CPC 30th birthday!

[Gryzor]

Taken from : CPC - CPCWiki

The Amstrad CPC (Colour Personal Computer) series was a series of 8-bit home computers that were manufactured by the British company Amstrad between 1984 (launch of the CPC464: 21st June 1984) and 1993 (?). The CPC, like most contemporary home micros, had an integrated computer-in-a-keyboard design. Also incorporated in the keyboard was the tape recorder or disc drive.

So, next year we're going to be celebrating 30 years in the life of the CPC464! Wow, just saying it makes me shudder... I mean, no f*cking way I'm that old! Not me! I'M NOT GONNA F*CKING DIE, DO YOU HEAR?


-ahem. So anyway, yes, 30 years of CPC awesomeness. So I thought (actually, SyX did We could start discussing what could be done to celebrate it in style...


One idea I had was that maybe we could produce a compilation of all the fantastic gems that have been released over the past several years, a multi-disk, big-box release... yes, it wouldn't be cheap, but it'd be pretty appropriate as a commemoration of the machine's longevity.


Anyhow, any other ideas?

[TotO]

Push'n'Pop has launched, some months ago, a Megademo project for celebrating that.
Push'n'Pop | Amstrad CPC Demoscene | 30 years megademo - Call for Demomakers


But, why waiting 30 years for doing something great to celebrate that?
For the 30 years of the 464, I dream about no more Tape use, no more 64K limitation and no more QAOP keymap in games. 

[Gryzor]

QAOPS: Goooood!

Tape loading: gooooood!

64kb: ok, not so good.

[steve]

We could have a kickstarter campaign to produce a run of fpga clones, there are a couple of projects already in progress perhaps one of them could be used.

[Gryzor]

Hm, not a bad idea, but I have no idea about the costs of it...

[TotO]

That already existed.
http://www.symbos.de/trex.htm

[TFM]

The TRex1 is not sold anylonger. Thank's to EU laws against lead on PCBs 

[Bryce]

We could have a kickstarter campaign to produce a run of fpga clones, there are a couple of projects already in progress perhaps one of them could be used.

Is that not a bit ironic? We're celebrating that the 464 hardware we use lasted 30 years by making a clone of it? What messege does that send? "It lasted 30, but we doubt it will last till the end of the year", "We can finally make it obsolete". We should be making things that enhance the 30 year old machine, not replacing it.

Bryce.

[TFM]

Exactly! And this is the reaseon why I never replaced my CPC6128 with any other computer. I still try to do everything on original hardware. And the use of a PC to make software for PC is IMHO a bit perverted. Why not making the programs all on the CPC. I never saw a program on a PC (used for producing CPC stuff) which couldn't be done on the CPC itself (disregarding factors like screen resolution etc.).

[Prodatron]

I never saw a program on a PC (used for producing CPC stuff) which couldn't be done on the CPC itself

I wonder how to assembly 1 Megabyte of Z80 sourcecode in a few seconds (time is short in these days...) on a real CPC?

[beaker]

We should be making things that enhance the 30 year old machine, not replacing it.

Bryce.

I am thinking in a half drunk state on how about making it more accessible in the modern world?

I am guessing most of us bought an Amstrad to play games on and returned to the machine to re-live some of those games?

Now I am older I don't have the same amount of time to try and complete these games in one sitting, and I am used to being able to save games on a modern console/PC, so what would be cool for me would be to save snapshots like the emulators (and the old Multiface II etc I guess which aren't readily available) but maybe save to a flash device for me to reload almost instantly later. Maybe have buttons so you can assign a game state to a button?

Hopefully Bryce won't shoot me down in flames

I guess that would be a nod to the past while looking to the future and maybe opening it up to a wider audience who want to use the original hardware. Anyway, this Jameson Special Reserve is going down well so I am off to refill my glass 

I think I may join AA tomorrow 

[steve]

Is that not a bit ironic? We're celebrating that the 464 hardware we use lasted 30 years by making a clone of it? What messege does that send? "It lasted 30, but we doubt it will last till the end of the year", "We can finally make it obsolete". We should be making things that enhance the 30 year old machine, not replacing it.

Bryce.

Our machines will not last forever, they will stop working eventually but a new clone could be good for another 30 years.

[TotO]

FPGA clones just get no soul.

If it's for plug it on a PC monitor, keyboard, ... and launching DSK only, better to run an emulator as more tools are available today for improving development.

[Gryzor]

Also, not all of us have the luxury to own original machines, or the space to have them set up.

[fano]

Exactly! And this is the reaseon why I never replaced my CPC6128 with any other computer. I still try to do everything on original hardware. And the use of a PC to make software for PC is IMHO a bit perverted. Why not making the programs all on the CPC. I never saw a program on a PC (used for producing CPC stuff) which couldn't be done on the CPC itself (disregarding factors like screen resolution etc.).

This is the eternal debat about crossdev vs vanilla.To be honnest, i do not care as long the final program runs on CPC.After , it is just a question of time and comfort.When you have to refresh,compress or compile a lot of data, it is usefull to use the power of a PC.Same thing about code write, it is more comfortable to have a modern editor with syntax coloration and i don't speak about debugging...

Also, not all of us have the luxury to own original machines, or the space to have them set up.

About this, that would be interesting to have something like a pool of cpc/+ we can sell at correct price instead of Ebay like awfull prices.When summer come, i do second hand markets to find various stuff, i'll be ready to sold the same price i found with additionnal postage if i find something interesting, why not other people.btw , a lot of people own that type of machine taking the dust and would be happy to sell them for a little ammount of money.

