Amstrad's 1991 Notepad Computer - Haven't We Seen This Somewhere Before?
Vložit
- čas přidán 3. 06. 2024
- In 1986 Amstrad bought Sinclair but didn't get the Z88 - roll forward five years and what's Amstrad releasing now? Was this machine just a blatant copy, was the too little, too late, in a market that had moved on? Or was it genius?
FiFine kindly supplied me their K690 and it's really helped with the audio on my channel. If you like what you hear - head to: fifinemicrophone.com/collecti... and tell 'em I sent ya :)
Follow the shack on twitter: / scottth54604744
Support the channel: czcams.com/users/TheRetroShack...
Buy us a coffee: ko-fi.com/theretroshack
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
03:05 History
07:15 A closer look
08:55 A look inside
10:44 In use
[References]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timelin...
www.ncus.org.uk/qanda_firmwar...
st-news.com/issues/st-news-vo...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad
www.referenceforbusiness.com/...
www.pressreader.com/uk/retro-...
www.computinghistory.org.uk/de...
Attributions
By W. T. Shymanski - Own work (Original text: self-made), Public Domain, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
By Danamania - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
If you like this video, please consider joining as a member to help support the channel and to get some lovely little perks :)
/ @theretroshack - Věda a technologie
We had the Amstrad 512. First IBM compatible PC we had. Introduced me to the classics such as Elite, Prince of Persia etc. Started off with the dual disk drive and then had one swapped for a 20mb HDD (which we found out later was 40mb partitioned, so we repartitioned to use the full 40mb!).
6:14 Catching sight of that Psion logo just gave me a super nostalgic blood rush and I was suddenly 12 years old again.
Glad it delivered the feelies:)
Does anyone know if those "alien letters" above the Latin letters were part of a complete alphabet?
@@ropersonline Those were the letter each symbol had below but split into pieces
@ I'll admit it took me a while to even understand what you were saying, but now I see. Thank you! What a weird and quirky design. I wonder if whoever came up with that did it just for PSION or if the idea preceded that company, and if they did the entire alphabet.
My dad sat hunched over his NC-100 for many hours in the early 90s and could even hook it up to his PCW8256. A nice machine and I have one of own now.
Nice to have those memories :) I wonder what my kids will remember of my computing adventures :)
I used to have one to help me with School work in the early 90s to some time in 2000 when it died. It was one great for getting around my poor hand writing.. It also had me to learn to type fast and pretty accurate.
I hope you passed all your exams as a result! :) :)
@@TheRetroShack Yeah. It saw me though to the GCSEs, with no fails.
Now you see why I had that NC100 sitting in a box for a couple of years - if you want to do very limited work with it, then it's...er... 'fine', but it was just too limited for me. Nostalgia value only, which is why I donated to a channel that properly values nostalgia. Love your work, keep it up! Cheers!
Thanks again for the donation John - it was a pleasure to research and I learnt a lot about these machines :)
Only one thing: I have a Z88 and the keyboard is superb.
I absolutely agree - hence why I said 'proper keyboard' :) And the Z88 is spill-proof too! IP67 ahead of it's time :)
Those early Psion's look very much like "The Book" In the BBC's television adaptation of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Good spot!
Thanks for the upload, I never knew such a thing existed :)
But to be pedantic, that's a DB25 parallel port, Centronics is the printer side with the "bar in the middle" ;)
Whoops - sorry!
There are a variety of centronics connector though, including a comparatively small 14-pin on some MSX machines (for connecting a printer) and, iirc a 37-pin version for other uses.
The NTS DreamWriter waves and says hi to its parents!
I had one of these in the early nineties. I honestly thought it was brilliant. The thing that stopped me using it in the end was the difficulty of getting my files off it onto my Amiga via serial. What it needed was SD card support, but it was too early for that. Really nice user interface though. It had an incredible amount right.
I seriously considered buying one of these, but the Psion Series 3A came out and although it was significantly dearer, so was its capabilities. I still have my 3A, has the usual issues of broken hinges and a dodgy flexi cable but in many ways still better than my modern phone, thanks to a physical keyboard.
