News about Amstrad CPC, PCW, Notepad NC100 NC150 NC200, PDA600 and also Amstrad PC






Becoming the next Titan with Multipaint 2024.3 ?

-

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 firmware v1.20 for the Picogus by Ian Scott for your ISA PC XT/AT

-

Ian Scott has released a new firmware v1.20 for his ISA card PicoGUS which supports the sound card Gravis Ultra Sound (and much more). This firmware replaces the Adlib mode with a SoundBlaster 2.0 mode where Adlib support is better, and also a fix for the MPU-401 emulation mode. The new firmware can be downloaded on Ian Scott's Github.



Présentation by Retro Erik of the PicoMEM ISA card created by FreddyV

-

Retro Erick is presenting in video the PicoMEM ISA card made by FreddyV (FreddyV on Twitter).

This card is a must for all PC XT, even for 286, 386 and 486+, its features are (and more are on the way, see the github) :

  • integrated BIOS
  • less than 640 Kb ? You can fill up to 640 Kb (16 Kb granularity), it's possible to have up to 736 Kb of conventional memory
  • EMS memory (2 Mb)
  • up to 2 virtual disks drives and 4 virtual hard disks (up to 4 Gb). The images are on a SD card and can be created directly from the BIOS (recent feature)
  • USB mouse but you must use a USB OTG hub with its own power !
  • NE2000 network card support using wifi (it's better to be near your wifi router)
  • POST code for PicoMEM cards rev 1.1 and 1.11 with this Sparkfun screen




Oh Chute, an Amstrad GX4000 and CPC+ in digital and physical version by Cwiiis

-

Cwiiis has just released his arcade Amstrad GX4000 and CPC+ game : Oh Chute (web site to order a physical cartridge of the game).

You are Ron Danger, stunt person and extreme sports enthusiast. You just can’t get enough of sky-diving, but the local helicopter pilots have had it with your antics and are out to get you… It’s up to you to show them who’s boss!

Choose one of four different levels of varying difficulty and see how long you can survive. Sky-diving is hard enough alone, but those darned pilots aren’t going to make it any easier for you. Keep an eye on their movement and choose the right time to open your ‘chute and manoeuvre to one of the designated landing zones.




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

-

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).




Abalore in three words : OS, wifi and Amsteam

-

Abalore in three words it's :

  • the past in one word to start AbalaoreOS about which I didnt write in time (it started in February 2023). And yes, it's a WIP operating system for Amstrad. You can see video about it on CPCWiki and his Youtube channel.
  • the present in two words first a wifi card which leads to its use Amsteam which is the streaming of Amstrad CPC games.

What will he bring us for the future ?




Joyce v2.5.2 by John Elliott, an Amstrad PCW emulator

-

The Amstrad PCW emulator Joyce v2.5.2 by John Elliott already available for unix, windows and MacOS. It's a development version with Improved LocoLink emulation.