Talk:PC1512

Price
The introductory price was £399 with a single floppy drive. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.220.42.46 (talk) 23:24, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

noise
The hard drive noise was nice, it'd be good to have a link to it.

I think I can do that, I've recently recorded that sound (I want to create a PC1512 emulator).--Stormy Ordos 23:19, 29 June 2007 (UTC)


 * In addition to sounding odd, many of the drives ran *incredibly* hot. People sometimes literally burned themselves touching the front of the hard drive once it had been running for a while. I remember Amstrad claimed this was 'normal', but I can't find a reference now. The drives weren't especially unreliable by the standards of the day. --80.176.142.11 (talk) 18:59, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

grammar
There are some serious grammatical errors in this article which need resolving... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.71.41.224 (talk) 01:56, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Fan
The cooling issue was the PC1640. Sugar's famous quote was "if they want pink spots, I'll give them pink spots".

I remember there was a controversy at the time about the machine's lack of a cooling fan (the PSU was in the monitor, and the case had a lot of air space). The press suggested that the machines might overheat, and Amstrad later added a fan, although Alan Sugar made it clear that he was only doing so because the market wanted it rather than because it was necessary. I can't find a good contemporary source, but it is mentioned a few times, e.g. here and this source from 1987, which mentions the presence of a fan but nothing about the controversy. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 19:52, 4 March 2009 (UTC)


 * It's covered in issue 3 of PC Plus, on page 6: http://www.pcplus.co.uk/themes/pcplus/minisites/issue3/index.html 217.205.148.230 (talk) 14:19, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Mouse problems - says who?
Where did these "mouse problems" come in? I used to have Amstrad PC 1512 CM DD (+HD) and never experieced anything like mentioned here. This appears to be original research. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.65.73.202 (talk) 19:35, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

The mouse driver used a completely nonstandard interface, which anything that expected to talk directly to the hardware didn't support (e.g. Ventura Publisher.) The other problem is that the MOUSE.SYS which was included reprogrammed the timer interrupt to three times its normal frequency (only updating the clock on every third invocation) -- however, quite a few Microsoft compiled BASIC products would program the timer interrupt back to the standard 18.2 Hz frequency, at which point the clock would run at one-third speed. Hpa (talk) 18:25, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

A few technical notes
The 640x200 16-color mode was technically not another mode, but bitplane support added to the standard CGA 640x200x2 mode. There was a write bitmask register indicating which planes should be written to (simultaneous writes to multiple planes were supported), and a selection register which plane should be read. The standard CGA color register was reinterpreted as a bitmask for which planes should be displayed. The default was all planes written to, and I seem to remember it was the red plane that was read by default. Hpa (talk) 18:29, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

The wikipedia article is wrong while talking about "an expansion pack" for a RAM upgrade. I upgraded my own Amstrad PC1512 (in germany, it's "Schneider PC1512") a few hours ago and I needed no secret "expansion pack" and also the name "top hat" had no (web) sources at all. For a proof of my words, look at my last blog entry at http://www.z80.eu/blog/index.php?entry=entry141221-233000 All other wikipedia pages in different languages copied the whole text, also with the wrong detail about the RAM upgrade. Please correct this. Thank you for reading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:7A:2D2F:E097:E952:9288:749F:3B1D (talk) 23:50, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Power supply in monitor makes upgrading difficult how exactly?
Don't quite understand why having the power supply built into the monitor should make the PC any more difficult to upgrade? 86.132.63.66 (talk) 00:01, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Try upgrading the graphic card and adding a higher resolution monitor. A bit tricky when the power supply is in the decommisioned monitor. 109.156.49.202 (talk) 14:01, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on PC1512. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20150607132555/http://www.swtrocketry.com/computer/amstrad/swt_computers_amstrad.htm to http://www.swtrocketry.com/computer/amstrad/swt_computers_amstrad.htm

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 10:59, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Ever officially sold in the US?
I attended a summer camp in the US that had these exact machines (around 1986 or so). I'm not sure they were ever sold in the US so now I'm curious how they got there. 57.135.233.22 (talk) 06:28, 27 July 2023 (UTC)


 * The linked advert in the article provides the details of a reseller in Texas, so maybe that is how they got there. PaulBoddie (talk) 21:51, 2 May 2024 (UTC)