A postal stamp inspired by the Amstrad CPC game La Abadia del crimen is or will be available in Spain.

Edward (JeuxVideo.com) is showing a new french Amstrad CPC game : Peur Sur Amytiville (Ubi Soft) with the original author Serge Payeur. He has programmed the game when he was 15 years old ! It's a graphical adventure game in french of course.

Seen on Gameblog (french site), each time a PC Engine SD is created, a poor Amstrad GX4000 console must die !

If you love the japanese PC Enngine console it's not a problem, but for the Amstrad CPC generation, it's a crime !

Screenshots incoming soon.

Jose Javier Garcia Aranda has written a new version of 8BP v30 (8bits de poder : 8bits of power), a RSX library to write Amstrad CPC games in basic (26 Kb max). You can download 8bp on github.

Fresh Fruits and Vegetables is the last game programmed with 8BP and showed at the RetroMadrid 2017 meeting.

Seen on the Amstrad.EU Facebook group, a clone of an Amstrad CPC 6128 created by Zaxon with the following features :

• 128 Kb RAM
• DDI-1 compatible floppy interface
• PS/2 keyboard interface
• RGB video out on minidin 8 (video cable included
• CRTC is UM6845R
• Two slots for extensions cards

Il fabrique et vends également son clone d'Amstrad CPC 6128.

After the orchestral version of Barbarian, here is an orchestral version of Cauldron.

Will you get some more remix of its music : Cauldron (Amstrad CPC) : Music remixed by DJ Mitch (Hexenkuche Walpurgisnacht HardTance Mix) ?

Dont forget the remake of Cauldron for windows by Devilmarkus. But the download link doesnt work anymore.

For french people, it's right this week-end, we are going to vote either for Macron or for Le Pen. So Votez pour moi by Coktel Vision (1985) is in a youtube video by JB le Daron. It's a management game where you are one candidate for the french presidential election. What will you do to get elected by the good french people ?

When I was only announcing Youtube videos of some youtubbers (Xyphoe, CholoCPC, ChinnyVision...), it was nice enough. But lately with more Youtubbers, I cant announce them all in the news, otherwise you would get rapidly a Youtube indigestion. So I will show the last 10 I added (see above), but still will announce some of them, because I like the game or any other reason (good I hope).

David Campbell's video is about the Amstrad CPC 464 which he received for Christmas 1985 with its twelve tapes pack.

Thanatos remixed by DJ ThumpHeadAche is a superb adaptation of the Thanatos music, you should really listen to it.

Already mentionned in 2011, a beautiful play of Thanatos on piano by Alpiso is quite a hit too (Alpiso Youtube's channel has more Amstrad CPC tunes).

Warming some old 2011 news is still useful, the next link wasnt good in 2011 (corrected now), so what about listening to a Thanatos guitar arrangement played by Pacopersia this time ?

For the longplay video by cholo go to :

• part 1 of Thanatos
• part 2 of Thanatos
• part 3 of Thanatos

Eight Bit Magazine will print this Eight Bit Adventurer column by Stuart Williams about the adventure games on 8bit compouters. Stuart is already writing in Eight Bit Magazine about Apple computers, and an article the apple adventurer will be in the incoming issue 3. For more informations, go read Retro Computing News.

Issue 3 of Eight Bit Magazine can be pre-ordered.

The problem with a disk drive emulator HxC or Gotek for an Amstrad CPC 464 is that you still need a DDI-1 interface which is a disk drive controler. It's not anymore a problem with the DDI3 USB Floppy Emulator for Amstrad CPC464 by Zaxon which integrates the DDI and the USB management.

For more informations about the DDI3 USB Floppy Emulator go on Indie Retro News.

The video is done by Novabug.

A new version of the Caprice32 emulator by Colin Pitrat is available.

Karamoon wrote a solution for the Amstrad CPC role playing game Fer and Flamme created by Hervé Lange on Gros Pixels.

The CRPG addict tried to finish Fer et Flamme (english this time).

You can find an interview of the author Hervé Lange on Amstrad.EU (french) made in March 2011 by NoRecess.

Many informations are available on El Linaje Real by ESP Soft on Retro Maniac, in spanish.