The PSION machines were (and to some extent still are!) amazing :)
I had an NC200 (clamshell version of this with a bigger backlit display, 3.5" floppy drive and more applications) and absolutely loved it. The word processor, BBC BASIC and the spreadsheet were all really good bits of software and I completed lots of school assignments on it, using my brother's 24 pin dot matrix to write it all out! Sometimes I wish I still had a device like this for work that removed all of the distractions of the internet and let you focus on just the work itself.
Yes the 200 was much better equipped and felt more like a ‘proper’ computer - I remember a friend having one and he absolutely loved it too :) Thanks for watching :)
Ah, yes. I bet a floppy drive made this a fantastic piece of kit. Alas, I had the NC100!
At the time for the PC100 introduction in Sweden I was working for a "office supply retailer", we received a free sample unit to showcase and test. We just asked ourselfs "for whom, and why"? We compared it to the Atari Portfolio and without DOS and generic application support it was a dissapointment. We never sold any and the PC100 ended up forgotten in a cabinet. I have a vague memory that it was not localized with Swedish character set (åäöÅÄÖ) and that limited it. Great video, excellent audio quality btw, wounder why ?? ;)
That's really interesting! Thanks for sharing. Glad you enjoyed the video :)
I had one of these, and at the time it was great, I used it to do course work on, on the train. The AA batteries lasted a month which is more than can be said for a modern device.
I bought one "back in the day" for college work alongside a Canon bubblejet printer, what made in Great for college work was battery life, I took notes on lessons for weeks on just AA battery's. I have only just donated it to another youtuber as I had plan forever to hook the serial terminal to a dos session so as to have a dedicated machine for the command line!
Seems a lot of people had these for school or college, just for note taking - nice idea for the dedicated dos session! :)
The NC100 is still quite useful. I'd say the Z88 is far better in lots of ways, but the NC100 had industry standard ports, which made it far easier to use.
Awesome video on this wonderful machine. I had an NC100. Well that's not true. My brother had one, got bored of it, and I ended up with it and LOVED it. No one I knew had anything close to it at the time. I filled the memory trying to write a text adventure in Basic lol. More a floor with my programming than the capacity to be fair. Very fond memories of what I often refer to as the iPad ahead of it's time.
Thanks! And glad you enjoyed the video :)
Glad you loved it. Back around 1992, these cost about $400 Australian dollars (about $1600 in today’s money). I wanted it real bad, but was broke. My Aunt, out of the blue, sent me $300, but there were conditions attached. 1/ I could spend this on a yoga 🧘♂️ retreat ... My heart sank. But alternative 4/ For the benefit of mankind ... offered me an out. I scrapped up the remaining $100 somehow and bought the NC100. I justified this on the grounds I was using it to write letters for foreigners having trouble with bureaucracy. My Aunt accepted this.
AND WHAT A WONDERFUL MACHINE IT WAS /STILL IS. It’s portable, off-grid, fairly well made, and for about 8 years fitted most well-known printers. I still occasionally use it, with my old Epson dot 24 pin printer. And it has been my emergency backup writing device that has seen out some 5 more modern computers !!
Pretty sure I subscribed after two or three videos. Keep up the great work!
Wow - an early adopter! Things were a bit rough back then so thanks for sticking around! :)
Great showcase of this interesting little machine. Thanks for the video!
You're welcome! Glad you enjoyed it :)
When the Z88 and the NC100 came out in late 80s early 90s, I was already using a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 portable. And didn't see any advantage in switching to either the Sinclair or the Amstrad machines.
I was surprised that the TRS-80 Model 100 wasn't mentioned in this video. It was a similar form factor and extremely popular. They sold about 6 million of them, mostly to newspaper reporters. If the NC-100 had been released earlier it might have gotten some of those sales.
I had one of these - bought from a car boot sale for a couple of quid, described as working but of course it didn't. It turned out to be a blown fuse on the motherboard which is a common fault and an easy fix. I ended up selling it on eBay because I didn't really have a use for it, but for some reason, I fancy buying another one.
I know, right? Strangely 'want-some' aren't they?
@@TheRetroShack I could imagine something really useful being made with an NC100 and a Raspberry Pi Zero W.
