble financially and there had been a string of failure, including the infamous Sinclair C5 electric car. After some abortive attempts to rescue the company, the Spectrum brand and its computers were sold off to Amstrad who licensed the "Sinclair" name.

Amstrad produced a CPC-style version of the Spectrum 128 the following year, followed by a version with a 3" floppy disk in 1987 with production continuing until 1992. But the story doesn't end there as you can now buy a "Recreated ZX Spectrum" with more modern interfaces or even a ZX Spectrum-based games console called the Vega. There are also Spectrum emulators for a variety of platforms including Android.

Although the ZX Spectrum 128 is the last "true" Sinclair Spectrum, Sinclair Research went on to fund the development of the Cambridge Z88, a 900 gram A4-size computer for note-taking and other applications which proved to be a niche success.

Image credits, ccwoodcock [1] [2]

Amstrad PCW 8256 (1985)

Launched September 1985

Thirty years ago we were seeing the dawn of 32-bit home computing with the state-of-the-art Commodore Amiga and Atari ST coming to market. The Amstrad PCW 8256 was also the exact opposite to these, and yet it turned out to be an enormous success in the countries it was launched in.

Back in the 1980s, wordprocessing was one of the most common things you’d do on a computer. Email and other online services were rudimentary and only used by a tiny handful of people, so things such as business correspondence were sent on bits of paper.

If you wanted to use something better than a typewriter, then you’d need a word processor. These tended to be expensive, or very difficult to set up. Or usually both. But the Amstrad PCW tackled both of those problems head on.

As with the Amstrad CPC range, the PCW was a combination of very cheap components cleverly packaged together. Based on a Zilog Z80 processor with 256Kb of RAM, and running the CP/M operating system (both designed in the mid 1970s), you could hardly call the PCW a high-tech device.

The package included a monochrome monitor, keyboard, one or two 3” floppy disks and crucially it came with a basic dot matrix printer in the package. With the possible exception of the floppy disks you had to buy, none of these components was very expensive, and this enabled the PCW to sell for a little over £450 (equivalent to about £1240 or €1700 today). This was a fraction of the price of (say) an IBM PC with similar capabilities.

The other advantage of including everything you needed in the box was that everything worked when it came out of the box. You didn’t need to worry about compatibility, or drivers.. or really anything else, because everything was designed to work together. The PCW can be regarded as an “appliance” in the same way that contemporary Macs could.

The LocoScript word processor was basic but straightforward to use, but because the PCW ran the CP/M operating system, it could also run a variety of other business applications such as spreadsheets and databases. And although the PCW wasn’t designed for games, inevitably there were those too.

Most of the circuitry to drive the printer was actually in the computer case, and the printer itself was very simple and the 9-pin head could only really produce rather chunky text. The printer itself was highly proprietary, so you couldn’t simply upgrade it to anything except an Amstrad daisywheel printer or Amstrad plotter. However, you could produce simple graphics with the standard printer which did lead to some basic desktop publishing (DTP) packages being developed.

A few months later the Amstrad PCW 8512 was launched with twice the RAM. In 1987 the PCW9512 and 9256 were announced, replacing the crude dot matrix printer with a daisywheel printer. In one form or another, this series of computers soldiered on into the 1990s by which time they had sold 8 million units. Not bad for something based on 1970s technology.

If you are looking at starting your own computing museum, then the Amstrad PCW is a very cheap thing to acquire, commonly available for about £10 to £15. An original 1984 Apple Macintosh will cost about fifty times as much!

Image credit

Amstrad CPC 6128 (1985)

Launched August 1985

The summer of 1985 saw the launch of some powerful home computers, including the Commodore Amiga and the Atari ST. These powerful computers broke new technological ground with a forward-looking 16/32 bit architecture, but they were also rather expensive.

But in Europe one of the most successful competitors to the ST and Amiga was the 8-bit Amstrad CPC range (distributed in Central Europe through Schneider). The Amstrad CPC464 had been launched in 1984 and featured a Z80 CPU with 64KB of RAM, an integrated cassette player and it also shipped with an integrated monitor, at a very attractive price. A floppy-disk version called the CPC664 followed, and in August 1985 Amstrad launched the CPC 6128 which featured a whopping 128KB of RAM as well as the floppy drive.

Although the CPC range were built using inexpensive components, they were relatively sophisticated with a dedicated sound chip and three screen display modes of various resolutions and colour depths. The CPC 6128 could also run CP/M (still used in businesses at the time) and it was the cheapest floppy disk drive system on the market.

The disk drive itself was an unusual 3" format designed by Hitachi. Disks for these drive were expensive and had a relatively low capacity, however they were designed to be very rugged. Despite their drawbacks, the floppy disk drive was enormously better than the cassette drive that the CPC464 was lumbered with.

A wide range of games were produced for the CPC6128, and it found a niche with businesses looking for a low-cost but practical computer. For home users, the fact that it included a monitor was an enormous advantage because it freed up the family TV for.. well, watching TV. Back in the mid 1980s even a small TV set would cost hundreds of pounds.

When sold in the US, the colour CPC6128 was pitched at $799 compared to $1000 for an Atari ST and about $1600 for an Amiga, and a shocking $2500 for an Apple Mac. In the UK the same model was priced at £399 and in Germany the price was 2098 DM. With prices like that the CPC range became a huge success in Europe, although not in the States.

Amstrad went on to produce the Z80-base PCW word processor range, a variety of upgraded ZX Spectrums after they bought Sinclair before moving into the PC business. In 1990 the CPC range received a makeover which made them look much more contemporary, but the era of 8 bit computing was over by this point.

A well-built and reliable machine, today there is a lively retro scene around these CPC models. Complete working models with a colour monitor cost from £100 upwards in the UK with secondhand games coming in at around £10, alternatively you could try playing with the CPC emulator on your Android phone. Although the CPC ended up as being a dead-end, it does have a legacy of introducing many families to a computer for the very first time.

Image credits: [1] [2] [3]