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Early MS-DOS Laptop Amstrad PPC512 (Part 1)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ส.ค. 2024
- This episode is sponsored by PCBWay www.pcbway.com
Support Noel's Retro Lab on Patreon: / noelsretrolab
Let's celebrate #DOScember by having a look at this early MS-DOS laptop: The Amstrad PPC512. The LCD screen is beyond hope so I swapped it out, but without success yet. Fortunately the external CGA video out was working, and I built an adapter to display it over SCART on a regular TV. The resulting image quality is great!
Finally, I looked into how to transfer over some programs to run on the laptop. I even found some of old games I had written in 89-90 and I hadn't been able to run until now. Quite a trip down memory lane!
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:41 From the outside
03:50 Sponsor message
04:11 Initial power on
07:42 Opening it up
11:03 LCD replacement and test
12:27 Dip switches
17:19 CGA external video
18:29 CGA2SCART build
21:18 CGA video test
23:17 Writing floppy disks
24:47 Return of Frankenstein
26:41 Bouncing Ball
27:57 Conclusion
Games:
Return of Frankenstein gamesfromwithin...
Bouncing Ball gamesfromwithin...
Bouncing Ball source gamesfromwithin...
CGA2SCART converter www.serdashop....
#DOScember official playlist: bit.ly/DOScemb...
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This game has an extremely high production video, especially considering you have written it in the 1980s! Extremely well made graphics
Well done Noel. Love that 30 yo game. What a great journey you took us on.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it
I had one of these back in the day (I don't know where it's got too!) and I remember upgrading it from a 300 baud modem to a 1200 baud one! I then swapped it out for a PPC640 and added a hard drive & external CGA monitor. I remember watching BBS pages drawing a line at a time! I don't recall throwing them out, they must be kicking about somewhere!
Nice! Putting a hard drive on a PPC wasn't a small feat! Did you get it done at a computer store?
@@NoelsRetroLab I fitted it myself, I must dig it out, I know I didn't throw it out!
Please, while people talked of bauds in the 80s no need to misuse the term in 2020. 300 bps was 300 baud but 1200 bps was 600 baud if I recall correctly. It is better just to forget the whole term. (baud is signal elements per second. Each element could code one or more bits)
@@okaro6595 Stop trolling - I know what the term baud is and I referred to it correctly as it was a 1:1 ratio. The Amstrad PPC is from the late 1980s, I upgraded the modem myself, the PPC640 shipped with a 2400 baud rate modem.
Wow! Everything is in Spanish, even the keyboard (and OS). I'm from Spain and I've got an Amstrad PC1640 DD (a desktop computer, not a laptop) back in the day. Pure nostalgia! Looking forward to watching the second part of this little adventure.
Yes, I got it locally, so it's all in Spanish (MSDOS disk and all). Part 2 is almost in the can, and I can report I managed to make some progress with that LCD screen 😃
the BIOS is multilanguage, it has DIP switches in the motherboard to change spanish, brit english, german and french
I have an amstard ppc512 but i dont have MSDOS DISK
Very cool! I don't think we ever got these in the states, so I haven't seen one before. Thanks for sharing!!
You're welcome! Yeah, it's a pretty unique form factor. Was there anything like that in the US, kind of in between luggables and portables?
@@NoelsRetroLab that's a very good question! I honestly can't think of one offhand... but I am sure there is one!!
Here in Brazil we call these little plastic clamps as "little rockets". My father used to remove then easily using an old ballpoint pen tube . It has the right measure to close the clampers' wings.
Great video!
Oh! I love that name and that trick!!! Little rockets they are from now on! 😃
Nice work Noel! I hadn't seen this machine before and am an Amstrad fan. A Fanstrad, if you like. So it was interesting to see this model. 👍🕹️
Thank you! It's a nice little machine if you don't have the space for a full blown desktop XT computer. I'm hoping that when I'm done with it it will be a lot more usable too 😃
HOLY CRAP! Return of Frankenstein looks amazing!!!
I agree, it looks like one of the best uses of CGA palettes I've ever seen! I hope the op will archive the source code if he finds it.
Haha, you know what's really funny? I created the graphics in a monochrome screen 🤣 That might explain why. I was just focused on brightness and ignoring the colors completely. There isn't a source code per-se, just the data that went into that 3D maker game. I'll see if I can find it.