PSION was a hardware company first (the name came from contracting “Potters Scientific Instruments”). They may have dipped their toe into the software market, but that wasn’t where most of their money came from
Interesting - although their Wikipedia page says: "Psion was established in 1980 as a software house with a close relationship with Sinclair Research. The company developed games and other software for the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum home computers, released under the Sinclair/Psion brand. Psion's games for the ZX Spectrum included Chess, Chequered Flag, Flight Simulation and the Horace series.[7]". This also seems to corroborate Psion being a software house first: stevelitchfield.com/historyofpsion.htm
@@TheRetroShack I stand corrected. I’d always thought that they had been involved in hardware before software, but it seems that they did things the other way around. The vast majority of their money was down to hardware sales, but they seem to have started that with the Organiser.
@@stevetodd7383 No worries at all! I’m going to go and put this down in Mrs Retroshack’s ‘My Husband Was Right About Something’ diary… (think it might be the first entry…) :)
in 1990 there was the Psion MC series - I have the MC400. The only other one I've seen where someone is hitting keys is Die Hard 2. Holly McClane is using one on the plane
Now *that’s* an excellent bit of trivia! Thanks :)
As programmable as the Z88, this also includes Acorn’s BBC Basic for Z80. And software ROM cards _COULD_ run from the PCMCIA socket, just none were released. It also had a “big brother” in the NC200, which had a bigger screen, and a floppy disk drive.
Yes, the NC200 was. MUCH better machine and I’m trying to get hold of one :)
@@TheRetroShack I have a rather hacked one that you can borrow if you fail. Although it's not a very good "vanilla" specimen. Mine has CF & PCMCIA type 2 support, and a gotek - so a long way from where Amstrad left it...
Hi Scott, thanks for sharing your thoughts about K690 microphone for us~ Really appreciated that. Keep creating more great contentssssss~
No problem Lucas - thanks again to you guys for helping me sort out the audio :)
@@TheRetroShack You're welcome~ So glad you like our microphone, hope to work with you again soon!
I do like the form factor. These days you could fill the top part with actual display rather than having a letter-box display and lots of "disguise" around it.
It’s a lovely form factor - but I do think the Z88 ‘wore it better’ :)
I had the Amstrad notepad. Loved it.
Awesome! Sometimes I guess if it's got everything you need, you don't need anything else! :)
TBH, I think the coloured keys were a plus. It was built to allow those in the '90s who'd spend decades hunting and pecking their way through life with a computer to do what they needed to while letting everybody else be productive if they needed to. But the lack of proper expandability was a let-down. Mind you, it's something that could've been solve with a new system ROM. And you're right: it was four years too late. Still better than the QL, which was basically dead on arrival.
I really must get myself a QL and see what none of the fuss was about :) :)
not much of a clue as to the function of any of these devices tbh non the less i find your videos fairly intuitive as much can be for a total layman like myself and thoroughly sparks my interest considering my limited understanding on these devices. love the channel 10/10 for presentation. keep up the good work!
Thanks so much! Really appreciate the feedback and glad you're enjoying the channel :)
You don't have 10k subs yet? For shame world, these vids are great!
Hopefully soon :) - Thanks for the support - appreciate it!
You can add also that the CPC sold very well in France and smash all other computers (at least 8 bits) with its agressive price, a 6128 cost just the price of a bare C64 without the screen and floppy drive. killing all other local 8 bits (dragon, spectrums, thomsons and al other 8 bits machines).
Thanks for the video. Your content is going from strength to strength.
PS you're right about the "preschool" keyboard on this thing. :)
Thanks very much - very kind :)
The Psion organiser II was used by Maplin for many years for stock taking, on there original EPOS system, written by a crazy man called Mark Dove, it was ported over to the PC after the company adapted for all use on the PC for all there stores using DRDOS concurrent DOS386. Well written for a basic program, it was very fast! The scrapped it, a few later the company went bust...!
I remember them being in John Lewis (Or maybe Marks and Spencer) - very adaptable little devices :)
I appreciate it has been a while since the video, but do you know of any schematics for the NC100 (also watched the Cliff Lawson video :) )?
I wouldn't call this a Z88 rip-off, both this and the Z88 were re-imaginings of the Epson HX-20 from *1982* and/or the TRS-80 Model 100 (Kyocera Kyotronic 85) from *1983*
I’ve got a HX-20 on its way to me :) Looking forward to comparing them :)
@@TheRetroShack That'll be interesting to see. It successors the Epson HX-40 / PX-4 and PX-8 are really interesting as well as they're Z80 based and CP/M compatible. You could run WordStar, CalcStar, and dBase II from the cartridge slot.
