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why was CP/M included? why Logo? what did Amstrad pay for the CP/M license?

Started by eto, 08:46, 17 April 24

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eto


Sure, CP/M was one of the aspects that made the CPC look "professional" but I also doubt they would have included it if it would have cost a lot. I only ever used it to format discs until I got a formatter utility - and I guess the majority of CPC users did not really know why they have those discs. Btw: does the serial/no on each disk have any real meaning? Is that really something that was tracked? 

And Logo... why was Logo included? I mean, it was not only on a disk, but even parts of it in ROM - that sounds like quite some effort to include something, that wasn't used a lot. Or was that the attempt to market the CPC to schools? I used it maybe a couple of times.

My only explanation would be, that it was dirt cheap to include CP/M and logo and have that compelling reason for parents when you can say "look, it's not just games, it even has CP/M - that can be used for real stuff".

Prodatron

Well, other systems provided additional Z80 cards (Apple II, Acorn BBC, C64) or created crazy frankstein machines (C128), as they all wanted to have CP/M running on their computers :P

I guess when they released the CPC, CP/M was already cheap enough and DR was maybe just happy that Amstrad included it, I guess at this time they already lost a lot of market shares in other areas.
It was probably not clear to Amstrad whether CP/M would still be used as widely in the mid and late 80s, and at that point CP/M still had a professional note.
And there were still some very good CPC-specific applications for CP/M like Proword (probably the most powerful word processor ever created for the CPC). I also used these ARC (or was it another extensions?) crunch/archive tools.
Haha, yes never tried Logo on a CPC. Beeing part of the Amsdos ROM that is probably the most strange thing.

GRAPHICAL Z80 MULTITASKING OPERATING SYSTEM

Bryce

Logo was big on the BBC and the BBC was big in schools, so Logo was being taught across the country. Amstrad probably considered it a "must have" if they were to break into the education market. Especially as the CPC also had a price advantage over the BBC.

Bryce.

zhulien


Sykobee (Briggsy)

Amstrad were marketing the computers as home, business, educational, and gaming all in ones.

LOGO was big in schools at the time, I believe it was a key part of the IT curriculum up into the 90s. Shame it was focussed on the turtle graphics rather than the core language itself, but it did teach some programming concepts such as repetition and so on. So having this was a selling point for the system, in particular the disc equipped systems.

Wordstar was the key CP/M application, so I'm sure the availability of this helped sell some systems too, at least until the PCW came out. I guess SuperCalc/Multiplan (play it in mame at https://archive.org/details/Multiplan_v1.06_1983_Microsoft_fr_cpm_version) and dBase II rounded out the other main app types.

I'm guessing format was on the CP/M discs only to save Amstrad from having to include another disc in the box. It is no wonder discs were sold pre-formatted a lot of the time.

Turbo Pascal too, that was a part of the A level computing curriculum in the UK even in 1995 when I did it. Sadly I had replaced the 6128 with an A1200 and never thought to get Pascal for the Amiga to help with my project!

Prodatron

Quote from: zhulien on 10:07, 18 April 24What exactly is in the logo part of the amsdos rom?
The upper 8K contains parts of Logo (probably to have more space in the TPA).

GRAPHICAL Z80 MULTITASKING OPERATING SYSTEM

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