@@NoelsRetroLab the world has mostly forgotten our country's contribution to the 80s and 90s, so big or small, every piece of history should be preserved for the future
@@NoelsRetroLab I like sources
@@luis46coco The source for the Bouncing Ball game is there. The other was done in a game editor like I said in the video. No proper source.
Great stuff =D Maybe the LCD problem is the flex ribbon being "hot bar" glued onto the LCD screen edge - perhaps it is suffering from the same problem Gameboys suffer and needs to be thermally joined again. Looking forward to part 2! Nice work on those old DOS games =D
Thanks! I don't have much experience with that kind of LCDs, so that could well be it. Right now I'm chasing down another lead though. I looked at the schematics and this LCD takes +5V and... -20V!!! And guess what, it's only getting -15V. So I think that might be enough to prevent it from displaying anything. Anyway, I'm pulling on that thread at the moment. We'll see where it leads me.
@@NoelsRetroLab Check for a shorted cap, or something else that gets too hot when you turn it on.
I'm at 6:44 3 beeps for me was first thing look at missing memory. I will continue watching. So fun. :)
Yeah that threw me off too. Apparently it was just the "you don't have batteries, please insert date" message. On the donor computer, when I turned it on it had constant, faster, higher-pitched beeping. I suspect that was a bad RAM test.
One of my first "work" computers... I wrote a complete call-logging reporting suite in BBC Basic (?!) and A86 assembler under MS-DOS on one of these. All the screen / graphics were handled through in-line X86 code or within the .COM files themselves. Happy days...
Nice! Yes, a lot of people mentioned they used this for work. I think that's why so many people have bad associations with it and hate it 😃
@@NoelsRetroLab I also remember around that time we were installing Tulip 386 PC's with a 20MB hard drive that had a BIOS bug that would literally 'jam' the heads when it reached exactly 50% capacity, and you'd have to open the HDD housing and move the heads!
Not sure what I like the most: the Amstrad part or your old games. I could feel something in your voice while talking about them :-))))))
Thanks! Well, it was the first time in 30 years so I really was pretty excited. It was totally unplanned too. I was going to demo something else until I thought of that all of a sudden.
@@NoelsRetroLab You nailed it Noel :-)
I used to own one of these - well the PPC640 version with 2x 720k floppy drives. Got it second-hand at a garage sale as a kid back when my primary PC was still a 386. I was so excited to have a PORTABLE computer I could take to school with me! Problem was I saved up my allowance to get those ten C batteries - I figured they'd last a long time, right? An hour and a half; that's it! I had the AC adapter of course but the teachers wouldn't allow me to plug it in, citing "safety concerns" but really I think they just didn't like the idea of allowing me to be special while the other students used pencil and paper. Unfortunately I resorted to taking it apart even though everything worked perfectly on it. Wish I still had it, as I'm now into retro PC's. All that remains today is the two floppy drives - and some of the original Amstrad floppy discs it came with.
Love that story, Angela! I could see how exciting it would be to try to take to class. An hour and a half is a LOT longer than I expected it would last on those batteries. They're cheap to get still, so I'd say look for one. The LCD video is abysmal, but the CGA out is great. I'm loving it so far.
Great to see one of these machines getting some attention! Watching this video makes me want to have a look at my PPC512 which has no drives and is in pieces, I got it years ago in that condition, and I've no idea if it works or not.
That top compartment is for the modem cable - I've also got a PPC640 which comes with the modem installed by default, and the cable is a really tight fit in there.
Do it! It's a fantastic little machine (OK, not so little). Especially with the CGA video out, it makes it great for early MS-DOS gaming. Totally worth it. Check out some of the upgrades I'll add in the next few videos.
@@NoelsRetroLab CGA and MDA! so also perfect for text writing. I used to write my diary on Microsoft Works 1.05!
My school ' business studies' teacher had one of these he set up on his desk during our 'lessons' which consisted of him pissing around with the laptop thinking he was the f-king Cheese, whilst we pissed around with the 286 RM Nimbus machines, either going into windows 3.1 control panel to change the official school crested screen saver, or drawing penises in MS paint...benefits of a comprehensive education 😂
Those plastic "screws" around 9:50 are called standoffs, just like the metallic ones that screw in and are typically used to mount most modern motherboards. The plastic standoffs were used in some AT-compatible (and early ATX) cases and would "slide" into openings in the case/motherboard tray instead of screwing in (though there were plastic standoffs that did screw in as well). And yes, I had to look that up just now because I couldn't remember ha ha!
