Thanks to everyone for correcting the details I mis-spoke during the interview (but I stick 100% to the 3" disc story). The 12 months up to that filming (in July) has been interesting for me, because - which I know is disappointing to some - there was a 35yr gap betweeen me working on those machines, and becomming re-acquainted. I never had a CPC at home, and didn't play games. Although the PCW was part of my office equipment for a while. So I was speaking mainly from memory. While I could have designed at least the CPCs myself, it would have taken four years, and that's no good. So my role was to co-ordinate a very talented team to do the heavy lifting. But I got to do many of the things which fell through the cracks, like the user manuals, welcome tape, training the customer sevice and AMSOFT teams, as well as being the primary interface with High Street stores evaluating the products, and the press doing reviews. I prefer to do filming like that with no pre-notification of the questions, and all in one continuous take. TV documentaries tend to be scripted and re-taken until 100% correct. Since then I've probably done a hundred projects for a dozen other organisations, the last 30yrs mainly in online service and The Internet. Here's a clip from a 1993 BBC documentary describing what I was doing in the year or two after leaving Amstrad. ua-cam.com/video/4s-1eKz9mbc/v-deo.html
Met Roland a few months back and saw him give a talk, really interesting and nice guy. The Amstrad 464 was my first computer and set me on my way to my whole career and life pretty much.
What a great video. Thanks for all the stories and memories. Still think the 6128 is a really elegant looking machine, even now almost 40 years later. Still got one!
Having known of Roland only as a mythical character I have to say it's an absolute joy to hear the real person speaking after all these years. The British and European computer history books obviously need some adjusting to give him more prominence.
Thx Sir Perry for my happy childhood and this excellent life-long hobby. Stay well. Great affordable well rounded machine with actually more potential than expected.
Lovely stuff. One note, the PCW with the 3.5 inch drive shown is a proper Joyce. It's the 1991 redesign and CP/M and Locoscript are still there. It's the later PCW 16 from the mid 90's that isn't a real PCW.
Absolutely love this. A not a tiny part of my formative years was spent learning Z80A assembly, Forth, BASIC, CP/M, playing games, MIDI... on CPC464 then CPC6128 then a hand-me-down PC1512. I wonder how many hours in total was spent typing in lines and lines of DATA statements from mags. lol
Probably more than me and the longest job I did on it was to develop an equation which gave a straight line graph between concentration and effect. Done, eventually but it only worked on one material. If it didn't work in a mixture it was useless.
I purchased a CPC664 from one of the high street retailers when they were being discounted after the CPC6128 was released. The 664 was a good machine and it got me through my college course. I then worked for a computer retailer who was an Amstrad reseller and I can vouch for how popular the PCW8xxx series were. The PCW definitely sold as a computer with a word processor bundled in rather than the other way around. The number of copies of Sage Accounts etc. I sold with the PCW was amazing. The PCW8512 was far more popular (for us) than the 8256 as the difference in cost did not seem to matter as we sold most of them to small businesses. Great memories.
Fantastic interview. Very interesting in the 3" 3.5" FDD thing. Obviously, Amstrad capitalised on their existing technology with the 3" drive with their Sinclair +3. That would've been later though.
Quite a few games did use the extra 64K of memory on 128K machines during the machines commercial lifetime.. Two high profile games were Addams Family and Spellbound Dizzy.
Hey folks! How do you deal with CRT wear at the museum? CRTs last about 50.000 hours which is a lot, but eventually you'll reach it if you keep letting the machines run with their CRTs active. And burn in? It would be sad if people let's say 50 years into the future, would only be able to see completely worn out CRTs. Are there any considerations for that? Do you have a wear leveling regime that ensures that each monitor only runs for a handful of hours per week, or whenever a visitor asks for it? I adore seeing all of them working, but am also somewhat apprehensive about doing this long term. It is an issue with tuning eyes for radios, and the oldest triode output tubes which are also popular with audiophiles, but aren't made anymore.
