But why is this PC sound card interesting? In fact, they are the sound chip twice on the board : AY-3-8913, yes a version derived from the AY-3-8910. The Amstrad CPC is using the AY-3-8912 variant also used by the MSX (or its Yamaha variant the YM2149F), ZX Spectrum, Atari ST and Oric. The PicoMEM card from FreddyV supports this Mindscape Music Board card since the 26th May 2025 firmware.

The Mindscape Music Board (video by The Oldskool PC) which appeared in 1986, a year before the Adlib sound card in 1987, which became a standard, followed by another standard with the Sound Blaster cards (1989). Only 2,000 cards were created at the time, and only four are believed to still exist today. The Mindscape Music Board was sold with the Bank Street Music Writer editing software, written by Glen Clancy, in two editions (one for the Tandy 1000 and PC Junior with just the software, and the other with a physical card for all other PCs with an 8-bit ISA card). The software was intended to be a word processor for music with 6 channels for notes and percussion, with octave changes, volume, envelope, and other features, with official music notation that could, of course, be printed. No MS-DOS game apparently supports this card due to its rarity, it losts foot when the Sierra company pushed the Adlibe sound card and the MIDI synthesizer Roland MT-32.

The Amstrad CPC from A to Z is a YouTube video by ORIGAMI Media (with Raphaël Lucas, Patrick Hellio) about the history of the Amstrad CPC range over two hours, followed by 30 minutes of gameplay, then the end of its life (arrival of the CPC+ and GX4000 ranges) and the conclusion which is about the present state of the Amstrad scene.

Arkos Tracker v3.2.7 by Targhan is available on his web site. This is no longer a beta version, the site has many tutorials. This version is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux (Intel and ARM).

It contains some important bug fixes, but also a FAP export, and a digidrum player! More doc and tutorials about digidrums and samples are going to be added to the website in the following days.

Ana Rosa v1.0.0 is an Amstrad PCW16 emulator by Habi Soft.

At the first use of the emulator, you must install the OS of the PCW16 which you will find there.

You can check the doumentation of the emulator.

Head Over Heels enhanced is an enhanced version of Head Over Heels first released in 1987 on Amstrad CPC and PCW (monochrome of course, 4 colors for this version), édited by Ocean Software and made by Jon RITMAN, Bernie DRUMMOND, F. David THORPE and Bob WAKELIN. It was ported on Amstrad PCW by Habi Soft with colour support and some optimized routines .

A new version of Amspirit, an Amstrad CPC emulator for windows by Dmanu78 is available on his web site. There are 32 and 64bit version.

This version features :

• Amstrad CPC+ emulation
• Cartridge file management (.CPR)
• Support for an additional floppy disk drive (B)
• Added timelapse function
• Support for writing script files (.CSL)
• Various fixes for CRTC 0, 1, 2, and 4 emulation
• Improved CTM emulation
• Improved FDC emulation
• Emulation engine optimization
• Keyboard Clash support
• New online commands added
• Improved support for additional ROMs
• Various ergonomic improvements

The thread on CPCWiki is here.

The ZX Spectrum Computer Sound Chip Emulator v3.0 (December 2024) by Sergey Bulba is available, it's an utility for windows and linux to listen to many music format files, including .YM, .AY and .AYM music files.

Ian Scott has released a new firmware v3.1.0 for his ISA card PicoGUS which supports the sound card Gravis Ultra Sound (and much more).

Since v3.0, it also supports CD-ROM emulation ! The new firmware can be downloaded on Ian Scott's Github.

SugarDS v1.2 is an Amstrad CPC emulator for Nintendo DS and DSi by Nige Rideout (github). This version features :

• Less pops clicks when going in/out of selecting games
• Cleaner/Faster Disk Writes (less pause, better "DISK WRITE" notification)
• Improved Z80 timing - found a few more instructions that needed timing tweaks
• Improved CRTC emulation - fixed regression on Pinball Dreams, etc. Back to emulation of Type 3
• Fix for two-sided drive signal for FDC (nothing seemed to be affected by this... but better to be accurate)
• Improved pan/scan for Mode 2 - auto-center and smoother scroll
• Improved offset handling - cleaner 1 pixel move and faster press-and-hold
• Added ESC as a possible key map

And if you are curious and you go check his Github profile, you will see that he has written several other emulators for Nintendo DS and DSi.

The CIRTECH Sprint accelerator card for Amstrad PCW has a 8 Mhz Z80 which replaces the original 4 Mhz Z80 inside the PCW.

Amstrad Retro Geek is showing this CIRTECH Sprint accelerator card being used on an Amstrad PCW 8256.