CHIPNSFX tracker+player suite is a musical software suite focused on lightweight code and data (the player itself is under 950 bytes long, and can be as small as 550 bytes) for the Amstrad CPC, Sinclair Spectrum 128 and MSX1 platforms; other hardwares can be supported with minor modifications in the player code, such as Sega Master System. The tracker can create songs up to 256 patterns long, patterns can be up to 96 ticks long, and there can be as many as 255 different instruments. The player itself is hardware-independent, the programmer can provide the external functions required to make it work on any Z80-based platform. CHIPNSFX was succesfully used in past projects such as :

• CNGTRO #1
• Justin
• Bubble Bobble for CPC
• Frogalot
• Hire Hare

After the reparation of an Amstrad Notepad NC200 by C-E, it's the turn of the reparation and modding of an Amstrad CPC 6128 (copy and paste of a CPCWiki message with the permission of C-E, thanks to him).

Last time I went to Spain I was digging in my old bedroom, that is basically a time capsule that takes you back to the 80s/90s, and I found my original CPC 6128 hidden in a closet along with the color monitor that came with it. There was also an old PC PSU I was using to power the computer, a 3.5" drive, a few home made cables... It seems that I put everything there when I was given a bunch of Pluses for free in 1997. After that, I was mainly using a 6128 Plus. The poor guy was pretty battered: very yellow keyboard that is probably not original (those keys look like coming from a Plus); a crappy ABBA switch hanging from a pair of cables; lots of scratches here and there...

However, despite its condition, this Amstrad is still very important for me. I spent my childhood with the machine, me and my friends played countless games on it, I used it to program a lot of crappy stuff and a few "games"... in summary, lots of great memories. So, when I came back to UK I brought the guy with me to restore and mod it :)

This is what I am planning to do:

• New caps
• Dual OS
• Centronics ports
• ABBA switch (a decent one)
• Reset switch
• 5VCPC
• Floppy drive restoration

and, if possible, internal RAM expansion.

Externally nothing will change besides the little hole for the reset switch and the case modification required to fit the Centronics ports. It will look like a Schneider 6128.

So... I finally had time to do something with my old 6128. It is still a work in progress but I thought that I could give you an update and show some pics :) . The first thing I did was just to remove the board from the case and clean it a bit. Here is how it looked before cleaning. It is a 6128 board version 2.

Then, I removed all the electrolytic caps, the 40015 and the solder that was filling the holes for the centronic ports. To remove the 40015 I simply cut the pins and then they were removed one by one. I was using the old good braid all the time. Here is the stripped board.

Before going on, I think that it is worth saying that it is NOT necessary to remove all the electrolytic caps in a CPC 6128. The only one that can be problematic if you install the 5VCPC is the cap near the power socket. Bryce found that if it is not OK the computer will likely reset. I just decided to replace them with high grade new ones because I felt like doing it, nothing else :) . In any case, if you decide to change the electrolytics, pay attention to one that is near the AY, it is a 50V 1uF NON POLAR cap.

The next step was to prepare the socket for the dual OS. I followed this tutorial from Bryce that describes all the necessary steps in great detail. This is my modded socket :

After this I recapped the board and soldered the socket in place :

Finally I installed the new ports. I attached them to the board first using screws and nuts and then I soldered the leads. There are quite a few, but it is still a reasonably fast process.

And it seems that it works... :)

There are still three clones left of the mouse interface sold for 27,50 € (France) or 31,50 € (worldwide). They are made by Talkrek, it's a clone of the Dk'tronics mouse interface created by Bryce.

I am late, but No sin mi Amstrad is an article by Álvaro Corazón Rural with pictures by Jelena Arsic seen on Jot Down web site an also in a paper edition it seems. It's an article about the Amstrad Eterno 2017 meeting which held in Barcelona on the 18th March 2017.

El Linaje Real by ESP Soft is available !

It's a platform game with 5 levels. You will test your sword skill in this game, by foot, by horse, by boat. There is more than one way to finish the game.

SAMdisk v3.8.10 by Simon Owen is out since the 18th December.

The utility supports transfers between floppy disks and disk images, and is designed to work with almost any soft-sectored disk format compatible with the PC floppy controller, including some copy-protected formats.

Low-level floppy device access requires the fdrawcmd.sys driver to be installed.