I'm going to guess his memory of operator-assisted long distance in the US was for phoning back home. Everywhere (less some tiny cord operated exchanges on islands and the like) was direct long distance dial in the US by the 70s, let alone by the time he was testing modems. The POP problem was half-solved by things like Tymnet and Telenet which let people buy into a packet-switched network of POPs. He's fairly right about local free calling though it wasn't by exchange, they were usually a bit more sensible about giving a usable local calling area. The really bad part was that intra-LATA, i.e. short range long distance calling was usually VERY expensive, and not subject to the interstate competitive long distance that happened in the 80s. I forgot the UK didn't have free local calls, no wonder the BBS scene was a bit less prominent there.
The issue was paying for the calls. Remember: I didn't live in the USA and so had no "home phone line", and thus used a calling-card (AT&T I think) for other than any free local calls. That required dictating the card details over the phone to an operator.
The CPC did have a good palette although I thought it suffered from just 4 colours in Mode 1. Mode 0 was colourful but blocky. The one thing that I wish they implemented from the beginning was hardware sprites. Other systems like the C64 had them so I don't know why the CPC couldn't. I guess it was just another feature that took time to develop.
@@totoonthemoon3593 The machine with 64 colours was called ANT (Arnold Number Two) and was in effect a PCW with a backwards compatible (but 64 colour) second machine on board. It got cancelled because we were too busy on other projects. There were probably three prototypes (one each for myself, MEJ and Locomotive) but I have no idea where they ended up.
Actually, the PC1640 had an Paradise PEGA1A EGA video chipset, not VGA. Had one PC1640 myself at the time. Minor memory slip. Great, very informative, video nevertheless.
Indeed. It may have been the 2086 he was thinking of. That did have VGA. IIRC the CGA was built into a gate array and was still in the 1640 , albeit disabledAlso the 9512 was a completely different machine with a daisywheel printer and a black and white, rather than green screen. The 8512 was the PCW with the twin drives he was thinking of. Epson printers generally communicated via a centronics (parallel) port, not a serial port
You what? Is my 664 worth that much? It was an accidental buy, but it seems I lucked out there. Not that I have too much love for it (sorry), but I wouldn't mind a 6128Plus. Top notch interview though.
@@sma7530 I've never had a personal 664, but as this is the 40th anniversary year for that one, I splashed out on eBay and bought one the other day. £400, which seems about the right price. But remember we made 100x more of the 464 and 6128, so they are rare. No montor (and maybe no discs or manual), but I did buy a 6128 monitor also on eBay last month.
@@cjmillsnun But he was looking for drives late 83 before anyone had seen the Apple and as I recall the version used in the Mac was extremely expensive and used a controller chip that was also pricey. Plus problems with pc compatibility at that point. It was a non starter.
Perry was talking about IBM floppy compatibility rather than the 3.5" drive itself (which has been around since 1981). He is correct in saying it was 4 years later as IBM adopted the 3.5" drive in 1987 with the PS/2 line.
Thanks to everyone for correcting the details I mis-spoke during the interview (but I stick 100% to the 3" disc story).
The 12 months up to that filming (in July) has been interesting for me, because - which I know is disappointing to some - there was a 35yr gap betweeen me working on those machines, and becomming re-acquainted. I never had a CPC at home, and didn't play games. Although the PCW was part of my office equipment for a while. So I was speaking mainly from memory.
While I could have designed at least the CPCs myself, it would have taken four years, and that's no good. So my role was to co-ordinate a very talented team to do the heavy lifting. But I got to do many of the things which fell through the cracks, like the user manuals, welcome tape, training the customer sevice and AMSOFT teams, as well as being the primary interface with High Street stores evaluating the products, and the press doing reviews.
I prefer to do filming like that with no pre-notification of the questions, and all in one continuous take. TV documentaries tend to be scripted and re-taken until 100% correct.
Since then I've probably done a hundred projects for a dozen other organisations, the last 30yrs mainly in online service and The Internet.
Here's a clip from a 1993 BBC documentary describing what I was doing in the year or two after leaving Amstrad.
ua-cam.com/video/4s-1eKz9mbc/v-deo.html
@@rolandperry thanks to you and your team for creating such wonderful machines (the CPCs) in so little time.
@@Mcklain To some extent we had to rush, because we'd only quoted to do four months work!