Right. Thank you! Since I don't have a background on mechanical/repair stuff, sometimes basic vocabulary like that is totally missing for me 😃
This brought back a memory, I had one of these given to me in the 90s. I didn't keep it for long. I'm amazed how much I remember like the odd empty compartment.
Funny how memory works. Also, a lot of people were given these for work and they universally hate them. People who bought them themselves tend to have a more positive view of them 😃
Great Video. I hope in the next video you explain the chips and features of both PCB's. :-)
Thanks! Absolutely. Actually part 2, which is mostly done already, is about fixing the LCD and some cosmetic fixes, but in part 3, when I start with upgrades, we'll have a detailed look at the boards for sure.
@@NoelsRetroLab Awesome. Have a great Christmas.
I am loving these themed videos from some of my favourite channels, really looking forward to Jamstraduary
Haha, there was talk of Amstraduary but it was too rushed. They're fun, but it's exhausting having to make themed videos on a schedule like that. Normally if I hit a dead end, I just move on to the next video while I think about it or wait for parts, but here it needs to happen within the month, so it's trickier. Still, it was a lot of fun!
Probably a ridiculously obvious suggestion: Try the contrast wheel. The screen looks quite similar to the one on my Olivetti Quaderno, and there's a surprisingly narrow range on the contrast pot that gives a usable image.
Not ridiculous at all! I did try it (just never recorded it), but that will come back to bite me in Part 2. Just wait 🤣
Nice. I have a PPC640 I haven't touched in years. Looking forward to part 2!
It turns out it's a great machine if you use the CGA output. I have lots of plans for this one, so there'll be many parts I think 😃
@@NoelsRetroLab dunno if it is in your plans but as it has a V20 you can make it run CP/M-80 apps :D
I got one just like that for 20 years in my basement it was a yard sale found but honestly I never tried it but I love the design
I bought the 512 (along with a small 9 dot matrix printer) back in 1990 and used it for several years while going to community college. Best investment I ever made at the time
That machine is an 8088, so is 8 bit for the data bus, but internally is still a 16 bit CPU. The Intel pure in and outside 8 bit CPU is the 8080.
Right. It's the NEC V30 so 16-bit CPU. It was a brain fade thinking of the 8 bit video bus (the regular bus is even a 16 bit one).
I worked at Wilding's Office Equipment many years ago and a customer brought one of these in. He asked if he could do any thing to make it more useful. I suggested it would make a good door stop! He complained to the head office and I got a formal reprimand!!
🤣🤣🤣 Hilarious! Fortunately, with modern technology, we CAN make them more useful. I'm hoping to upgrade it and improve it a bit over the upcoming months.
@@NoelsRetroLab I'm a qualified Novell engineer and still have the original Intel
pentium pc I trained on. 4Mb of RAM and 32 floppy disks to load Novell. 40Mb hard drive too. I can't part with it, sentimental reasons. Oh and it was Novell 3 by the way and I did upgrade!
@@grahamwalker6395 Nice! I wish I had my own computer from back then, but they were all sold/traded/donated along the way. Oh well.
Woah Noel, you recorded this like 4 years ago (date on the microscope footage)?! Crazy. Hehe, hope you're well! Enjoyed as usual.
Goes to show that I really plan things ahead!! 😃
Great video Noel! Cool Frankenstein game! 😀
Thank you 👍
Hi Noel. Thanks for another interesting video. I hope you have a safe and happy new year.
Thanks, you too!
You should try the contrast control because I recall the display was invisible for about half of its travel.
Right! I did but never showed it in this video. However, that will come back to bite me in part 2 😃
That Knight Lore clone is pretty impressive for 1990.
Robotechie-pc laptop from the past! Great video, as usual
Thanks!
You are talented to make games back in those days, when coding tools are not really good.
Thanks! Actually the Frankenstein game was all done in a pretty good editor, but yeah, back then it was mostly assembly or bust, so I just learned assembly in every platform I touched.
