Amstrad Core

[Chilli_Vibes]

Thanks for the reply, that sounds good to me. I have the Sony consumer TV, but it's just too big, and although I can have it for free, I have to take the stand, remote, original box, and anything else related to it. But, it looks good, and like I said it's very close to the real thing (I have a CTM 644), just much bigger.
The PVM is also free, it's with a neighbour who used to use them in video work for the BBC, but now uses modern LCD PVMs. This one is a Sony Trinitron PVM - 20M2MDE, in a sort of cream colour - although that could be UV light damage, over the years, and it may have been more white than cream.
I think the footprint is smaller with the PVM, mostly because it's a very basic rectangle shape, whereas the TV takes up most of my 100cm desk where my Mister is. I'm still learning all this, I have only had the Mister for a few days - it's a complete pre-built box from eBay.
It seems Amstrad CPC6128 machines are going for silly money on eBay, and mine is original, and boxed, so I am looking to cash-in, possibly even get some of my Mister money back.

[akeley]

If you can get a free PVM then just grab it pronto and pray your neighbour doesn't look them up on ebay. It will look great of course, even with Amstrad. It's definitely smaller than the monster 28" consumer sets, but not that small or light either. Personally I'm not all that wild about their heavy scanlines look, sort of prefer the one from a quality consumer set, but this is really just splitting hair - they both look fantastic.

Here in Poland 6128's can still be had for under 200 quid, but I can see people in the rest of Europe are asking quite wild prices. So, good luck with your sale. I'm keeping mine for now, since I have a great sentiment for it: it's the machine I wanted most when I was a kid, based purely on the looks (if I knew better it'd be probably C64) and could never have, due to it being rather pricey. Got a CTM 644 for it recently, to complete that childhood dream, and I was uber happy it managed to survive shipping.

[RascalUK]

Ah, keep the Amstrad if you can. You will regret selling it one day. I have a 464 and a 6128 and they are going nowhere. I also use my mister on a Panasonic 14" for Amstrad and others and it looks great. It's actually sat on top of an Amstrad colour monitor and they look identical when on.

Can't get a pic to show unfortunately

[Chilli_Vibes]

If you can get a free PVM then just grab it pronto and pray your neighbour doesn't look them up on ebay. It will look great of course, even with Amstrad. It's definitely smaller than the monster 28" consumer sets, but not that small or light either. Personally I'm not all that wild about their heavy scanlines look, sort of prefer the one from a quality consumer set, but this is really just splitting hair - they both look fantastic.

Here in Poland 6128's can still be had for under 200 quid, but I can see people in the rest of Europe are asking quite wild prices. So, good luck with your sale. I'm keeping mine for now, since I have a great sentiment for it: it's the machine I wanted most when I was a kid, based purely on the looks (if I knew better it'd be probably C64) and could never have, due to it being rather pricey. Got a CTM 644 for it recently, to complete that childhood dream, and I was uber happy it managed to survive shipping.

Yeah me too, I have a lot of sentiment for my 6128. I have kept it clean, it still has its original keyboard colour, they haven't gone yellow, as well as the original box and manuals. I got some new drive belts on eBay, and had the monitor checked and serviced, as well as adding a modern GOTEK drive. Thing is, like you said, here in the UK, and across a few EU Countries, the 6128 is getting good money, and I'm not getting any younger, I'm now 51, so free time is now limited - hence why I got the Mister, as well as space. I used to live in a 3-bed House, but I now live on my own in a bungalow, so space is very limited, and I now might have to make some tough decisions - sell, or keep, and I have a lot of old retro hardware.
The PVM is among many, loads of 9", 14", and 20" PVMs, all stored in a dry, outside brick shed. The bloke is ex-BBC, and even older than me, but can't be bothered with eBay - he told me of a couple of horror stories involving smashed PVMs he sold (smashed by the courier), and he had to pay back the money to the buyer, AND let them keep the smashed PVM.
I got my C64 much later in the C64's life, around '87, a breadbin in it's box, plus 1541 drive, and tape deck. As nice as it was, I had more of a soft spot for the Amstrad - it had a superb, huge library of games, some amazing, some poor ports from the speccy.

Ah, keep the Amstrad if you can. You will regret selling it one day. I have a 464 and a 6128 and they are going nowhere. I also use my mister on a Panasonic 14" for Amstrad and others and it looks great. It's actually sat on top of an Amstrad colour monitor and they look identical when on.

Can't get a pic to show unfortunately

All my friends have said similar, but they all live in large houses, whereas I am in a bungalow due to cheaper rents, and better location.
The great thing about Mister is the tiny space it can occupy, with the display choice being the largest - if I go CRT. Although, it doesn't still feel as authentic, due to using PC keyboards and mice, and modern controllers. On my 6128, I use a 9-pin micro-switched Competition Pro. Whereas, on my Mister I use a USB arcade stick - great stick, but doesn't "Feel" right, if that makes sense.
I will try to get some pics, if I can get to my spare room.

[RascalUK]

Yeah I built a Daemonbite adapter and use an original Competition Pro or Zipstik with my Mister for CPC / Amiga type stuff. Easy to do and worth so much in terms of getting that original feel back.

[Chilli_Vibes]

Bit past my time, doing the DIY, my old eyes wouldn't see a thing, even with me glasses on.
I might try and see if anyone has pre-built Daemonbite adapters for sale, as I have been eyeing up the SNAC adapters, and the Daemonbite adapters intrigue me.

[RascalUK]

Quick question as the CPC was the first computer I was ever online with (Prestel. Micronet 800) in the 80s. Is it possible to use the Amstrad core to 'dial' BBSs like you can with the ST and Amiga cores? Any help greatly appreciated...