Glad to see Mr. Roland Perry again at the Museum!!! Great video and memories
Met Roland a few months back and saw him give a talk, really interesting and nice guy. The Amstrad 464 was my first computer and set me on my way to my whole career and life pretty much.
...what an absolute Lord you are MR Perry..... "we stand on the shoulders of giants"
Legend.
41:52 We had one of those at work and it still powered up.
What a great video. Thanks for all the stories and memories. Still think the 6128 is a really elegant looking machine, even now almost 40 years later. Still got one!
Having known of Roland only as a mythical character I have to say it's an absolute joy to hear the real person speaking after all these years. The British and European computer history books obviously need some adjusting to give him more prominence.
Awesome thank you for putting this together.
I went to the museum about a month ago and had a fantastic time.
Thx Sir Perry for my happy childhood and this excellent life-long hobby. Stay well.
Great affordable well rounded machine with actually more potential than expected.
Excellent interview there =D Fascinating listening to Roland!
Lovely stuff.
One note, the PCW with the 3.5 inch drive shown is a proper Joyce. It's the 1991 redesign and CP/M and Locoscript are still there. It's the later PCW 16 from the mid 90's that isn't a real PCW.
Absolutely love this. A not a tiny part of my formative years was spent learning Z80A assembly, Forth, BASIC, CP/M, playing games, MIDI... on CPC464 then CPC6128 then a hand-me-down PC1512. I wonder how many hours in total was spent typing in lines and lines of DATA statements from mags. lol
Probably more than me and the longest job I did on it was to develop an equation which gave a straight line graph between concentration and effect.
Done, eventually but it only worked on one material.
If it didn't work in a mixture it was useless.
I remember once running a whole nights batch work on a PPC dialed into an ICL 3900.
I purchased a CPC664 from one of the high street retailers when they were being discounted after the CPC6128 was released. The 664 was a good machine and it got me through my college course. I then worked for a computer retailer who was an Amstrad reseller and I can vouch for how popular the PCW8xxx series were. The PCW definitely sold as a computer with a word processor bundled in rather than the other way around. The number of copies of Sage Accounts etc. I sold with the PCW was amazing. The PCW8512 was far more popular (for us) than the 8256 as the difference in cost did not seem to matter as we sold most of them to small businesses. Great memories.
I still have some Toko coils that I bought from Ambit International. I remember them well.
The "Roland on The Ropes" graphics didn't do this man justice!
Fantastic interview. Very interesting in the 3" 3.5" FDD thing. Obviously, Amstrad capitalised on their existing technology with the 3" drive with their Sinclair +3. That would've been later though.
My Joyce is in the loft sadly no longer functioning. A lovely machine.
EDIT: I have both manuals on my computer bookshelves.
That was some great insight topping off with the Sinclair Purchase :) Thanks.
Enjoyed that. Thank you.
Quite a few games did use the extra 64K of memory on 128K machines during the machines commercial lifetime.. Two high profile games were Addams Family and Spellbound Dizzy.
I used to play games on the Olympia word processor that was a typewriter with a screen arm coming out the back!
Hey folks! How do you deal with CRT wear at the museum? CRTs last about 50.000 hours which is a lot, but eventually you'll reach it if you keep letting the machines run with their CRTs active. And burn in?
It would be sad if people let's say 50 years into the future, would only be able to see completely worn out CRTs. Are there any considerations for that? Do you have a wear leveling regime that ensures that each monitor only runs for a handful of hours per week, or whenever a visitor asks for it?
I adore seeing all of them working, but am also somewhat apprehensive about doing this long term. It is an issue with tuning eyes for radios, and the oldest triode output tubes which are also popular with audiophiles, but aren't made anymore.
I own 28 CRTs (arcade, TVs, Sinclair Tvs, etc) and would love to hear a reply too.
Love this, but I can assure you in 1987 in the US we did not need to speak to an operator to place a long distance call.
I thought that sounded wrong.
@@sma7530 Using a calling card.
Never owned an Amstrad computer myself (or a Spectrum). But this was a very good and interesting interview nonetheless.
