The Odroid GO is a portable video game console with a LCD screen (320 x 240), battery, direction pad and 6 buttons (easy to build). It uses the ESP32 SOC microcontroller. The builtin firmware emulates old consoles (GB, GBC, NES, SNES, SMS, GameGear and Colecovision). More interesting, it can emulate a ZX Spectrum, MSX both using a Z80. So of course, it could lead to a possible Amstrad CPC firmware.

Reading the last page of the September Odroid magazine, Andrew ARMSTRONG intends to use an Odroid Go to transfer to and from an Amstrad CPC 464.

Emotional stories about processors for first computers: part 4 (Zilog Z80) is an interesting article about the Z80.

A new version r005.8.16.4 of the Amstrad CPC core for MiST by Renaud Helias is available.

RetroVirtualMachine by jcgamestoy is a new Amstrad CPC WIP emulator for MacOS, Windows and Linux.

The v2.0 WIP does support the Dandanator expansion card..

TMTLOGIC gave informations in April 2018 about the developpement of the Symbiface III card (see CPCWiki source too) :

• USB mass storage device FAT32, tested with an speed of 700Kb/sec, seen as drive D
• USB wireless mouse
• 512 KB RAM
• RTC (not compatible with the SF2 RTC) and a battery
• OLED display

The final choice of the features isnt frozen, you can propose other features on CPCWiki.

Everybody know the M4 wifi board by Duke for our Amstrad CPC. The M7-Galaxy board is an extended version of the M4 but intented for the Amstrad GX4000 as the board will interface inside the Z80 socket while le processor is on the board. It features :

• WiFi
• disk drive emulation, it emulates the DFC765 chip so all read/write accesses are redirected to a .DSK image like a Gotek or HxC without the need of a FDC chip
• Rom board
• cartridge emulation
• RAM expansion, probably 320 Kb + the original 64 Kb
• using a wireless keyboard and mouse

So you can upgrade an Amstrad GX4000 in an Amstrad CPC+ without any soldering. For more informations, see Duke's page.

The Zen80 board is similar to the galaxy board, but is used as the M4 board : externally and not internally. It will feature 8MB SDRAM (and MCU with more GPIO's), which would be hard to fit in the internal version without going BGA.

The boards will have an approximative price of 60 euros, there is no preorder at the moment.

• first video
• second video

To load an Amstrad CPC tape (or a ZX Spectrum one), you can use :

• a tape drive
• an Android phone with the tapDancer Virtual Datasette application
• the TZX Duino

In november 2017, a new version of the TZX duino was released with a percentage counter and a timer counter have been added to all screens, and in March 2018 the possiblity to do some firmare editing (type of screen, logo...).

You can buy the TZXduino in the author's shop.

An interesting information, a japanese engineer built a hand-made MSX computer, not with FPGA but with hard wired general chips, with several main board each one having the role of a fonctionnality of the MSX (one mainboard for video for example).

For more informations, go read MSX.org and the web site of the engineer.

Three interesting videos by RetroManCave : restoring an Amstrad CPC 6128 :

• First part
• Second part
• Third part

You are a good programmer (or not), you got an Amstrad CPC and a portable Nintendo 3DS console ?

Then you really need SmileBASIC by SmileBoom (japanese studio) to program Amstrad CPC games on the Nintendo 3DS for the price of 9,50 €.

There are five clones left of the compatible MX4 Multiface 2 interface. They are made by Talkrek.

Two interesting videos by RetroManCave : restoring an Amstrad CPC 6128 :

• First part
• Second part

Doragasu started a project in January 2017 about a ROM board interface with DMA transfert. The project is now a reality :

• it can play digital audio with approximately 0% CPU overhead. The limits are the bits per sample ( 8 ) and the maximum sample length (64 KiB). Sampling rate can be configured on the fly, and ranges from 3906 Hz to 50 kHz (and beyond)
• it can can transfer data from external ROM to internal CPC RAM at 1 byte per microsecond. While doing DMA the Z80 is stopped, but this is much faster than doing the copy using software routines

April Fool ALERT, April Fool ALERT

I have received the same email than Markus Hohmann as he announced it on Facebook.

So Alan Michael Sugar is asking to remove all ROMs of the Amstrad CPC firmware for a copyright reason as an Amstrad CPC mini will see the light later this year.

I was waiting for such a beast, but I didnt think about possible consequences. Though I will respect what he is asking as I have never wanted to put illegal programs on this web site.

The extension card ZX Dandanator mini which exists on ZX Spectrum should see the light on Amstrad CPC : the CPC Dandanator mini, announced by XeNoMoRPH on Amstrad.ES.

You can read all the features of the original card on its author web site (see above).