Here's an unexpected donation to the museum. I was recently sent a message asking if I wanted this "old Amstrad thing". Obviously I said yes and went to collect it
It's a Amstrad PCW 9512 Word Processor, PCW stands for Personal Computer Word-processor, and it would have originally come with a printer but I didn't get that, or the boot discs either
The Amstrad PCW was a range of inexpensive computers created for the most common PC task of the time which was word processing
The range was first released in 1985 with the original PCW 8256 and continued until 1998 with the last model, the PcW16. All the models except the PcW16 were compatible with each other
You may have noticed the model numbers start with 8 or 9 which are the different models, the first gen versions were 8*** and the second gen versions were 9***, and then they end in either 256 or 512, which relates to the amount of memory the machines have, so for example the first gen versions of the PCW have either 256 MB for the 8256, or 512 MB for the 8512, and the same for the 9*** series
The 9512 also has a plus version where the 3" floppy drive was swapped out for a 3.5"
These were followed by the PCW10 which was an upgraded 9256 with 512MB of RAM and updated software
The last model of the PCW range was the PcW16 which was incompatible with the previous versions, had a 640x480 monochrome resolution used a mouse driven GUI and utilised flash memory for storage of files
This particular model, the PCW 9512 was first available in 1987 at a cost of £499, which was significantly cheaper than the IBM PC's (and it's clones) of the time, which meant it was quite successful for a short time
The machine itself, despite looking like an all-in-one PC is totally incompatible, as it runs a Z80 processor at 4MHz, and with 512MB of RAM it could run CP/M which was similar to, but not compatible with, DOS
The computer would have used a 3 inch disc drive as its only storage medium, there is no hard disc, the later 9512+ would use the more common 3.5 inch disc drive, which this example has been upgraded to
The display is a 12 inch monochrome CRT with a white phosphor, and there is a beeper on the logic board for simple sound
Connectivity-wise there is a dedicated port for the supplied printer, and a parallel port for other printers, there is an edge connector and a keyboard port
The only controls on the device are CRT related like brightness, contrast, vertical and horizontal hold, and a toggle power switch
Here is the keyboard
The keyboard has 82 keys which feature dedicated word processing functions
Close up of the keyboard sections
It would appear a former owner has painted over the model labels
The base of the keyboard with its model label
The keyboard does feature retractable legs to angle the keyboard
It also has a coiled cable with a chunky plug
It plugs into a port on the front of the computer under the display
Moving on to the computer itself, you can see someone has painted over the model label, I have no idea why, also the original 3" disk drive has been swapped out for a 3.5" and it doesn't quite fit in the hole, and can be wobbled up and down so is not fitted correctly
And yes, the computer is quite grubby, these photos were taken after I cleaned it up
Why someone was trying to hide the Amstrad labels I have no idea
Not the original disk drive, and doesn't quite fit right either
The side of the computer
The other side of the computer, there are brightness and contrast controls here, and some damage to the lower part of the case
The rear of the computer remindes me of the aeroplane sprite in River Raid on the Atari 2600
Rear model labels
Rear CRT controls and external connectors
The base of the computer
Before this gets powered up, it's getting inspected, here is the CRT, doesn't look high hour, it is dusty though
I had a good look around and couldn't see any issues with capacitors or any evidence of carbon tracking or damage
The CRT board is on top and the computer board is below, both have Amstrad printed on them and the cables connecting them are short, so this is about how far the lower board will come out, and I didn't want to screw with it too much so left it alone
There are connections for a second drive
The CRT, the printed text is all but gone from the label
Anyway, everything inside looks in order, and I don't have a CRT tester, so I'm plugging it in, and after hitting the power button then retreating to the other side of the room just in case it exploded (spoiler: it did not) the computer silently came to life
I initially thought the computer was dead, as I did not hear high voltage start up or the vertical sync running, but after a few seconds I could sense the horizontal sync running and the CRT lit up. Note: I'm old and can't hear high pitch sounds anymore
There is no ROM as such, there is a tiny boot loader which just looks for a specific file on any floppy disk and executes it, the computer just displays a white screen until a valid disk is inserted
There are no built-in programmes of any kind, the machine is unusable without disks
Amstrad would have shipped the Locoscript word processor programme and the CP/M operating system with the computer, you could not run both at the same time and the machine would need to be rebooted if the user needed to do a task in CP/M while running Locoscript
Due to its popularity many other programmes were available, including BASIC interpreters and games
Eventually the computer loudly beeped three times (which I initially thought was the smoke detector) which means no disk is in the drive. There are a number of beep codes which mean different things like invalid disk etc
You may have noticed the yoke is rotated slightly caused a mis-aligned picture, and there is distortion in the top right of the image. I have seen pictures of other 9512's with curvature at the top of the white screen, so this may be normal
A rubber plug
?BREAK ERROR