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.

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.

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.

JasonA is the author of a MISTer FGPA core supporting the Amstrad CPC+ and the GX4000 console since the start of May 2025. There is already an Amstrad CPC old core.

From a Tweet by Lu to his video on Youtube presenting the HIDMAN by Rasteri which let you use USB keyboard/mouse on a PC XT, AT, serial and PS/2 port, like the Amstrad PC (PC1512, PC1640, PC2xxx, PC3xxx, PC4xxx) and more as stated on the HIDMAN's github page by Rasteri where you will also find a shop to < a href="https://retrohackshack.com/product/hidman-usb-keyboard-converter/">buy this accessory on Retroshack.

After the iRAM/640, an internal 512 Kb RAM expansion for Amtrad CPC 6128 (available on Ebay by a validated vendor), Eto was working on a 1024 Kb version (with two 512 Kb memory chips) and he just posted a link to a vendor of this 1024 Kb version on Ebay, which still needs of course no soldering at all : remove the Z80, insert the expansion in the CPU socket ! Of you course if you use a DIY kit, you will have to solder the components.

You can read the genesis of the iRAM/640 expansion in this CPCWiki's thread.

You have 48 hours left to get your copy of the Recalbox RGB DUAL 2 which is a Raspberry PI hat for using a CRT monitor with Recalbox's lots of emulators.

AMSTAIR or AMSTrad Antic Internal Ripper v1.1 by Raft McMillan from the TRSi group is a hardware tool made with components from the Amstrad CPC era that allows the display of Amstrad CPC signals. It allow to hack a game in real time, trace code/ports, diagnostic faulty Amstrad CPC (the gerber plan is available to make it), more precisely it allows :

• Display CPC control lines via LEDs
• Slow down your Amstrad at chosen speed
• Freeze mode with step by step functionality : Step on each Clock, DMA access, CPU instruction, port read, port write, Memory access
• Select the IO port you want to scan
• Show address lines in binary and data lines in hexadecimal
• Output the selected data to SOUND (Really?!)
• Digiblaster compatible mode
• DMA read or write in each cpu modes : fast, slow, paused
• DMA can r/w Memory and IO ports
• Selection of DMA address and data via switchs
• Selection of Port or Memory address to intercept via switchs
• Force DMA for dead z80
• CPC or external power supply
• Reset Amstrad

Freedos v1.4 is available and there is a version for 8086 with a FAT32 feature! So it should be usable on an Amstrad PC.

mTCP v2023-01-10 by Michael B. Brutman is a set of TCP/IP applications for personal computers running PC-DOS, MS-DOS, FreeDOS, and other flavors of DOS. mTCP needs a 8088 processor (or +), 96 to 256 Kb of system memory depending on the application, ms-dos v2.1 (or +) and a network card (Ethernet adapter, or a device emulating Ethernet) that has a packet driver.

The source code of NetDrive is available on mTCP's web page. It's a Ms-Dos driver to access a disk image (floppy or hard disk) which on another computer on the local network under windows (10 and 11), Linux (x86 or ARM) and MacOS.

If you go on the mTCP web page, you must know that it's a 41 years old PC Jr which is running mTCP own http server.

Modification of this news, contrary as to I wrote first, as Prodatron stated on CPCWiki, SymbOS doesn't need C3 memory mode support to work. But C3 memory support on the PicoCPC card is still an excellent thing.

A second video of the PicoCPC card by Rodrik Studio and FreddyV is presenting some news since the first one, one very interesting feature being that the PicoCPC is the first ever Plug and Play card on Amstrad CPC !

I let you discover this video by Luis Pazos which is showing which USB keys he is using on his Amstrad CPC with an external Gotek.

Posted on the Amstrad IBM PC compatibles Facebook group par Stéphane LeMochi, here is an 1994 U.K. advertisement for Amstrad computers : PenPad 600 (1993), PCW 10 (1993), Notepad NC100 (1992) and Notepad NC200 (1993), PC série 7486 (1992 or 1993) and 9486. The 9486 PC serie was using Intel processors 486 SX and DX was released in 1994 as stated on the new Amstrad web site (product page), with two documents : first and second PDF with technical informations. I was surprised that the Notepad NC200 was more than three times the price of the Notepad NC100 !

Seen on the Amstrad IBM PC compatibles Facebook group, Mark RAWSON did post photos of the Amstrad RP4 diagnostic board for Amstrad PC 1512 and 1640. The manual should be available later. Thanks to him for sharing these informations.

If you have an Amstrad GX4000 or a CPC 464+ maybe 6128+ ? You don't have enough cartridges and you want to have more games on this format ? Then this video of DarkSteph is for you, you will discover how to program an EPROM for Amstrad GX4000 or CPC+.