I owned a PPC640DD when they came out. Some models had the NEC V30 Z80 clone CPU that was mil spec to survive a nuclear war and some slipped thru into the supply chain into the production of these PC's. Glad the 640 had 640 RAM and the DD meant dual 3.5inch floppies. It also had a built-in modem - 24bis IIRC. Fun times on BBS and for train journeys. Though for batteries it would eat them and a full set was not cheap, even then and rechargeable was lamentable. Still a fun machine for the time, but don't expect to play elite on battery for more than 4 hours, IIRC 3 was closer to the mark.
Was not a light machine and when I moved onto a PSION II, battery life was leaps ahead and had fun programming with that and the hardware addons.
Did try the MC600 PSION PC notebook sized affair (was also the MC400 that was Psions OS interface and not DOS though may of got those two crossed in models) and was good battery wise, but was just too buggy for DOS stuff and took that back next day (yay Dixons).
This was really good, thank you!
Glad you liked it!
Great video :) Have a nice Christmas Noel
Thanks, you too!
That Frankenstein game looks good.
Thanks! 😃
maybe a easy one, but have you tried the "contrast knob" for the LCD ?
I did, I did... but that's a really good suggestion as you'll see in part 2 😃
I was screaming this throughout! 😱😂
I had one of these many years ago, and the display was nothing like a modern lcd , actually not particularly good even for the time let alone today - you really had to play with the contrast and the angle of the screen to get something readable. I used mine with a monochrome CGA monitor most of the time.
@@Doug_in_NC my PPC640 was pared with an IBM 5153 for 99% of its life, too!!
Great little machine, shame about the screen
@@NoelsRetroLab I also noticed that the floppy you used had bad sectors.. Sucks that lots of floppy disks probably nowadays are slowly bit-rotting away..
I'm amazed you can solder these items with that honkin'-huge soldering iron tip.
Nah, it's not that bad. The tip I actually really like it wide like that because it transfers heat a lot better than a narrow tip. So it's my go-to tip unless I need to do something really small.
ohh sweet memories.. my first MSDOS machine, a PPC 640, dual floppy ! I used on vacation connected to a ZyXEL modem (cell protocol for ETACS cellular networks, mid '90s)
Nice! Wow, I never ran modem over cell networks back then. Must have felt like total sci-fi!
@@NoelsRetroLab yes, and very slow! 16800 bps nominal, more or less 9-10k real... and quite expensive, billed at minute... :)
i just want to say your game is really good . :)
Thanks! 😃
Una versión en Español de DOS 3.X! Eso me trae memorias! Awesome video, btw!
Gracias! 😃
@@NoelsRetroLab has hecho imagen del disco? No recuerdo que esté en archive.org y el mio sufrio las ganas de trastear de una niña con un editor hexadecimal y mucho tiempo libre.
Have one of those in my loft. Haven't tried it for years. I'll dig it out and see if it works.
Do it! It's a really fun little computer, especially if you use the external video out.
@@NoelsRetroLab not sure if you'll get to read this Noel but I finally found time to go into the loft and bring down my ppc512. Powered it up and it worked! I didn't try booting from the floppy as I wanted to copy it first. I have all the manuals too. It's amazing the documentation you got with old PCs. While up there I rescued my Video Genie too.
Interesante video, uno más.Gracias
De nada. Me alegro de que te haya gustado.
The donor computer could make for a fun project afterwards, then again I bought a luggable compaq portable 2 with a view to putting a gaming computer in the chassis but procrastinated so long the machine became something that belongs in a museum instead
Noel, personally I don't consider the MS-DOS era to be truly "retro", but still I enjoy the content. That is how good your videos are. Merry Christmas to you, the fam and to the viewers!
Whoa! Considering that MSDOS came out in 1981, that's a pretty far cut off for retro 😃 But I know what you mean. It definitely has a very different feel because it's not a single machine that was unchanged over the years, but it was a moving, evolving platform. Heck, at some point I'm sure I'll do my 1998 dream PC build with SLI Voodoo 2 cards. That's even further away but still feels retro-ish to me.