Why did Ms. Retro Shack demand 10K subs? I thought that "over 9000" is better choice.
She didn't demand it - she just laughed when I said I might get there before my birthday in June :) :)
Mine has a different ROM Chip "AMSTRAD GR A1 999-13667-061 9238XD026" bought in Germany with German as default language. Great Video, thanks!
Is this the one that had a version of Protext by Arnor on it as the WP ?
Yeah I had one of these 1992 on and as a Protext fan on the Amiga and PC it was very useful. The relative lack of expandibility and connection issues were a problem, I got a suitable cable for it. The nc200 has an opportunity to fit a USB drive convertor. Shame never anything similar for the NC100 as these are much more prevalent.
Theoretically, a competent computer assistant / nerd, could set something up the NC100 to download directly into an old computer (think Windows 3.0) but I never managed this. I was reduced to printing out documents from my NC 100 to an old Epson dot printer, then scanning these into a modern computer and then correcting the result. A bit expensive and time-consuming.
I found the Alphasmart Neo 2 (made 20 years later) was great for downloading to computers and had wonderful 700 hrs approx battery life, but only had 1/2 to a 1/4 the features of the old Amstrad NC100 (which had a 20 hrs per 4 x AA batteries).
I still think there may even be a market for an updated version of the Amstrad NC100 i.e. increase the memory, allow cheap data cards to be used, and combine it with the best features of an Alpha NEO 2.
Well, it was build for an audience that knew, lets say, not much about computers. And you don't want to give the noobs too many options they won't understand. Making user interfaces for non-computer users is an art in itself and it seems that they hit their mark with that machine. Granny could type a letter on it and print it.
Not my granny! (God rest her soul - Miss you, Nan) she couldn't tell the time on a digital clock! :) :)
@@TheRetroShack Sad but amusing (re. Your Granny). The NC100 was my very first computer / WP device. Great for getting a basic letter out of it first try. Other more complicated tasks sometimes took a bit of organising but, yeah, a great first up WP machine. Used mine for years, and occasionally still do.
its a good system ive managed to get it online using a retro wifi modem it does more than word process it got a built in terminal and bbc basic
Yep - mentioned the serial transfer and the BBC Basic in the video - I guess if it had everything you needed, it's a cool little machine. Still personally prefer the Z88 though ;)
@@TheRetroShack never used a z88 I’ll have to try and find one in working condition
Dad had a Psion II but NEVER used it.....
I had a Z88 when it first came out but to be honest I thought the formfactor was a bit bog for me, so I went the Psion route. So ... LZ, LZ64, Series 3, Series 3a, Series 5, Series 5mx... Did I really buy six of those? Loved the 5mx as it did exactly what I wanted to do, but... my Series 3a was a special edition in a "woodgrain" like case. Wish I kept hold of that now.
I even bought a Planet Computer Cosmo because it looked 5mx-ish. Pity Android doesn't like playing ball in landscape mode...
Wow - that’s quite the handheld journey :)
i bought a laptop in 1998 with my student loan.. yeah.. hold your breath... it cost £1800... what was i thinking!!???? took me years to pay off that loan lol
I remember those days well!
Ah Psions... my Series 5 just succumbed to screen rot recently.
I'm on the lookout for some Psions for an episode - really think they're amazing little machines!
@@TheRetroShack they're really nice. The Series 5 has the best keyboard I've ever encountered on such a small device. I've been looking for a Series 7 since forever - or a good Series 5 since mine was a mess before screen rot took its toll.
That keyboard probably cost a third of the price. It's better than some laptops which appeared 10-20 years later, not to mention modern ones. I'd kill for a laptop with such keyboard nowadays.
It's a proper keyboard alright :). I guess I'm just odd that I like the Z88 one better :) (probably because of my spectrum roots!)
I love my fifine, also what is basic on the NC-100?
Me too! Excellent microphone :)
@@TheRetroShack what's the basic in there?
