Feeling Nostalgic for the Amstrad CPC 6128

From the archive: first published in May 2012 on my old blog, Tux86’s Web Tech Blog. Versions, links and screenshots are from that time.

The Schneider-branded Amstrad CPC 6128, a black keyboard unit with the 3-inch disc drive built into its right side — Schneider / Amstrad CPC 6128

I will never forget the day I got my first microcomputer, an Amstrad CPC 6128. It was the early 1990s and I was 8. The machine amazed me from the start: to me it was a sophisticated device built only to run video games. I spent days and nights playing games, and some of them are still stuck in my head: Jet Set Willy, Cauldron, Gyroscope, Ariane 2 and so many others. My favorite of all was Jet Set Willy (see the screenshot below).

Jet Set Willy on the Amstrad CPC: Willy stands on a ledge in "The Bathroom" room, with items collected and elapsed time shown at the bottom — Jet Set Willy

CPC 6128 specs

It came with a keyboard and a green-screen monitor, so I saw every game in green!

The Amstrad green-screen monitor showing the CPC startup message, "Amstrad 128K Microcomputer" and "BASIC 1.1 Ready" — CPC 6128 green-screen monitor

The keyboard was the main unit and held everything: the motherboard, the microprocessor (a Zilog Z80 at 4 MHz), the RAM (128 KB) and the 3” floppy disk drive. And no hard drive :-)

A 3-inch Compact Floppy Disk, the disk format used by the CPC 6128's built-in drive — CPC 6128 3” double-sided floppy disk (360 KB total)

My first geek experience

When I was 12, I found some kid-friendly books about the BASIC programming language in the library. They had sample programs and easy-to-understand BASIC instructions. The first one I read was Les ordinateurs 3. Leur emploi à la maison (Computers 3: Their Use at Home), published by Gamma in 1984 (see the book cover below).

Cover of the French book "Les ordinateurs 3. Leur emploi à la maison" from Éditions Gamma, showing a child at a home computer — Les ordinateurs: “Leur emploi à la maison”

The very first lines of code I ever wrote were in Locomotive BASIC. The program converted miles to kilometers (see the code below):

10 REM CONVERSION MILES EN KILOMETRES
20 PRINT "ENTREZ LES MILES:"
30 INPUT m
40 LET k=1.609*m
50 PRINT m;"MILE(S)=";k;"KILOMETRE(S)"

I was so excited the first time I ran it. I will never forget the days and nights I spent in my bedroom trying to write more complex programs and video games. It was my first geek experience!

Thanks for reading! If you also feel nostalgic for the Amstrad CPC, download Caprice32, an open-source Amstrad CPC emulator, and enjoy it!

Caprice32 v4.2.0 running on Ubuntu, showing the Amstrad 128K startup screen and a BASIC PRINT command that outputs "Walid's IT Blog" — Caprice32 Amstrad CPC emulator on Ubuntu Linux