@@NoelsRetroLab For me, "retro computing" isn't a date on a calendar. Microsoft Windows, today's dominant OS, is a superset of MS-DOS and so in a sense we are still in the MS-DOS era. Additionally, Windows virtualizes hardware in such a way that the hardware hardly matters, so PCs are generic, amorphous blobs with a serious identity crisis. For both of those reasons I find it hard to accept MS-DOS machines as "retro" in the same way as the 8-bit (and some 16-bit) microcomputers of the '80s.
Those microcomputers on the other hand, are very concrete and fixed. You know exactly what they look like and how they will behave. They have a real identity both in hardware and software. Each one is distinct and usually incompatible with the others. In a technical and marketing sense this incompatibility is a disadvantage, but it may be the defining characteristic of the micros and the thing that gives them their personalities. Getting to know the machine was exciting! Thinking back to those days, the good old days when we thought the future was going to be great, warms my frozen heart a little.
But I digress. The individuality of the microcomputers was both the thing that made them exciting, and the thing that killed them. The modular and generic approach turned out to be the winning formula. I can see there is an argument to include the MS-DOS era, and while I am not fully convinced, I accept that others have different views. It's a good and interesting video which I enjoyed. Keep doing what you're doing Noel! You cannot go wrong.
Great video! Looking forward to seeing you fix that LCD. Just don't get distracted by... say... some silver machinery. :-)
Haha, the LCD is already fixed, but still need to record a few more things for part 2 (coming next week). The silver machine will have to wait for a few more weeks before it takes the spotlight 😃
Nice to find video of these device. I bought one for about 15€ (640k version) few months ago. Very good condition. Lcd works fine, but it's kind a lame to use. That scart -adapter looks interesting. Maybe I have to buy one and try to install Gotek too. :)
You'll like this week's video then 😃And the LCD is next in my upgrade goals too. That one is awful indeed!
Good stuff. I loved your video work round.
Awesome Noel.
Glad you enjoyed it
Assuming all 10 D alkaline batteries (12,000 mAh each) are in series, providing a nominal 15VDC with a power draw of ≈ 0.6 Amps then ideally the batteries could last up to 20 hours. (12,000 ÷ 0.6 = 20) However, in reality you will only get a fraction of that, but assuming the dropout voltage is ≈ 9VDC you might expect to get over 15 hours IF power draw actually stays at .6Amps. I’d expect the actual average power draw to be closer to twice that. Though notably the Sony CXQ70116 CPU Amstrad used in that device had a primitive version of power management/standby mode for reduced power consumption.
I made $15 or maybe $25 from my one shareware upload to wuarchive. I didn't actually expect anything, so I was quite happy.
Nice! I made about $50 from some later programs that I actually released, but that's about it. Clearly not as attractive an option for a developer as a modern app store!
Huh. That CGA2SCART kit was packed on my birthday.
This really looks like it belongs in the film "Alien" somehow.
Haha, yes, pretty much. Especially once you see the fuzzy, green LCD working!
Oh my goddess that was my first laptop. I still have it.
Sorry "laptop", more like "portable beast heavy as a black hole and a white dwarf dancing together", without the batteries
The computer lasted between 15 minutes and 1 hour depending on floppy access using C size batteries. You could not put rechargable, the BIOS detected them and showed a message preventing you from booting. Neither non-alkaline (yeah those old ones), also detected by BIOS. They had to be the expensive alkaline ones.
I was told it lasted an hour, but that makes more sense with heavy disk access. That's crazy about dertecting rechargeable batteries and preventing you from using them though!! I wonder how they did that.
@@NoelsRetroLab at the time it looked like magic. now I know better. same as a multimeter can tell you a battery voltage. rechargables are 1.2V, alkalines are 1.5V. The current is also different. That's how modern batteries tell you the percentage left, they used it to detect the battery type and whine. Now the question is not how, but why, if the nicad and nimh had the power to make it POST and beep and show a message on the screen, why stop there? why not run on them?
@@NoelsRetroLab Needed good alkaline batteries as it expected each to be 1.5 volts, and NiCd rechargeable would give you less at 1.2 volts, so one way of detecting them would be that way. Modern rechargeable batteries NiMH or lithium) that give 1.5 volts might fool it, and also give more than an hour of run time.
Edit: You already covered that in your subsequent comment. Should read all the replies first.
Noel ... you should absolutely port the Frankenstein game to Amstrad CPC6128 It would be amazing.