[krusty]

Today there are few hardware expansions that allow to directly access to the internet https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/M4_Board, https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/USIFAC or indirectly by using a PC as a proxy https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/CPC_Booster.

However, there is no standard communication protocol or driver and tools are programmed explicitly for each given card.
And none of them is simulated on misterfpga.

Maybe there are tools to dial BBSs with them or standard joystick port but is quite hidden in Amstrad software list. You can find several posts related to BBS on https://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum that could guide you

[breiztiger]

crtc bug

https://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?pag ... l&num=7535

first part top scramble on crtc 1

[breiztiger]

MiST as amstrad core update

Add Symbiface II support for RTC and IDE

can someone bump it to MiSTer core ?

[Krakout]

Sweet!

[breiztiger]

@sorgelig
as you update with framework all core it seem ... can you please update our amstrad cpc core with that update too ?
https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.p ... 51#p437251
thanks in advance

[pjperez]

Hey folks, when I run the Amstrad CPC core all I get is a black screen. I'm using the HDMI out from the DE10. Does this happen to anyone else?

[EeDee]

Have you placed the Amstrad.rom file, found in the Releases folder, into games/amstrad folder?

[kathleen]

Hello everyone,

Today I wanted to run the CPM on the Amstrad CPC core and I was not able to find the symbol | in order to launch CPM with the command |CPM.
It is not the 1st time that I run CPM on this CPC core so for sure this symbol was existing. But now, I cannot find it anymore.
The only thing that changed on my setup versus last year is my keyboard, I now have a QWERTY while before I was using an AZERTY.
Could someone using a QWERTY keyboard (I guess most of you ) help me on this ?

[pgimeno]

Left shift and the key to the right of P works for me.

[TLPD-AVW]

| is typed with LShift+[.

[kathleen]

Thanks to both of you, will give a try this evening.

[pgimeno]

Apparently it's the same with a CPC using a French layout, except that the symbol displayed is ù instead of | but typing ùcpm works.

[kathleen]

Just tried on my side and I do confirm ùcpm work !
Thank you so much for your help and for having refreshed my old brain

[pepito]

ùcpm for AZERTY
and
|cpm for QWERTY
this is well know!

[Malor]

ùcpm for AZERTY
and
|cpm for QWERTY
this is well know!

Remember, lots of people here will be touching an Amstrad for the first time, me included. Community knowledge is not something we share.

Well-known or not, we may well not know it. 8-bit machines had tons of weirdnesses because they were so simple, so never beat anyone up for not knowing the intricacies of any given 8-bit. They are freaking Byzantine in terms of knowing how to use them.

A different example: the RMC guy on Youtube got an Apple ][ for the first time. He's in the UK, and those are uncommon over there. He had no idea that, for instance, you were supposed to put the floppy drive controller in Slot #6. Nearly everyone who used an Apple back in the day will know that, but he had no idea.

With no prior experience, it's not obvious that floppy controllers go in Slot 6 on an Apple II, or that ùcpm starts CPM on an Amstrad.

[breiztiger]

and |cpm start a lot of games too

when you type cat and get error try |cpm that can help ...

[breiztiger]

@sorgelig

as you update sys in some old core ...

can amstrad core have this update ? and last commit from MiST with symbiface II ?

https://github.com/gyurco/Amstrad_MiST

thanks in advance

[pjperez]

Have you placed the Amstrad.rom file, found in the Releases folder, into games/amstrad folder?

Apologies as I haven't seen this message, and thank you for the tip. It seems the amstrad.rom file was already there (I bought this MiSTer second hand from someone and they had a nice setup already), so that does not seem to be the issue.

I am using the HDMI out so I wonder if that is not supported or something. I will look further into this.

Thanks!

[breiztiger]

fdc bug

https://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=931

when you have the screen to wait for CASSIOPEE disk (Face 1B) you can't go over, disk dosn't seem to be detected from change

[nano]

Hi guys, I am helping transferring some of the recent changes from the Amstrad MiST core to the Amstrad MiSTer core.
If some of you could have a look and do some testing especially wrt CRTC behaviour that would be great! (and support a merge by Sorgelig).
The list of changes are here: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Amstrad_MiSTer/pull/23.

According to the description of changes, the demos S&KOH from the Logon System and the “Flying chip" scene in Batman Forever should be used at least. Other than that, any other demos or programs that could possibly make use of these tricky CRTC optimisations could be used to test the changes. Also any form of regression testing would also help!

I did some tests myself and did not detect any problem.

Thanks!

[breiztiger]

hi

strange with your version i can't run revolog (disk provided and RUN"REVOLOG that have register R tricks)

with my build it run

[nano]

Hello breiztiger,

This is interesting indeed!
I don't have a MiST myself but does this demo run on the MiST?! (BTW I have tried it with winape and cpcec but without success...)

If it does, then can you please tell me what commit is correcting this bug because apparently I missed it.

If not, then your improvement to the core (for a better handling of R register) should definitely be proposed to Sorgelig at some point.

I noticed that the MiST core was maintained more actively than the MiSTer core and that a lot of recent improvements had not been ported yet.
My intention is just to support as far as my knowledge allows. I am far from being able to improve the core by myself or make it compliant with the CRTC Compendium

Other than this (new) issue, did you notice any specific regression resulting from the changes?

Cheers!

[breiztiger]

hi nano

as i am a noob in fpga i have just report mod on mist to mister and compil

https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.p ... 58#p446858

this correct this demo

why implement ALT-F11 to reset as we already have CRTL-SHIFT-ECHAP like a real cpc ? and for hard reset CRTL-ALT-ALTGR ...