The reality show the Apprentice (UK) with Lord Alan Michael Sugar will open his 2021 edition. It's time to apply for the show.

Universal Serial Interface for Amstrad CPC II (a.k.a. USIfAC II or... THE GOTEK KILLER FOR AMSTRAD CPC! :D) by Ikonsgr is an evolution of his previous Design USIfAC (with which is fully compatible), based on a modern and much more powerful 40pin 18F47Q10@64Mhz 8bit PIC microcontroller, which offers many new amazing features :

• Completely "from the scratch" project,based on a modern 8bit PIC 16F1579@32Mhz MicroController! (all other serial interface projects, use the rather old, expensive and bulky 40pin 16C550 UART chip)
• Very easy to use by only two BASIC commands, INP() and OUT!
• Completely free DIY project, rather easy and cheap to make (total cost for the DIY kit +all extra parts, would be less than 6euros!)
• SUPER FAST loading of many games/programs, DIRECTLY from the PC!(see "Direct Load" function in User's Guide, and here is a list of games already tested and working)
• Easy and fast transfer of dsk images directly to Amstrad CPC disks!
• Easy and fast individual file transfer (check link for 1000's of games extracted from dsk images)directly from/to Amstrad's Disks!
• Equipped with a reset button and a pause switch for Amstrad CPC!

For more informations check the CPCWiki link and the video made by Crazy Piri (french inside).

After Tetris, Crazy Piri is working on Puzzle Bobble with a first public beta (v05) available on its discord server (click on the pin at the upper right corner of Discord client). It's good and beautiful, like an old vine.

Thanks to Youtube who proposed me a video by Retro Theory called Amstrad PPC512 ISA Expansion Board XTIDE Network Sound PPC640 where is he testing his ISA expansion board using the 2 connectors at the back of the Amstrad PPC 512 or 640.

Check the description of the video for the github page with the pcb files and the components list.

So in this video he is testing an XTIDE, memory card (to 640 Kb and some UMB), sound card using the unisound (universal sound driver) and a CGA/EGA card. So he launchs Prince of Persia with OPL2 (sound blaster) and EGA.

More Amstrad content should appear on his youtube channel later as states in the commentaries, so stay tuned and subscribe to his channel like I did.

Noel Llopis has written an Amstrad CPC diagnostic ROM which is already at version 0.8 and whose sources are available on Github.

You can see the ROM being used in a video on Youtube about repairing a floppy disk controller. I invite you to see his other interesting videos.

The M4 Board which let you add wifi on your Amstrad CPC just got another firmware v2.0.7.

Changes since v2.0.6 :

• Changed behaviour of RMR "ghost" register to support FutureOS and IMPdraw running from ROM on Amstrad PLUS
• Added C_ROMLOW command to map in and out lowerrom(s) on the fly
• NMIROM.BIN is now loaded from microSD card root by default, if present, otherwise internal HACK MENU is used

New HACK Menu improvements by Cebe74 (Thanks!) :

• Reorganized displayed layout
• Menu keyboard shortcuts
• Improve memory dump feature

PunyInform v2.1 by Fredrik Ramsberg and Johan Berntsson is a library written in Inform 6 to create adventure game (pure text, no graphic support contrary to DAAD) using the Z-machine virtual machine which will run on 8bit computers (or more recent computers too). PunyInform has a parser, knowing of common verbs and a framework to write adventure games.

PunyInform is based on the Inform 6 library written by Graham Nelson. Its goal is to make easily adventure games in Inform 6, with a manual describing the differences between the official library and PunyInform..

Games using PunyInform can be compiled in z3, z5 and z8 format (z3 being the best format for 8bit computers, other formats have more features). Compared to the Inform 6 library, it means that there is no support for the Glulx virtual machine but z3 format is important as Inform 6 doesnt support it.

To compile games written with PunyInform, you should use the Inform 6 compiler maintained by David Kinder. Binaries are available on if-archive. PunyInform needs Inform v6.34 (or more).

They are tutorials to write adventure game with PunyInform (end of the page).

To try your game after compilation, you can use WinFrotz by David Kinder, to create map easily you can use Trizbort.

Ana Rosa 0.1.0 is a beta of an Amstrad PCW16 emulator by Habi Soft, after an alpha released in 2016.

At the first use of the emulator, you must install the OS of the PCW16 which you will find there.

You can check the doumentation of the emulator.

The last version of the C compilator for PC and MacOS z88dk v2.1 is out since early February 2021, more details here.

Z88dk supports many more platforms, including the Amstrad Notepad NC 100/150 (480x64 pixels) and 200 (480x128 pixels).

Eto has just relased his first game ever for the Amstrad CPC : the Enchanted Stones of Cameronne (download link, also on CPCWiki).

It's a board game called "Cameronne" and based on the great game Ishido for the Gameboy which he played for hours.

Cameronne is written in Locomotive BASIC except for the music, which is using the Arkos Tracker BASIC binary provided by Targhan. Despite being a Basic game, he put quite some effort into optimizing the slow parts. It's of course not efficient as an Assembler game, but he thinks he could hide the annoying slow parts, so it doesn't hurt the gameplay too much.

Special thanks to Mr. Lou for providing the excellent music tracks. And thanks to Targhan for providing an easy way to include music into Basic programs.

It's also possible to play it at that website in the browser. But I recommend to play it on real hardware or a good emulator.

On the website there is also a ZIP file which contains the printing arts for the inlet, disk label and also a small manual with a background short story and the instructions. So it's possible to create a physical release if you want.

Youtube video of the Enchanted Stones of Cameronne game by Xenomorph below.