Bit Amstrad on the bum for being an early adopter for their top end machines. Flattered into being one of the first manufacturers to have it, then suffering from MS's bugs.
I didn't know that Schneider stopped distributing Amstrad products in 1988, leading to Schneider-branded machines being dumped for cheap on the German market. Compare that to Australia, where Amstrad also took over from its former local distributor (Mitsubishi Electric AWA) in 1988. Over here, I don't think anyone even noticed the change in distributor, probably because the big push to connect Amstrad and AWA when the CPC was first released had well and truly receded once Amstrad was established as a brand in its own right. As for the PC2000... IIRC many of its issues were resolved prior to being released down here, which would explain why Amstrad's Australian outpost was still going gangbusters in '89.
My spare 6128 has centronics and extra shielding so I suspect it to be some of the same inventory as those PCW's. Interestingly the internal design docs I saw for the CPC Plus and GX4000 forbade variations like different connectors so they could move stock around easier.
Really by 1989 we were already well into the clone era... Amstrad must have been finding it pretty tough to compete with cheap Taiwanese-based component builders and tbh I was always a little surprised that they were buying in proper controllers from Seagate when the like of Goldstar were already pushing out copies of this hardware for peanuts.
As one of the news reports says, a 50 percent market share of the 8086 market in the UK so the clones hadn't quite kicked in yet. I think it's 90/91 you start seeing a significant number of adverts in the mags for the Far East brands. Didn't Silica go heavy on Goldstar?
@@chinnyvision2 Thing is I base this on the fact that I saw a lot of clone PCs at work when I first started, old ones from Opus Technology, 8086ATs and some 286s, and the bits inside were 1988-9. These were bought in massive numbers by British Rail. But perhaps they weren't quite there yet at that point. They were very generic inside (with blatant IBM-clone rip-off case and PSU bought in from DTK, Goldstar Prime II RLL I/O cards IIRC, and I think Tseng Labs VGA), to the point where British Rail Computing actually refurbished them later on with 386 motherboards (to run Windows effectively I believe) and relabelled them "British Rail Vixen", with most of the other parts carried over. The 386 motherboards were labelled in the BIOS with the name of the department I worked for (Local Systems Nottingham) and these were featured a while back on Adrian's Digital Basement.
This is what I'd call good engineering to a price point. Ensure reliability by using decent components where it mattered. Except Seagate messed up and so did Microsoft.
@@6581punk Yes, that is fair comment, although I would say that even in 1988, hard drive controllers were well understood and pretty much a commodity function. The clones were just as reliable but perhaps didn't have the performance - and to be perfectly honest the principle of "simple is best" would apply here anyway - it tended to be the "latest and greatest" that gave trouble, then and now. But yes, I take your point. As for DOS4, the less said about that debacle the better :)
@@jasejj We had Opus machines at school. 286's. The art teacher had an Amstrad 2286 in his office. The Amstrad looked nicer but was plastic. The Opus was a metal box thing produced fairly locally. No idea on the rest of the spec for the Opus as they never got pushed.
I think they just grew too fast. You just can't scale from nothing in 1984 to being the 5th largest computer manufacturer in the world by early 1989 and expect that to go without a hitch. That's not withstanding all the other lines Amstrad had including the design and manufacture of all the receivers for the launch of Sky. They probably thought "we're indestructible, we can do it all". But a 286 or 386 PC with a hard disk is an order of magnitude harder than a new Spectrum (which also suffered from issues). When you realise its the same small group of people designing all of these products rather than whole separate offices spread across the world (like Commodore), you can only take your hat off to them. Sadly however its as their downfall. Spread too thinly. But for a brief time, that office block in Brentwood was turning out all sorts of new products we'd see in Dixons like there was no tomorrow.
This brings me back. Capitalist arcades, capitalist burgers, and the lung destroying stench of stale cigarettes (and worse) in the 1980s. An era when the effects of leaded petrol on behaviour was at its peak as was street violence and anti social behaviour. AHH the whiff of retro desperation. I remember these articles the first time around, and it was hard not to feel sorry for Amstrad at the time, but as you said they failed to scale their operation with the demands of the business model and paid the price. Still, hard nosed arrogant businessman meets harder nosed arrogant businessmen and loses. We'll always have the Emailer.
Of course Clarence Pier arcade still exists and still has a Wimpy on the first floor. Mainly coin pushers and fruit machines these days. Still a few of the modern video games in there though and still feels like an authentic experience even if the Space Harrier and Outrun cabs up front have long gone.
Absolutely fascinating. Thanks for sharing and preserving bits of history. Your magazine read throughs/reviews are always highlights for me.
Yeah DOS 4 was a pain in the backside for everyone.
We went back to DOS 3.3 and waited for DOS 5.0
Bit Amstrad on the bum for being an early adopter for their top end machines. Flattered into being one of the first manufacturers to have it, then suffering from MS's bugs.