• added read and write support .qdos (QL) disk images
• added --irregular option for blind output image if first track isn't regular
• added --fill to set filler byte for regular formats
• fixed setting perpendicular mode for 1Mbps data rate
• fixed reading directly to single-sided formats from a:/b:
• fixed short data indicator showing on no-data sectors
• fixed raw output not using source format fill byte for missing sectors
• changed raw output to allow blank head 1 to mirror head 0 format

There is also a Samdisk 4.0 beta version on github for windows, linux and MacOS.

New version of the Amstrad CPC core for MiST by Renaud Helias is available. : TV mode with border and screen well centered.

Another game with Rob Hubbard music : Nemesis the Warlock with a gameplay video by Amstrad Maniaque.

They are 2 nice remixes of this music :

• Nemesis the Warlock (Amstrad CPC) : Music remixed by Marcel Donne
• Nemesis the Warlock - Amstrad CPC by CPC moments

An update of El Linaje Real by ESP Soft is available, which fixes a few problems.

Thanks to the Facebook Amstrad.eu CPC 464 / 664 / 6128 group, I stumbled on the r Zisquier youtubber who dont hesitate to remix Amstrad CPC music in metal mode. Will you recognize Barbarian, Nebulus and Antiriad ?

Dont hesitate to look for his other gameplay videos of Amstrad CPC games.

Caprice Forever v2017-5 by Frédéric Coste is a modified version of the Caprice emulator (by Ulrich Doewich) for windows.

• Add cheat script keywords
• Fix FastFDC crashes when trying to read multi-sided disk image
• Play CSW tape images
• Convert WAV to CSW tape images (see Hints)
• Fix game controller detection issues (Xbox 360)
• Fix FDC write sector issues
• Fix FDC read sector regression (Dimension6)
• Use « Keep original aspect ratio » option for fullscreen display
• Add PlayCity audio channels
• Fix minor bugs

This Next-Generation Speech Synthesizer for the Amstrad CPC 464 by Michael Wessel started with a breadboard and now a PCB. For the moment, they are 4 videos of the interface card on Youtube :

• Amstrad / Schneider CPC 464 Breadboard Connector
• CPC 464 Breadboard Adapter Demo - 7-Segment Display for CPC :-)
• A Next Generation Speech Synthesizer for the Amstrad / Schneider CPC 464
• Next-Generation Speech Synthesizer for the Amstrad / Schneider CPC 464 - First PCB Version

It uses an Emic 2, the other components in the design are : Atmega 328 for implementing a parallel (CPC) to serial interface, to bride from the CPC to the Emic 2; a 74LS373 flip flop, 2 G16v8 PLD's for address decoding and generation of the chip select signal, and some other gates. The hardware extension is at address &F9E1. The speech synthesizer requires almost no driver, since the microcontroller and the Emic 2 are implementing an intelligent interface. The Basic program shown in the videos is implementing a simple protocol, but basically, to talk to the speech synthesizer, one only needs to write bytes to port address &F9E1 (e.g., using OUT in BASIC). Interestingly, the interface from the CPC's parallel data bus to the Atmel was tricky to implement.

It isnt compatible at the momeent with the other Amstrad CPC synthesizers : Dktronics and SSA-1. Emic 2 requires Start- (S) and End-Token (CR) - whereas Dktronics and SSA-1 simply send the allophones. Emic 2 works buffered, asynchronously, Dk'tronics and SSA-1 work synchronously. To make it compatible with SSA-1 and Dk'tronics, it would a) need to translate between allophone bytes and Emic 2 "equivalents", and b) figure out start- and end-token and shuffle them into the data stream (maybe based on a speech pause timing criterion). Not so obvious. Speech won't be synchronous, but maybe doable.

Announced by Retro Maniac, tapes for the CPCRetroDev 2016 programs available for buying.

A demo of a windows and linux remake of SRAM 2 by ArjOn is available (graphical adventure game by ERE Informatique).

The gameplay video is done by Edward.

Arnold build 20170513 is the new version of the Amstrad CPC emulator by Kevin Thacker.

Second release of CHIPNSFX tracker+player suite by CNGSoft : new command line options -F (48000 Hz) and -L (linear amplitude). A blue bar makes the active items stand out. Minor changes in the documentation file.