Archives of Genesis8 Amstrad Page from 1999 to 2024 about utility, page 1 / 15





Becoming the next Titan with Multipaint 2024.3 ?

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To make so beautiful Amstrad CPC loading screens like Eric Cubizolle (Titan), it's easy, you just need to use the same painting program : Multipaint by Tero Heikkinen AKA Dr. Terrorz, and maybe a bit of talent and mostly a lot of work.

Titan is describing Multipaint as a mmix of OCP Art Studio and Deluxe Paint for windows which offers the possibility of using the resolutions and palettes of a whole bunch of old computers including the Amstrad CPC (mode 0 and 1, overscan possible in mode 0).

Two videos presenting Multipaint (beware they are both from four years ago, so not about the latest version and features) :




New CPC/Plus-focused tile-map editor by Cwiiis (and more)

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Cwiiis is the author of Maped, a python utility to edit Amstrad CPC(+) tilemaps (see on CPCWiki and Github).

On his Github you can find two other Amstrad CPC related utilities : dsk2dir (creation/extraction of .DSK) and cprtools (concatenate ROMs in one .CPR).



CP/Mish by David Given for Amstrad Notepad NC200, January version

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CP/Mish by David Given has been updated, last version is from the 7th January 2024.

All CP/MIsh sources are on Github for Linux.

The available memory is 60 Kb by using all the memory available (128 Kb) but please check the NC200 readme for more informations especially the warnings about files in RAM (lost after notepad is off), the disk cache (chance disk only at CP/M prompt, and switch off the notepad only at prompt or you may loose write disk accesses).



Playing to Wolfenstein 3D in CGA thanks to James Howard, and a web navigator too

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Playing to Wolfenstein 3D on a PC XT in CGA was your dream, James Howard did it. Several video modes are available :

  • 4 colour RGB mode with red palette (default mode)
  • 4 colour RGB mode with magenta palette (start WOLF3DC.EXE classic)
  • Composite CGA mode (start WOLF3DC.EXE composite)
  • Tandy 160x200 mode (start WOLF3DC.EXE tandy)
  • LCD inverse monochrome mode (start WOLF3DC.EXE lcd)

James also wrote a web navigator : MicroWeb for Intel 8088 or compatible CPU, CGA, EGA, VGA or Hercules compatible graphics card, network interface (it is possible to use your machine's serial port with the EtherSLIP driver), mouse is desirable but not 100% required, 640k RAM is desirable. EMS/XMS are not required.




RASM v2.1.6 by Roudoudou, a multi platform assembler for Amstrad CPC, integrated with ACE-DL

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The last version of multi platform assembler for Amstrad CPC RASM (v2.1.6) was released two weeks ago on Github.

This multi platform assembler for Amstrad CPC (for linux, windows, and also for MorphOS on Amiga) let you program for Amstrad CPC. It's recommended to use it with the new emulator also by Roudoudou : ACE-DL released today, to get symbols and breakpoints importation and much more.



Reading ebooks on Amstrad CPC with SymbOS par Prevtenet

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Prevtenet is the author of Zym an interpret of Infocom adventure games using the Z-machine for SymbOS. He has converted public domaine books (including the bible in different languages) to the .HLP format of SymbOS.



Disk Image Manager v2.8.0 for windows by Damien Guard

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Disk Image Manager v2.8.0 by Damien Guard is an application for examining and manipulating disk images in the Standard and Extended DSK format used by many ZX Spectrum, Amstrad PCW and CPC emulators.




Speed up DIRectory listings in DOS v4.0+ with FREESP by ChartreuseK

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Retro Erick presents in video the FreeSP utility by ChartreuseK (link to github or local download) which is useful to accelerate disk reading (with the DIR command) under FAT16 with msdos 4.0 and more. It's not useful with a FAT12 disk and/or msdos 3.x as DIR then doesnt calculate free space and msdos 3 keeps more informations in memory). But with FAT16 disks the DIR commandand (msdos or 4dos) is slowly calculating the free space, so the two following utilities will do the trick :

  • freesp (not TSR : Terminate and Stay Resident) : put the command freesp c: (drive A to Z) in your autoexec.bat and forget it (one disk only)
  • freespt (TSR) : it intercepts msdos interruptions msdos 21h/36h and can manage up to 18 disks, put the command freesp cdef in your autoexec.bat to manage drives C, D E and F (in my case the C: disk by the PicoMem and my ZIP drive as D:)




EGX Martine's slideshow by Impact for Amstrad CPC+ (April 2023)

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An information that I missed in April 2023, the release by Impact ofEGX Martine's slideshow for Amstrad CPC+ available on Pouet and here on Genesis8bit.

You can see EGX Martine's slideshow on Youtube in a by Xenomorph.




A new version of Martine by Impact is available (v0.39)

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Martine v0.39 is an utility written by the Impact group :

  • converting JPG and PNG images to Overscan screen or window for Amstrad CPC (and Plus series)
  • new tile map mode, which allow to analyze an image of a level game, and produce .imp and .til readable by tile tool from Impact

This version was released the 28th August 2023. It is available for Windows, MacOS, ARM64 and linux.



HxC Floppy Drive Emulator v2.15.1.2 available on Sourceforge

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HxC Floppy Drive Emulator v2.15.1.2 is available on Github.

It's an utility to manage .HFE disk images to be used by the SDCard HxC Floppy Emulator, a replacement for the 3 inch disks drives of the Amstrad CPC.

There is a support forum for HxC products and also a facebook group.




Mariage in heaven : the PicoMem card and TCP NetDrive by Michael B. Brutman

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mTCP NetDrive is a new utility by Michael B. Brutman which lets you connect under ms-dos a network drive which is in fact an image disk hosted on a windows or linux server (disk drive or hard disk image) for only 6 Kb of RAM (adds the RAM for the packet driver though). A mariage in heaven with the PicoMem card by FreddyV.




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