That could be fun!! 😃
@@NoelsRetroLab i agree 👍.
I'm new to your channel Noel and I'm enjoying it very much being an Amstrad fan myself.
Thank you for your efforts.
It might be heavy but you have to allow for the fact that it has a boiler, and comes with it's own firing irons! :-D
Haha yeah that'd be nice. Over there on the right?
Wow, our dad had one.
Have you ever seen a Psion MC400 from around the same period? 80C86 based machine - the 200 had a tiny screen that looked 'wrong', but the 400 and 600 had a larger screen that was at least as good as CGA with a resolution of 640 x 200/600x400. The 600 ran a version of MSDOS, I think it was 3.2 from ROM. The 400 ran Psion's own windowed operating system, called EPOC (later used on Nokia phones as Symbian), with a trackpad that you clicked (effectively a single button mouse, along the lines of the Macintosh well over a decade before trackpads were a thing, with a 1:1 mapping to the screen) The 600 didn't have mouse support, for obvious reasons. I own the 400 - the DOS version was clunky, since I used an ST at home, and liked GEM.
It was profanely expensive at the time (£850 or thereabouts for the 400, around 1300 for the 600 - in today's money that's £1,872.25 [2,077.35 Euro] for the 400, and £2,863.44[3,176.42 Euro] for the 600) They claimed on the 400 something like 60 hours out of 8xAA cells, and I got at least 12 hours out of it running some pretty heavy (for the time) spreadsheets on train journeys to different sites.
Rumour has it that only about 1000 units were sold. I got an ex display one for £99 - the machine cost a £1 and I the rest was a three year warranty, since the salesman got a commission on it. I was more than happy with the deal.
For portability it weighs in at about the same as a modern low end laptop from a couple of years ago.
I used mine until the late 90s - the battery pack became unstable following it being dropped, causing random resets - I still have it in the attic somewhere.
In many respects, it was way ahead of its time, and a grand little machine. You can see the MC600 in action in Die Hard 2:Die Harder (my second favourite Christmas movie). Holly is working on one on the plane.
Remember seeing the MC400 in Dixons in Lewisham. Great screen, good looking OS on high resolution LCD, First clickable trackpad I saw. Way ahead of its time. Always wanted to get one.
I had one of those that I bought from an auction and ended up selling on eBay. Interesting machine though, as well as the touchpad being a button, it also used absolute positioning so it took some getting used to.
I hadn't seen one of those. Now I need to do some research. Which one is your favorite Christmas movie? Die Hard 1? 😃
@@NoelsRetroLab A classic trilogy is good
@@NoelsRetroLab Seriously, Die Hard 1 was a family favourite when I visited my parents for Christmas more or less every year.
nice video, good work
Thank you! Cheers!
briefly played with one of these years ago (late 90's early 2k before I went to high school), would only work with the external CGA monitor as I didnt know about the switches to use the internal one at the time, had two floppy drives as well. not sure if these things can have High Density drives, I didnt have it long enough to find out, it may not have the "HD" pin on the drive header connected.
That's a good question. I don't think so, but I should check. I'll have a Gotek heading into one as soon as possible too. That alone will make it way more usable!
Ha the game seems pretty cool with neat graphics! I still have some of my unfinished Amiga games from the early 90s on my A1200 HD and disks somewhere, I should rescue them sometime. But sadly all my C64 and Spectrum stuff is lost to the mists of time.
Light-Luggable? :) Certainly not a TRS-80 4P or Compaq Portable; but not a laptop either.
I like that! It's clearly not a laptop because nobody in their right mind would use it on their actual lap 😃
Great video buds, really enjoyed it! SAdly, the links to your old games isn't working (brings up a tab for a moment and nothing happens)
Thanks! Those links should be downloading the file right away. Check your downloads folder or view in the browser and they should be there.
I had a 512k one of these but then I got a 640k one because the first was real flakey, many games need 640k to run but you can solder in extra chips to make it 640k. It runs those old xt games at just about a perfect speed and I don't appreciate the old cga games if I run them on a 486.
Right! That's one of the first upgrades I'm planning on making. Looks really easy too.
In the list of software you created or worked on I noticed a folder called 'MUD'. Exactly what MUDs did you work on?