I'm going to guess his memory of operator-assisted long distance in the US was for phoning back home. Everywhere (less some tiny cord operated exchanges on islands and the like) was direct long distance dial in the US by the 70s, let alone by the time he was testing modems. The POP problem was half-solved by things like Tymnet and Telenet which let people buy into a packet-switched network of POPs.
He's fairly right about local free calling though it wasn't by exchange, they were usually a bit more sensible about giving a usable local calling area. The really bad part was that intra-LATA, i.e. short range long distance calling was usually VERY expensive, and not subject to the interstate competitive long distance that happened in the 80s. I forgot the UK didn't have free local calls, no wonder the BBS scene was a bit less prominent there.
The issue was paying for the calls. Remember: I didn't live in the USA and so had no "home phone line", and thus used a calling-card (AT&T I think) for other than any free local calls. That required dictating the card details over the phone to an operator.
@@rolandperry Oh! A calling card, yes, hadn't considered that. Explains it. Thanks for this interview by the way!
Sky Blue Pink! Deep Purple! I always thought 27 (3 levels of R G B) was a great idea and here it was on the GX4000.
The CPC did have a good palette although I thought it suffered from just 4 colours in Mode 1. Mode 0 was colourful but blocky. The one thing that I wish they implemented from the beginning was hardware sprites. Other systems like the C64 had them so I don't know why the CPC couldn't. I guess it was just another feature that took time to develop.
This amusing anecdote will have confirmed the CPC was indeed prototyped with a palette of 64 colours (bit5 used)
@@EgoChip No time to include sprites - we only had about a month to do the whole gate array design.
@@totoonthemoon3593 The machine with 64 colours was called ANT (Arnold Number Two) and was in effect a PCW with a backwards compatible (but 64 colour) second machine on board. It got cancelled because we were too busy on other projects.
There were probably three prototypes (one each for myself, MEJ and Locomotive) but I have no idea where they ended up.
The 27 colours was the idea of Roger Hurrey, one of MEJ's engineers.
Actually, the PC1640 had an Paradise PEGA1A EGA video chipset, not VGA. Had one PC1640 myself at the time. Minor memory slip. Great, very informative, video nevertheless.
Indeed. It may have been the 2086 he was thinking of. That did have VGA. IIRC the CGA was built into a gate array and was still in the 1640 , albeit disabledAlso the 9512 was a completely different machine with a daisywheel printer and a black and white, rather than green screen. The 8512 was the PCW with the twin drives he was thinking of. Epson printers generally communicated via a centronics (parallel) port, not a serial port
@@cjmillsnun Not to mention the issue with the 3.5" drive being four years in the future. That is not true. Again, loved the video.
@@cjmillsnun Yeah it's the 2000 series that has VGA.
@@pmsrodrigues They were looking at drives late 83 and 3.5 wasn't viable at that point. But in 2 years it would have been. Slight muddling on dates.
@@chinnyvision Yep. I think we can forgive him considering how long ago it was
JERRY LAWSON
You what? Is my 664 worth that much? It was an accidental buy, but it seems I lucked out there. Not that I have too much love for it (sorry), but I wouldn't mind a 6128Plus. Top notch interview though.
Yup 664s are worth a lot. A good few hundred pounds (UK).
@@sma7530 I've never had a personal 664, but as this is the 40th anniversary year for that one, I splashed out on eBay and bought one the other day.
£400, which seems about the right price. But remember we made 100x more of the 464 and 6128, so they are rare. No montor (and maybe no discs or manual), but I did buy a 6128 monitor also on eBay last month.
MARK DEAN
He's wrong about the 3.5" drive. The Apple Macintosh launched the same year with..... a 3.5" drive.
@@cjmillsnun But he was looking for drives late 83 before anyone had seen the Apple and as I recall the version used in the Mac was extremely expensive and used a controller chip that was also pricey. Plus problems with pc compatibility at that point. It was a non starter.
Perry was talking about IBM floppy compatibility rather than the 3.5" drive itself (which has been around since 1981). He is correct in saying it was 4 years later as IBM adopted the 3.5" drive in 1987 with the PS/2 line.
Sony