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General Category => Amstrad CPC hardware => Topic started by: 00WReX on 03:11, 14 January 13

Title: I finally have a CPC 472
Post by: 00WReX on 03:11, 14 January 13
I have wanted a CPC 472 for a long time, and on Friday just gone it arrived  ;D

I had paid for this in mid December so almost a month of waiting..but it was worth it.

It was very grubby both inside & out and the tape counter reset button appears to have been damaged in the post.
I took it out and attempted to glue it, but after a couple of resets it broke again.
Also some keys were not working, all on a common line with the keyboard switch matrix.
I proved the issue to the membrane and swapped the membrane with another and now the 472 is fully operational other than
the tape counter reset button (the tape counter stills works).

It took a bit of cleaning, but it now looks quite OK.

If anybody has a spare tape counter and or a spare 464 keyboard membrane then I'd be interested  ;)

Cheers,
Shane

Title: Re: I finally have a CPC 472
Post by: ervin on 03:16, 14 January 13
Fantastic! You're building quite a collection for yourself!
Title: Re: I finally have a CPC 472
Post by: Gryzor on 11:48, 15 January 13
A beauty! :)

Title: Re: I finally have a CPC 472
Post by: steve on 12:29, 15 January 13
That add-on board seems an unnecessarily complex way of adding 8KB of inaccessable ram.
Title: Re: I finally have a CPC 472
Post by: robcfg on 12:48, 15 January 13
Well... without the board the computer won't boot anyway, so it's not a bad way to convince the authorities that it has really more ram and won't work without it.
Title: Re: I finally have a CPC 472
Post by: db6128 on 19:39, 15 January 13
The last three characters of the chip's serial number are "HAK". What more needs to be said?  :laugh:
Title: Re: I finally have a CPC 472
Post by: 00WReX on 08:35, 16 January 13
Hahaha @ db6128  :)

Actually I reckon the idea was a stroke of genius and a really simple idea and implementation.

I think the story and history behind it is cool though, and for anyone that has not read about it, the wiki has an excellent entry for it.

472 - CPCWiki (http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/472)

Cheers,
Shane

Title: Re: I finally have a CPC 472
Post by: Kris on 20:38, 16 January 13
Nice find !
Just a simple question: does it display "72Ko Ram" at boot ?
Title: Re: I finally have a CPC 472
Post by: TFM on 21:59, 16 January 13
No, because you can only access 64 KB. The other 8 KB are wasted, therefore I never liked that 472. What a pity.
Title: Re: I finally have a CPC 472
Post by: 00WReX on 23:36, 16 January 13
Although I really like the Spanish keyboard 472 (the one I managed to get hold of) for the true authentic Spanish look  :D  I suppose the one to have would be the early 472 with the English keyboard and the 664 ROM fitted, giving you BASIC 1.1 instead of the usual BASIC 1.0 of the 464.

From what I understand both appear to be reasonably rare though.

I think back in it's day a person who bought one of these may have been disappointed to find you could not access the extra 8k.
But as I mentioned previously, for me the history behind the 472 is the cool thing, these days not being able to acces that 8k is not really an issue (although it would have been nice)  :) .

Cheers,
Shane
Title: Re: I finally have a CPC 472
Post by: TFM on 02:38, 17 January 13
Quote from: 00WReX on 23:36, 16 January 13
I think back in it's day a person who bought one of these may have been disappointed to find you could not access the extra 8k.
Remember ... that happened to me first with the 6128 too, every kind of software was for 64 KB CPCs, except CP/M Plus. Took years until things got a bit better.
Title: Re: I finally have a CPC 472
Post by: arnoldemu on 10:29, 17 January 13
Quote from: Kris on 20:38, 16 January 13
Nice find !
Just a simple question: does it display "72Ko Ram" at boot ?
I want to know the same as Kris. What does it show on boot?
Title: Re: I finally have a CPC 472
Post by: 00WReX on 11:09, 17 January 13
The ROM in the 472's was totally un-modified, so just the standard boot screen.

For the early 472 with English keyboard, it had the 40022 ROM (same boot screen as the English CPC 664).

[attachimg=1]

The Spanish keyboard version had the standard 40037 ROM (Spanish) and displayed the normal 464 screen with (s1) to indicate the Spanish ROM.

[attachimg=2]

Cheers,
Shane
Title: Re: I finally have a CPC 472
Post by: TFM on 23:23, 17 January 13
That's correct (I did investigate one of them once at the XzentriX meeting).
Title: Re: I finally have a CPC 472
Post by: zhulien on 17:59, 22 February 23
I was thinking... why not burn a new ROM and change the message to 72kb, and put in an internal Multiface 2 - then you will really have a 472
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