Asking the big questions: Is the Wimpy still there?
Oh yes. Totally. Still there above the arcade.
@@chinnyvision2 Fantastic!
I didn't know that Schneider stopped distributing Amstrad products in 1988, leading to Schneider-branded machines being dumped for cheap on the German market. Compare that to Australia, where Amstrad also took over from its former local distributor (Mitsubishi Electric AWA) in 1988. Over here, I don't think anyone even noticed the change in distributor, probably because the big push to connect Amstrad and AWA when the CPC was first released had well and truly receded once Amstrad was established as a brand in its own right.
As for the PC2000... IIRC many of its issues were resolved prior to being released down here, which would explain why Amstrad's Australian outpost was still going gangbusters in '89.
My spare 6128 has centronics and extra shielding so I suspect it to be some of the same inventory as those PCW's. Interestingly the internal design docs I saw for the CPC Plus and GX4000 forbade variations like different connectors so they could move stock around easier.
Well I learnt something, I didn't even know Amstrad made PCs
They were everywhere in the late 80s and early 90s in the UK.
Really by 1989 we were already well into the clone era... Amstrad must have been finding it pretty tough to compete with cheap Taiwanese-based component builders and tbh I was always a little surprised that they were buying in proper controllers from Seagate when the like of Goldstar were already pushing out copies of this hardware for peanuts.
As one of the news reports says, a 50 percent market share of the 8086 market in the UK so the clones hadn't quite kicked in yet. I think it's 90/91 you start seeing a significant number of adverts in the mags for the Far East brands. Didn't Silica go heavy on Goldstar?
@@chinnyvision2 Thing is I base this on the fact that I saw a lot of clone PCs at work when I first started, old ones from Opus Technology, 8086ATs and some 286s, and the bits inside were 1988-9. These were bought in massive numbers by British Rail. But perhaps they weren't quite there yet at that point.
They were very generic inside (with blatant IBM-clone rip-off case and PSU bought in from DTK, Goldstar Prime II RLL I/O cards IIRC, and I think Tseng Labs VGA), to the point where British Rail Computing actually refurbished them later on with 386 motherboards (to run Windows effectively I believe) and relabelled them "British Rail Vixen", with most of the other parts carried over. The 386 motherboards were labelled in the BIOS with the name of the department I worked for (Local Systems Nottingham) and these were featured a while back on Adrian's Digital Basement.
This is what I'd call good engineering to a price point. Ensure reliability by using decent components where it mattered. Except Seagate messed up and so did Microsoft.
@@6581punk Yes, that is fair comment, although I would say that even in 1988, hard drive controllers were well understood and pretty much a commodity function. The clones were just as reliable but perhaps didn't have the performance - and to be perfectly honest the principle of "simple is best" would apply here anyway - it tended to be the "latest and greatest" that gave trouble, then and now. But yes, I take your point.
As for DOS4, the less said about that debacle the better :)
@@jasejj We had Opus machines at school. 286's. The art teacher had an Amstrad 2286 in his office. The Amstrad looked nicer but was plastic. The Opus was a metal box thing produced fairly locally. No idea on the rest of the spec for the Opus as they never got pushed.
This was a bit of arrogance or a lack of understanding by Sugar. Believing that testing was not required as everything was using "standards".
I think they just grew too fast. You just can't scale from nothing in 1984 to being the 5th largest computer manufacturer in the world by early 1989 and expect that to go without a hitch. That's not withstanding all the other lines Amstrad had including the design and manufacture of all the receivers for the launch of Sky. They probably thought "we're indestructible, we can do it all". But a 286 or 386 PC with a hard disk is an order of magnitude harder than a new Spectrum (which also suffered from issues). When you realise its the same small group of people designing all of these products rather than whole separate offices spread across the world (like Commodore), you can only take your hat off to them. Sadly however its as their downfall. Spread too thinly. But for a brief time, that office block in Brentwood was turning out all sorts of new products we'd see in Dixons like there was no tomorrow.
This brings me back. Capitalist arcades, capitalist burgers, and the lung destroying stench of stale cigarettes (and worse) in the 1980s.
An era when the effects of leaded petrol on behaviour was at its peak as was street violence and anti social behaviour. AHH the whiff of retro desperation.
I remember these articles the first time around, and it was hard not to feel sorry for Amstrad at the time, but as you said they failed to scale their operation with the demands of the business model and paid the price.
Still, hard nosed arrogant businessman meets harder nosed arrogant businessmen and loses.
We'll always have the Emailer.
Of course Clarence Pier arcade still exists and still has a Wimpy on the first floor. Mainly coin pushers and fruit machines these days. Still a few of the modern video games in there though and still feels like an authentic experience even if the Space Harrier and Outrun cabs up front have long gone.
Leaded gasoline had on behavior?
What do you mean by leaded gasoline affected behavior?
@@MartinD9999 I'm not your encyclopedia. Look it up.