Archives of Genesis8 Amstrad Page from 1999 to 2025 about hardware





The Zilog Z80, the nightmare for Intel, a video by Olivier Poncet

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Olivier Poncet is the author of the Amstrad CPC Xcpc emulator for Linux, BSD and Unix. Il a a réalisé une video sur le processeur Zilog z80 qui équipe bien d'autres ordinateurs que l'Amstrad CPC.


Youtube video



After the PicoGUS, the PicoIDE by Ian Scott for PC with an IDE connector

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Ian Scott did create the PicoGUS card emulating the Gravis Ultra Sound sound card (you can buy a PicoGUS in Europe at Serdashop).

He has announced today the future availability of the PicoIDE which features ATAPI optical disc emulation and IDE hard drive emulation. A new card next to the PicoMEM card by Freddy Vetele (the PicoMEM can be bought too at Serdashop).

Even for PC XT (and up), it can be interesting to use SCSI emulation as it exists SCSCI controllers for PC XT : BlueSCSI v2, ZuluSCSI, PiSCSCI.



Expansion card PCW Mini for Amstrad PCW by Habi Soft

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The PCW Mini expansion card by Habi Soft let you add more features on an Amstrad PCW computer :

  • sound and music DK'Sound, TurboSound and DAC
  • two joysticks
  • HDMI output
  • four colour modes

thePCW Mini, an expansion card for the Amstrad PCW




Interview by Felisuco of Mark Eric Jones, the engineer of the Amstrad CPC and PCW (and a bonus)

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Felisuco has made at the start of October 2025 an interview of Mark Eric Jones who is one of the engineer of the Amstrad CPC and PCW. The interview is in spanish but as usual there is a translation possible on Youtube.

And as a bonus, a short video by Felisuco on the best Dandanator possible.


Youtube video



Abatape by Abalore, tape emulation featuring multi loading on Amstrad CPC and more

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Abalore has a project he is working since September 2024 : the Abatape.

It is using an Arduino Nano ATMega328p@16 Mhz, a 700 mAH battery for about 24 hours of use, a SD reader and an OLED screen. It is especially able to detect the two motors making a real taping moving the magnetic band so it can support multi loading. Someone did suggest to add writing support to create new tape files. The Abatape supports of course the Amstrad CPC (.CDT) but several other computers as it is based on a Maxduino firmware :

  • Spectrum : TAP, TZX
  • MSX : CAS, TSX
  • ZX80 : O
  • ZX81 : P
  • Acorn Atom, Electron : UEF (without compression), TSX
  • Dragon 32/64, Tandy CoCo : CAS, TSX
  • SVI Spectravideo : TSX
  • Oric 1/Atmos : no .TAP support unless converted to TSX

Youtube video



Amstrad CPC 464 mechanical keyboard and 464/6128 replica main board

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Vous souhaitez un clavier mécanique pour remplacer celui d'origine sur un Amstrad CPC 464 ? Alors Bread80 a ce qu'il vous faut avec toutes les informations sur la carte disponible sur Github.

In the same CPCWiki's thread, Salvogendut is showing his replica of an Amstrad CPC 464 main board with Bread80's mechanical keyboard. This replica of the Amstrad CPC 464 main board comes from Bob's Bits site on Tindie (out of stock sadly). But this is also in stock this time a replica of the Amstrad CPC 6128 main board. You will find below three photos of Salvogendut's keyboard.

board of the Cherry keyboard for Amstrad CPC 464

replica board of the Amstrad CPC 464

the cherry keyboard inside an Amstrad CPC 464



The last Amstrad PC in 1996 : Integra PC/TV with Windows 95

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The last PC released in 1996 by Amstrad was the Integra PC/TV with a 486 DX2 (80 ou 100 Mhz) or pentium (75 à 133 Mhz) processor, 8 Mb of RAM (up to 128), 540 Mb hard disk (up to 1 Tb), a CD-ROM drive and especially a TV Tuner. Windows 95 was installed on the Integra PC/TV. You can download the brochure and specifications on Amstrad web site (or here locally). You can see below a video of the Amstrad Integra PC/TV by Nostalgia Nerd.


Youtube video



Duke stops making the M4 board, but...

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Duke stops making the M4 wifi board after almost 1500 boards. He explains it on his web site. I want to thank him personnally as I am the happy owner of his board since years, it is still useful to me. Thanks for all these years of making board and supporting it with new firmwares and answering user on CPCWiki.

It could be an end but it is in fact a new start as Duke has released on Github all needed informations so at least for a start two people will make new boards :



After the Aleste 520EX (a russian clone of the Amstrad CPC/MSX), the XiAleste by h2w

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The XiAleste by h2w is a recreation with modern components of an upgraded Amstrad CPC 6128 presented on Hackaday (the sound is upgraded notably). The PCB of the XiAleste is available as is the FGPA code source of the XiAleste both on Github. You can read informations on the XiAleste on CPC Wiki.

You will find below informations from 2019 about the Aleste 520EX which inspired the XiAleste.

The Aleste 520EX is a russian clone of the Amstrad CPC and the MSX. It works not with AMSDOS but with the MSX DOS (see this russian site in english). There was already a thread about the Aleste 520EX on CPCWiki, but this time Sebastian Blanco is talking about the Aleste kit he just bought. Finally he isnt the only one in the Amstrad CPC community to have one. If you are interesting it's seems to possible to buy one kit by writing to tetroid at inbox ru like Sebastian did.

You can see a youtube video of an Aleste 520EX running the Phortem demo by Condense (and MSX games at the start of the video).

A modified version of Caprice32 permits to emulate at least in part the Aleste 520EX.








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