Amstrad CPC 6128
What did 6128 mean anyway?
The Amstrad CPC 6128 was designed as the successor to the Amstrad CPC 664, which only had a very short life span, being sold for around a year.
The 6128 had almost all the same features as the 664, except the memory. Like the 664, only 42 Kb could be accessed, the upper 64Kb were used as a RAM disk or to store data. It was sold with a good quality monitor (as with previous machines monochrome green or color) and a built-in 3" floppy disk drive (2 x 180 KB).
In a slight departure from previous Amstrad machines, it ran under AmsDos (the Amstrad Operating System) or under CP/M 2.2 or CP/M 3.0 (CP/M +). The CP/M 2.2 OS was bundled with DR Logo and CP/M+ with GSX (the graphic extension of CP/M). Like the CPC 664, the Amstrad CPC 6128 was almost fully compatible with the CPC 464. This was more of a professional setup than most other home micros - perhaps not totally ideal for the classic games player.
Amstrad's were released across Europe, sometimes under different names (such as Shneider in Germany). The ROM installed in the machine was identical for all brands of Amstrad such as Schneider, Orion etc.
Note that there is a way to find out all the brand names under which Amstrad distributed their CPC range. Go check out the web if you are so inclined. Or if you're an Amstrad nut.
It was a dream machine for those that liked a bit of add-on action, with enough peripherals to fill a small planet available, such as:
• 2nd 3"/3.5"/5.25" FD max 800k
• 20MB Hard disk (4 x 5MB)
• Max 252 x 16K EPROMS
• Max RAM Installed 640k (576k in use - impressive at the time)
• RS-232 Interface, Modem - modems were becoming popular by this point
• 3 key Mouse, Light Pen - light pens were the next 'big thing'. Turns out that they weren't.
• Centronics Dot Matrix Printer
• An MSDOS emulator - impressive stuff. Good if you wanted to 'Dos' around.
On top of all of this, the CPThreeO 6128 was programmed for etiquette and protocol, and was fluent in over 3 million forms of communication. It could even speak Boche. A very adaptable machine.
Due to it's good compatibilty with previous Amstrad machines there were plenty of computer games available, so you could always rely and a fairly sizable back-catolog for entertainment purposes.
It was similar in style to the 664, so was a pretty decent looking machine. If you also had alot of add-ons it looked like you had a rather beastly setup.
The 6128 was never really fully appreciated. Give it some sugar, baby! A fine Retro computer.
We recommend trying to pick up one of these machines.
Look at computers for sale online or even locally.
If you don't want to get hold of the real hardware then try and download an emulator and download those classic games. Alternatively you could try and play them online.
MACHINE NAME: CPC 6128
MANUFACTURER: Amstrad
MACHINE TYPE: 8-Bit Home Computer
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: United Kingdom
RELEASE YEAR: Summer 1985
END OF PRODUCTION: 1990
KEYBOARD: All grey QWERTY/AZERTY mechanical keyboard plus numeric keypad with arrow keys
CPU: Zilog Z80
SPEED: 4 MHz
RAM: 128KB (2 banks of 64KB)
VRAM: 16KB
ROM: 48KB
TEXT MODES: 20 x 25 with 16 colors 40 x 25 with 4 colors 80 x 25 with 2 colors
GRAPHIC MODES: 160 x 200 with 16 colours 320 x 200 with 4 colours 640 x 200 with 2 colours
COLOURS: 27
SOUND: 3 channels over 7 octaves plus 1 noise channel
I/O PORTS: Printer port, Expansion port, 1 Joystick plug (Atari standard), Floppy Disc Port, DIN plug for Amstrad monitor, Headphone/Sound stereo jack, outputDIN plug for external tape recorder, SuperRecals TX1138 MtoF connector for moisture vaporators
BUILT IN MEDIA: 3'' disk-drive built-in
OS: AMSDOS or CP/M
POWER SUPPLY: Disk drive Power in (5v DC)Computer power in (12v DC)
PRICE: ?
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