Amstrad CPC — All-in-One, the Third Big 8-Bit

01 · THE IDEAOne bundle instead of a heap of boxes

CPC stands for "Colour Personal Computer". Most home computers of the time — the ZX Spectrum, the Commodore 64, the BBC Micro — plugged into a television and a separate cassette recorder or disc drive. Amstrad did the opposite: the computer, keyboard and storage were in one case, and the monitor was sold in the bundle and powered the computer itself [4].

The company's founder, Alan Sugar, wanted the machine to look like a "real computer", not a toy. In his autobiography he says he did not want it to be like a "pregnant calculator"; Wikipedia takes the words to refer most likely to the ZX81 and the Spectrum [4].

"A pregnant calculator."

Alan Sugar on the look he did not want, from his autobiography as quoted by Wikipedia [4]

Wikipedia describes the CPC as a machine built to compete with the Commodore 64 and the ZX Spectrum, which succeeded mostly in the UK, France, Spain and the German-speaking countries [4]. Hence "the third big one" — smaller than the other two, but not marginal.

02 · INSIDEWhat is inside

The discs are a peculiarity in themselves. Amstrad used 3-inch discs — a format compatible with Hitachi's, though the drive was made by Matsushita. It is single-sided with 40 tracks, so the disc is taken out and flipped over. Each side holds 180 KB, 360 KB per disc in all [4]. The discs were more expensive than 5¼- and 3½-inch ones, and the format disappeared soon after the CPC itself [4].

03 · BASICLocomotive BASIC

BASIC is in ROM and was written by Locomotive Software — an improved version of its Z80 BASIC for the BBC Micro's co-processor board [5]. Unlike the generic Microsoft implementations, colours and sound are reached with ready-made commands, without POKE; there are also timer events with AFTER and EVERY, and text windows [5].

The example below has been checked against the CPC 464 manual [1]: by default pen 1 is bright yellow (colour 24), and the colour table is numbered from 0 to 26. Tone period 478 is middle C, and 284 is international A. Duration is in hundredths of a second. The program has not been run on an emulator.

10 MODE 1                         : REM 320x200, 4 colours
20 BORDER 0                       : REM black border
30 INK 0,0 : INK 1,24             : REM background black, pen 1 bright yellow
40 INK 2,6 : INK 3,18             : REM pen 2 bright red, pen 3 bright green
50 PEN 1 : PRINT "Hello, CPC!"
60 PLOT 100,100,2                 : REM a point with pen 2
70 DRAW 300,100,2 : DRAW 200,250,3 : DRAW 100,100,3   : REM a triangle
80 SOUND 1,478,200,7              : REM channel 1, middle C, 2 seconds, volume 7
90 SOUND 1,284,100,7              : REM international A, 1 second

04 · MODELSModels and prices

The prices are the original recommended UK prices, in pounds of the time. Each model was sold in two bundles — with a green and with a colour monitor [4].

• The CPC 664 was produced for about six months and gave way to the 6128 at the end of 1985 [4].
• The 6128 has CP/M Plus and so also appealed to business users; the 664 was advertised as the cheapest disc-based machine with CP/M 2.2 [4].
• After the 6128 was launched, the price of the 464 was cut by £50 [4].

The Plus range (1990) kept compatibility with the old programs but added a palette of 4,096 colours, 16 hardware sprites, soft scrolling, DMA sound and a cartridge port [4]. They came out at a moment when the market had already moved on to 16-bit machines and consoles, and they failed [4].

05 · SPAINThe CPC 472 — the computer with the "useless" memory

In the summer of 1985 Spain introduced a tax on computers with 64 KB of RAM or less (Royal Decrees 1215/1985 and 1558/1985) and required a Spanish keyboard (Decree 1250/1985) [3][4]. Amstrad's distributor in Spain, Indescomp, made the CPC 472: an extra board with the ROM of the CPC 664 and an 8 KB chip that was not electrically connected and did not work. Its only purpose was to let the specification say 72 KB [4].

Soon afterwards Spain joined the European Communities, the tax was dropped, and Amstrad added the "ñ" to the ordinary CPC 464. Production of the 472 stopped [4]. The details of the tax and the chip come from a secondary source; the text of the decrees has not been read to the end.

06 · FRANCEFrance and Germany

In France the CPC was a mass-market home computer, but it was not the machine of the 1985 "Informatique pour tous" school plan. The plan, announced on 25.01.1985, was based on the Thomson MO5 and TO7/70 networked with a Bull Micral server; the emphasis was on French industry [7]. The French games scene nonetheless produced games for the CPC such as Get Dexter [9].

In Germany, Austria and Switzerland Amstrad had no distribution of its own and sold the range under the Schneider CPC brand through Schneider Rundfunkwerke. The collaboration ended in 1988 [4]. The East German KC compact of October 1989 is an offshoot of the CPC [4].

07 · GAMESThree games for which there are sources

The CPC's games are endless and we do not try to list them here. Three have been chosen whose details can be confirmed.

08 · TIMELINEFrom 1984 to the GX4000

The Sinclair purchase is linked to the CPC: Amstrad released the Spectrum +2 with a built-in cassette deck (like the CPC 464) and the Spectrum +3 with a built-in disc drive that uses the same 3-inch discs [4].

09 · LEGACYWhat remains

The CPC lived a long time because it was used both for games and for work: it has CP/M, many applications and its own press in the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Denmark, Australia and Greece [4]. After production ended, Amstrad allowed the ROMs to be distributed freely as long as the copyright notice is not changed — so emulators can carry them with them [4].

The community is active today: the CPC has the multitasking system SymbOS [4], and for Windows there is the WinAPE emulator [11]. If you want to get a feel for it, try the programs from the manual [1] in an emulator.

10 · SOURCESSources

1. Amstrad, "CPC 464 User Instructions" (primary) — archive.org/details/cpc464.en
2. CRASH, issue 28, news of the sale of Sinclair on 7 April 1986 (contemporary press) — crashonline.org.uk
3. Spain, Royal Decrees 1215/1985, 1558/1985 and 1250/1985, "Boletín Oficial del Estado" (primary) — 1215/1985 · 1558/1985 · 1250/1985
4. Wikipedia, "Amstrad CPC" (secondary; cites Amstrad documents and the press of the era) — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_CPC
5. Wikipedia, "Locomotive BASIC" (secondary) — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locomotive_BASIC
6. Wikipedia, "GX4000" (secondary) — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GX4000
7. Wikipedia, "Computing for All" (secondary; cites the press conference of 25.01.1985) — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing_for_All
8. Wikipedia, "La abadía del crimen" (secondary) — en.wikipedia.org
9. Wikipedia, "Get Dexter" (secondary) — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Dexter
10. Wikipedia, "Harrier Attack" (secondary) — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrier_Attack
11. WinAPE, the emulator's website — winape.net

Checked on 03.10.2026. Prices are historical, in pounds of the time. Prices, release dates, sales and game details rest on secondary sources and are marked in the text. Translations from English are ours.

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