cpc roms

CPC

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The Amstrad CPC was a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad during the 1980s and early 1990s. CPC stood for 'Colour Personal Computer', although it was possible to purchase a CPC with a green screen (GT65/66) as well as with the standard colour screen (CTM640).

The first machine, the CPC 464 was introduced in 1984. It was designed to be a direct competitor to the Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum systems. The CPC range was very successful, and over 3 million were sold during the machine's lifespan [1].

Outwardly, the most distinguishing features of Amstrad's offering were the matt black console case with sharp corners and narrowly rectangular form factor (the latter due to the built-in cassette tape deck (CPC 464) or floppy disk drive (CPC 664 and CPC 6128), the keyboard's distinctly coloured special keys (all the non-typewriter-standard keys on the 464 and 664), and the unique power supply hookup with one lead going from the monitor to the computer (or RF modulator) and, on disc-based machines, one lead going the other way. A television could be used with an optional adapter, and an optional tuner was available to turn the monitor into a TV.

Hardware

All CPC models were based on a Zilog Z80 processor clocked at 4MHz. Because a common pool of RAM is shared with the video circuits, the Z80 may only make a memory accesses every four cycles - which has the effect of rounding all instruction cycle lengths up to the next multiple of four. The speed is therefore roughly equivalent to a 3.3MHz machine.

The system came with 64 KB or 128 KB of RAM depending on the model (capable of being expanded to 512k within the Amstrad-standard address space). The machines also featured an (almost) standard 9-pin Atari-style joystick socket which was able to take two joysticks via a splitter.

Some well known Amstrad CPC emulators today are:

Arnold

Top Roms

Cybernoid 2
Turrican
Switchblade
Krafton & Xunk Sega (1984)
Ballblazer Atari/Lucasfilm Games (1986)

How to Play

Please check our Getting started page for more information.

External links