Haha! Eagle-eyes! That was a folder with old files, only the ones in "projects" are ones I created. MUDs contains information about muds I used to play back in the day, mostly Abandoned Realms 😃
@@NoelsRetroLab Aha. I have only been involved with MUDs since around 1996-1997 or so, mostly in the creative process. I never played much myself. I do still host two MUDs of the DIKU/MERC line though.
@3:20 love the EOB games, especially II, the Legend of Darkmoon, classic DOS in its prime.
Yes! I spent so many hours making maps for them...
I was like...try the monitor.... then I watched the rest. xD
Right! It seemed like the safest path just to see if it works. For part 2 (next week) I'll go back and tackle the LCD.
I couldn't get out of the bubbles...I ran it on the Amiga PCTask emulator so it was a bit too slow to figure out the controls.
Haha, I"m not surprised. That's the slowest part even on the original hardware (lots of transparent drawing). The controls should just be the arrow keys, although I think QAOP and shift to jump also work.
Pero pero pero... ¡si eres asturiano!
8 bit... I have a feeling it ran a full 8086.... close, NEC v30
Yes, exactly! I avoided it calling it an 8086 machine even though I wanted to, because I knew I would get flooded with comments saying that it was a NEC v30 😃
Hey Noel !! Firstly, thanks a lot for your videos, I have just discovered you and I am binge watching all of them. I have a question for you, and you are free to ignore it completely, but I am very very curious. I already caught you pronouncing some Spanish on camera, and you do the Rs and Js perfectly, so I am guessing you must speak Spanish right? Did you learn it in Spain? Thanks !!!
Thank you! Glad you're enjoying them! I am from Spain, so that would explain my Rs and Js 🤣 I just spent many years living in the US as well.
On the SCART adaptor the USB connector solder points are super close together. My mediocre soldering skills would have been heavily tested. Any suggestions for not shorting such close quarters connections? By the way ... great Christmas ornaments. 🎄
Yes, those USB pins are pretty close. A slightly narrower tip would help, and either plenty of flux or solder with lots of flux inside. And even if you do short them, that's not a problem. Check them afterwards and pass the tip again to break any connections or even a bit of solder braid. I have no doubt you can do it with a bit of care. Haha, glad you liked the ornaments! They're great! 😃
"Origen" instead of "Inicio", nice!
And "piles" instead of "pilas", just wow! these guys were already sold on the inclusive language way back in the 80s!
🤣🤣🤣
Ye Gads those things used to drive me batty we had several of them on hire to a factory that made carbon fibre and such the darn amsttads were horrible for geting shorts nightmare things
It would be really interesting to retrofit a modern day, full colour lcd into this one if it was possible, any chance of that ?
Yes, it's been done before: retrohax.net/amstrad-ppc640-modshax/ I don't how how to feel about that. On one hand the screen is great, on the other hand, it's really far from the original. You can already get great visuals through the external video port, so I'm not sure I want to go that far. Before that I'm going to try with some backlighting, but I don't rule it out that I go all the way and end up with a VGA display. We'll see.
@@NoelsRetroLab wow I'd definitely want to do it if i had one, it looks way better after that mod, either way it'll be interesting to see which way you go Noel.
Why didn't you just try an external monitor before stripping it all down to make sure it actually worked? Also to make a floppy disk DD just put some tape over the whole on the disk
Probably because I thought it was introducing too many unknowns since I don't have a CGA monitor. I also like to look inside a computer to make sure things look OK anyway.
Pls link the converter supplier.
3:30 If I remember correctly the batteries last for about one hour of work.
Seriously??? That's really, really impressive! I guess that's what you get with the low-power LCD.
You may have been able to use rechargeable batteries in this too. An hour per pop with 10 disposable C cells will get expensive fast
@@williefleete the BIOS would detect that, stop booting and tell you to use alkaline batteries :( I was a little child when I had to convince my mom to buy me alkalines every month I went to Tenerife with my grandma for the travel time
@@williefleete Ni cads are 1.2V rather than 1.5V for alkaline cells.
It was also possible to connect it to the cigarette lighter/accessory outlet in a car or van. Which is closer to 14V than 12V.
I'd guess it contains a 12V linear regulator such as a 7812.