It’s BBC Basic - Just like the Z88 ;)
@@TheRetroShack interesting they didn't use locomotive basic like the CPC machines
I had one of these for school work as a special needs kid in the 90s. Maybe it doesn't have all the expansion options that the Z88 or Psion did officially, but it does have BBC BASIC too (with its assembler) and a terminal emulator. I never had any memory cards but I'm guessing more ROMs or add-on hardware would at least be theoretically possible through that slot?
Theoretically yes but it didn’t really take off it seems so unfortunately never fully exploited. Glad you found it useful though! :)
6:33: This is driving me crazy. An "XJS juggernaut"? Does anyone have the faintest idea what XJS stands for?
I have no idea!!! :)
I think it comes from the Jaguar XJS car. It was on it's final generation in 1991
@@robsmall6466 Seeing how that ad is from 1987 as teh googles tell me, and seeing how PSION was British, I now think you might be right. But I also think that even back in the day the automotive reference would have gone over many people's heads.
It has a "secret menu" key... I wonder what it does...
It allowed you to enter a small amount of text that was protected by a PIN number. :)
Quite an interesting machine amstrads computer products were much better made and more reliavle than any of its audio and video products .
It's an interesting machine for sure - just felt it was a bit too... Vtech...
I'm subscribed to your channel, but weirdly, I cannot enable the notifications.
That’s odd? I wonder if other people are having the same issue?
I have 2 of these, one immaculate with carry case and manual.. and one just a bit meh to tinker with
Schools in Australia were being encouraged to buy them as cheap WP machines. I resisted as I saw the writing on the wall for them. Shame.
That's interesting - I didn't realise that Amstrad had that kind of reach!
This form factor is awesome, why not a new version with a raspberry Pi inside and a decent 60 or 75% Cherry MX keyboard?
That would be really cool!
You can throw them all the bones you want on the poor expandability, but how hard would it really have been for them to put the system ROM on an removable card, and move the connector to a card-edge? There’s a quote often attributed to Einstein, “everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler”, and that applies very well to the tech industry. I guess in 1991 you COULD release a calculator with a diary in it, with no expend ability. This device is proof of that. The market demanded software, though, so Amstrad, in a quest to squeeze every penny on development, went past the “no simpler” position.
Do you have any Psion devices? I’d love to see your reviews of those. Particularly the Series 3 (which my school had, branded as Acorn Pocketbooks), and the Series 7.
You're in luck - there's some Psion stuff in the schedule :) Glad you enjoyed the video!
just like the PCW it was an "appliance" (in this case a portable word processor) that could be used as a computer
Appliance - That’s a good description :)
Well there's something new, a CZcamsr who actually uses a sponsored product.
Yep - use it all the time :) I won’t sponsor anything that I don’t actually endorse or believe in. Gotta be able to sleep at night :)
@@TheRetroShack Kudos for that!
Yes, that MIC actually sounds good 🙂
The Dreamwriter NTS 325 looks rather similar to this unit....
All copies of the TRS-80 Model 100 from 1983? Proper keyboard, micro$oft Basic, and last last system mostly written by Bill Gates ;)
Going to get my hands on a TRS-80 model 100 :) :)
Wait, twelve minutes and not a single word about the fact that it has a button that says "SECRET MENU"?
I am sure to be disappointed, but I HAVE to ask what it does. (Also, I want a "SECRET MENU" button to replace the app menu key on my modern keyboard.)
Can you run CP/M on the NC100? - czcams.com/video/1_SKdKtwq6I/video.html
It looks like a toy. :)
First !
LOL :) Well done - you know there's not a prize though, right :) :)
The first will be the last... (or was it the other way around?)
Interesting little portable, but WHAT, you cannot load software!
That means that this isn't really a computer, so kind of useless to me.
Well, it’s not so much that you ‘couldn’t’ load software - you could transfer programs over serial, or type them in, or theoretically programs could have been sold on PCMCIA cards, but to my knowledge, no-one did. So you were kind of stuck with what you got out of the box :)
Ignoring Amstrad's success in France completely.... :D
Le Amstrad? Tres Bien!
Failed to talk about what it does at all? Let down by this vid.
Sorry to hear that, but if you heard me say word processor, calculator and diary, that’s it. It really was a very limited machine even back then. The addition of BBC Basic was a nicety but without third party apps it was a bit of a lame horse.