News about Amstrad CPC, PCW, Notepad NC100 NC150 NC200, PDA600 and also Amstrad PC







Joyce v2.5.3 by John Elliott, an Amstrad PCW emulator

-

The Amstrad PCW emulator Joyce v2.5.3 by John Elliott is available for unix, windows and MacOS. This emulates another proprietary communications interface : the PCW Linkit which links two PCW (click on the link PCW hardware information) whereas the LocoLink did link a PCW to another computer with its parallel port (PC, PcW16 or a PCW 9512 with a third-party software). The Linux build also has another feature : you can now use JOYCE as a terminal to your system's command line, so you can use MAIL232 (or other PCW terminal program of your choice) in the same way that you would an xterm.




Rodolfo Skylarriente 2 by Sakis Kaffesakis, an Amstrad CPC adventure game

-

Rodolfo Skylarriente 2 is a graphic adventure game on Amstrad CPC by Sakis Kaffesakis, Manossg (music), Brundij (digitized screens) and MiguelSky (traduction). It is available in english, french, greek and spanish.

A video of presentation in french is available (soon also in english, check his Youtube channel).


Youtube video




Becoming the next Titan with Multipaint 2024.3 ?

-

To make so beautiful Amstrad CPC loading screens like Eric Cubizolle (Titan), it's easy, you just need to use the same painting program : Multipaint by Tero Heikkinen AKA Dr. Terrorz, and maybe a bit of talent and mostly a lot of work.

Titan is describing Multipaint as a mmix of OCP Art Studio and Deluxe Paint for windows which offers the possibility of using the resolutions and palettes of a whole bunch of old computers including the Amstrad CPC (mode 0 and 1, overscan possible in mode 0).

Two videos presenting Multipaint (beware they are both from four years ago, so not about the latest version and features) :





New firmware v1.20 for the Picogus by Ian Scott for your ISA PC XT/AT

-

Ian Scott has released a new firmware v1.20 for his ISA card PicoGUS which supports the sound card Gravis Ultra Sound (and much more). This firmware replaces the Adlib mode with a SoundBlaster 2.0 mode where Adlib support is better, and also a fix for the MPU-401 emulation mode. The new firmware can be downloaded on Ian Scott's Github.



Présentation by Retro Erik of the PicoMEM ISA card created by FreddyV

-

Retro Erick is presenting in video the PicoMEM ISA card made by FreddyV (FreddyV on Twitter).

This card is a must for all PC XT, even for 286, 386 and 486+, its features are (and more are on the way, see the github) :

  • integrated BIOS
  • less than 640 Kb ? You can fill up to 640 Kb (16 Kb granularity), it's possible to have up to 736 Kb of conventional memory
  • EMS memory (2 Mb)
  • up to 2 virtual disks drives and 4 virtual hard disks (up to 4 Gb). The images are on a SD card and can be created directly from the BIOS (recent feature)
  • USB mouse but you must use a USB OTG hub with its own power !
  • NE2000 network card support using wifi (it's better to be near your wifi router)
  • POST code for PicoMEM cards rev 1.1 and 1.11 with this Sparkfun screen

Youtube video