ChinnyVision - Ep 219 - Amstrad NC200 System Review
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- čas přidán 29. 08. 2024
- The follow up to the Amstrad NC100, the NC200 was a portable computer that also had a built in 3.5 inch floppy drive and a larger display then the NC100. But it didn't really make the impact Alan Sugar was hoping for.
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I used one of these for years.......the “transfer to disk” function was key to operation, as you stated at the start the unit could only really be use the drive when plugged into the mains. All my road work was done in memory and then bulk transferred to disk when I got back to the office. I did sometimes used the terminal programme but not that often.
I have a real hard time understanding why you have so few subscribers. You deserve loads more.
I don't take ads so CZcams doesn't push the channel. But also the channel is rather niche (the way I like it) and I'm just doing it for fun. The antics of some of the wannabe 'professional' CZcamsrs get on my nerves on their quest for attention and clicks. As long as the right people watch then that's cool. It's not about the numbers.
Knew a couple of people who used these for their university work (i'm talking 94/95/96) and the saving to MS Dos compatible floppy was useful but not always reliable for them (our computer lab's Viglen machines had issues with some 720k formatted floppies!).
You losing it over Super Blockade was my favorite thing 😆
Just got one of these specifically for playing around with Z80 basic and wanted something portable / not needing an external screen. It's a weird mish mash of genius and WTFery. The RS232 terminal and BASIC are both really good, powerful tools for the era (Basic can even include Z80 asm), but both are buried and hidden away and barely mentioned. The PCMCIA slot is also potentially very powerful..... but....
* The games are literally a waste of ROM space. They could have been left out and the space used to include a BASIC packager/compiler, or bump the word processor up to LocoScript (by the time the NC200 came out, the cost implications of offering it with 256k instead of 128 would have been pretty negligible)
* The PCMCIA slot is electrically fully Type II compatible, but the design of the case means type II cards wouldn't fit. Changing this would have been completely trivial (3D printed case mods now let you do it, it's literally just a piece of plastic). This would have allowed the use of a PC card modem which could have been a big draw for mobile workers.
* WTF make the power connector literally the reverse of pretty much the rest of the world do?
* CP/M has in more recent times been ported to the system. Again not sure why this wasn't offered from the outset as an option in ROM or on floppy, as it opens up a whole slew of options like dBase, which was still a pretty big deal in the early 90s.
PCMCIA situation is annoying (I jammed a type 2).
Power connector wasn't that unusual at the time. I have a number of devices that are centre negative.
CP/M would have been a licensing issue. And by the time the NC100 came out it wouldn't have been a selling point.
BASIC is hidden away because the machine is designed to be easy to use and "User Friendly" so I guess they didn't want people accidentally stumbling across it. If you wanted it, you'd know where to go and were not a beginner.
@@chinnyvision Even in the mid nineties I would have brought one of these to run Wordstar if it had CP/M on it. But you are right, a limited market by that stage. Thanks it's an interesting review.
Love to get one of these or something like it just for my writing. Be a lot cheaper then the Freewrite that is out now.
Problem is getting stuff on and off really in a way that works with a modern PC. I did try a PCMCIA to Compact Flash adapter but it didn't work and in fact jammed!
Interesting device, thanks for the video!
Amstrad certainly scored a big goal with the CPC series but they seem to have failed to reproduce that success afterward. Although the portable market was quite effervescent at the time, competition was much tougher given the market had quite matured compared to the everything-is-permitted 8 bit era and they failed to please the high end consumers who were after these kind of devices.
The lower end of the market (Atari ST, Amiga) was starting to be seriously eroded by lower priced PCs and there was little margin to be obtained in making these so it looks like betting on the higher end was the right bet (just look at Apple's success at the time selling highly priced (but poorly performing compared to high end Amigas) Macs) but Amstrad looks like it was not quite high tech enough to compete with Psion and its ilk.
They seem to have had the right ideas and analysis of the market but the execution failed short.
Seems from the comments below and from the overview that it would have been so much better to have has the floppy separate, leave it in the office or home, and keep the main unit light with only 4 AAA's.
And a built in modem like the Tandy 100. And fax software. Now that would have been a very usable on road device...
Probably didn't want the batteries to die whilst writing to floppy your only current up to date copy of a file as it will likely corrupt the disk. Common thing with low tech laptops.
Love your videos dude! This is a nice spot light on a little known machine.
What power supply would you recommend for it?
"Its a z88 ripoff" ... 5 minutes later ... "well well well thats pretty sweet. Lets look at ebay ..."
They are pretty nice and yes, while they owe something to the Z88 actually they owe more to the Japanese devices that looked similar, the likes of which Tandy used to sell.
They'd have been better off with scramble or defender.