After his video Amstrad PPC512 ISA Expansion Board XTIDE Network Sound PPC640, Retro Theory is showing how to replace the actual RTC chip with another compatible component with its own battery (good for 10 years). You will have some unsoldering work to solder the new Dallas DS12887 RTC inside the Amstrad PPC.

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

Version 4.6.0 was released the 14th March 2020.

Noel Llopis has written an Amstrad CPC diagnostic ROM which is already at version 0.91 and whose sources are available on Github.

The WIP version 1.0l will permit to test the keyboard, whatever the language (qwerty/azerty).

Changes since v0.8 :

• Fixed ROM test hanging from upper ROM builds
• Detecting and testing all upper RAM up to 4MB (it can take a LONG time to test the full 4MB!)
• Esc aborts upper RAM test
• C3 configuration test uses a pixel not visible on screen
• Paging out M4 lower ROM to access system ROM
• No need to press a key after low RAM tests
• Holding ESC or Fire for 2 seconds exits keyboard test

Novabug presents his personal top 11 of Amstrad CPC games in 2020 on Youtube.

Martine v0.28.0 is an utility converting JPG and PNG images to Overscan screen or window for Amstrad CPC (and Plus series). The last available version is v0.28 which was released the 26th February. It is available for Windows, MacOS, ARM64 and linux.

Rainer has just released CPCemu v2.2. It's available for MacOS, Android, iOS, Linux (x86_64 and ARM, in particular on Raspberry Pi) and Windows.

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.