[Bryce]

Our machines will not last forever, they will stop working eventually but a new clone could be good for another 30 years.

Why not? What will break that can't be fixed? I see it more like a classic car. Fix it, replace parts, do what's needed to keep it going. But turn up at  a classic car meeting with a replica and you'll soon find out what real fans think of them.

I also never understood the whole FPGA thing anyway. Why spend all that time designing a piece of custom hardware to emulate a system, when you can install an emulator on a mini PC motherboard and have exactly the same thing.

@Beaker: I like your idea. But I think it will be more of a software challenge than a hardware one.

Bryce.

[Gryzor]

I also never understood the whole FPGA thing anyway. Why spend all that time designing a piece of custom hardware to emulate a system, when you can install an emulator on a mini PC motherboard and have exactly the same thing.

Just for the illusion. Don't underestimate that.

[TFM]

I also never understood the whole FPGA thing anyway. Why spend all that time designing a piece of custom hardware to emulate a system, when you can install an emulator on a mini PC motherboard and have exactly the same thing.

And I thought you like real hardware....

Well, one reason is for sure the real hardware (origninal CPC or FPGA implementation) runs to the ys precise, while an emulator on a PC always has speed changes. So for some demos / games (/maybe even apps) the precision is important. Else it gets screwed up.

[TFM]

I wonder how to assembly 1 Megabyte of Z80 sourcecode in a few seconds (time is short in these days...) on a real CPC?

Not in a few seconds for sure. But it can be done. The maximum source I did assemble on the CPC was about 500 KB and I used Maxam II under CP/M Plus and with the HD20 hard disc.

If I would have time I would create a quick assembler, but meanwhile I have time for a cup of tea. And while waiting for the CPC to do it, I more often have good ideas :-) Or do something on the other CPC, sitting next to the one which is assembling 

[TFM]

But back to the topic here... 30 years... wow... how much wheel chairs to we need?
Anybody interested in anti aging stuff?

[Prodatron]

And while waiting for the CPC to do it, I more often have good ideas :-) Or do something on the other CPC, sitting next to the one which is assembling 

Ok, let's introduce CPC server farms for implementing large data processing by using parallel computing technics with CPCs: I am dreaming about assembling my Z80-sources inside the CPC cloud  When multitasking is already possible on the Z80, why not multiprocessing, too

[Gryzor]

[attachimg=1]


Now, seriously, let's get back on issue...

[ralferoo]

I also never understood the whole FPGA thing anyway. Why spend all that time designing a piece of custom hardware to emulate a system, when you can install an emulator on a mini PC motherboard and have exactly the same thing.

Well, I guess you've already seen the work I've done on my FPGA board, but for me it's simple. I've got something that plugs into any SCART TV so I have a true 50Hz display, it boots instantly, it's silent, it runs at exactly the same clock rate as a real CPC without ever getting interrupted by another process using too much memory, etc. Even on my quad-core 2.5GHz machine, the software emulators can't reliably lock at 50Hz and because my monitor won't run at 50, it's always jerky. I haven't even found a software emulator that's good for video capture, but I can just hook my FPGA board up to a DVD recorder for instance.

To all intents and purposes, my FPGA board is a real CPC, just one that happens to interface better with modern devices. It's got standard joystick ports, it's got tape line-in, but it also has built in all the other peripherals people like to expand their CPC with - it's got 512KB of RAM and 2MB of flash ROM, it's got a PS/2 port for a modern keyboard, but enough GPIO pins to interface a real CPC keyboard if I wanted, it's got a USB socket that exposes a serial port to a modern PC.

I'm close to having support for DSK images on an SD card, and future plans include monitor emulation so that smooth scrolling is possible using an LCD TV and I'm hoping to ultimately have hardware breakpointing as usable as a software emulator but in hardware (so capturing a whole frame and providing cross hair markers like you'd see on a software emulator), direct video/audio capture to SD card, etc. I'm even thinking about adding support in the next prototype board for a 5V level shifted breakout board, because I'd actually quite like the ability to plug in a real floppy drive.

I guess for me, the underlying reason for this project was I wanted to learn VHDL. But, in the process I've learned a lot more about the design of the original CPC hardware and by thinking about these chips were probably designed to optimise gates, I think I'm closer to the original chip design than most of the software emulators. For example, originally I just had a big lookup table to map from hardware colours to RGB, but over Christmas I was thinking about how the hardware was designed originally - there wouldn't have been a mask ROM in the gate array just for this, because it'd have been cheaper just to add an extra bit to each of the palette registers. And sure enough, after a while of staring at the mapping, I came up with an efficient implementation that uses a total of 5 slices for the entire conversion. For those that don't know FPGA, a slice can be thought of as a single 4-input, 1-bit output logic gate, i.e. the smallest logic element on the chip.

[beaker]

Now, seriously, let's get back on issue...

Send a big cake to Alan Sugar at Amshold from which Georgia Salpa (our representative) emerges to infer all the pleasure (we can work on the details on how the inferring will take place...) his machine has given us over the years... 
Assuming he knows it's the machines 30th Birthday next year, or cares...

[TFM]

Ok, let's introduce CPC server farms for implementing large data processing by using parallel computing technics with CPCs: I am dreaming about assembling my Z80-sources inside the CPC cloud  When multitasking is already possible on the Z80, why not multiprocessing, too

Well, that's actually not a big problem. We got local hard-discs and we got the CPC-Booster which can connect up to 32 (or was it 64?) CPC by using the highspeed RS442 network. That was always one of my plans, to make a real CPC network, but time is soooo limited.
The VN96 already showed us that network apps/games are doable