An hour seems plausible, with alkaline batteries. While an alkaline C cell can have a nominal capacity of up to 8000mAh, it will deliver much less when it needs to supply lots of current. Since the mains power supply is rated at 2A, I guess the current draw would be in the general region of around 1A (plus an additional 0.3A..0.7A when the floppy drive runs). Alkaline C cells could deliver that for maybe an hour (without excessive floppy operations).
There was no power saving feature in these old machines; the CPU ran at full power all the time - which would be in the general region of 1W.
Great memories!
I'm hoping you could fix the LCD on this machine! 😉
Already done! Stay tuned for part 2 next week 😃
Hola Noel, feliz Navidad. Oye, parece que puedes reemplazar esa pantalla con una moderna LCD: www.hackster.io/news/replacing-a-amstrad-ppc640-monochrome-lcd-with-a-modern-color-lcd-4c1b3134a78e
Ah, vale, ya lo has visto. Bueno, me parece una buena opción.
Sí, está muy bien pero se pasa un poco porque es tan diferente del original. No sé, intentaré hacer otras cosas antes, pero siempre es una opción.
Did you look at the display fuse?
I didn't! To be honest I didn't even open the LCD frame yet. But it turns out that wasn't the problem (already fixed it for part 2). Spoiler: The LCD has a +5V and a -20V input!
Did you really have to specify that the disk was DD? I think many IBM's lacked the detection for the disk type, but non-IBM PC's had the detection ability. I think they formatted the disk to the correct capacity automatically based on that.
The Amstrad PPC only supports DD disks (or at least that disk drive, I don't know if with a different drive it would be able to read an HD disk). If I hadn't formatted it as 720K it wouldn't have been able to read it. It's quite primitive that way.
@@NoelsRetroLab I meant that you seemed to use an actual DD disk for it. A regular (non-IBM) HD drive would have detected the type, reported it to the format program, and the format program would have by default formatted it as a DD disk, without any extra parameters. (Whereas on an IBM there would be no detection, and the drive would report its own maximum capacity, and even a DD disk would by default be formatted into an unreliably-functioning HD disk.) On a non-IBM system the 720 parameter should be needed only when specifically formatting an HD disk into a DD disk in an HD (or ED) drive. I just tried myself on my WIndows 10 laptop with USB floppy drive. I don't have actual DD disks, but I taped over the capacity type hole in the corner of the disk and formatted it with just "format a:" command. As expected, it got formatted into 720 kB, so the capacity got detected as expected.
Great video but I still despise the PPC! :)
Haha, fair enough. Stick with me for the series and I can guarantee it you will like it a little bit more by the end (even if that's still in the despising category 😃).
@@NoelsRetroLab I will Noel. Looking forward to it.
Plastic rivet stand-off.
A backpack with no padding... Were you expected to wear a heavy jacket to carry this on your back? Though at 4.6 kg carrying it with one hand would be possible.
Yeah, odd choice. Maybe some more penny pinching by Amstrad? Or maybe the concept of a laptop bag was new back then. I don't know.
Por que habla en ingles?
Hell Yeray,This os a spanish version xd because the volumen and buttons letters i sin spanish..Im from spain.”que bueno un laptop modelo spanish “
@5:26 Ah, the '80s, when disks were made in Denmark.
Haha, yes! And it works 30 years later!!
push pin standoffs
Quería compartir con vos y otros que me han enseñado tanto, un osciloscopio para celular sin contacto con el que podés medir la señal de una lámpara led, transformador, motor, fuente o cualquier otro circuito a distancia, sin conectarlo al celular. th-cam.com/video/JlK1K_YLs60/w-d-xo.html La curva te muestra si es capacitiva, conmutada, factor de potencia y cualquier anormalidad del circuito. Resulta muy interesante interpretar la curva que aparece al acercarlo a un router, una fuente, una antena, o un mosfet.
Tenho um Pc deste Amstrad ppc 512. Vendo.
One of the worst things I invested money in, around 1989...
Haha! What was it that you didn't like it about it? The smearing LCD?
you don't sound like havin any spanish accent jaja
Dont have room for old computers. Translation=wife decides what you can have and not have in your own house that you pay for and have like 10% of the house for your own stuff.
Not everyone has room for lots of stuff. You shouldn't judge.