ScuzzBlog: Diaries April 2018 Entry 30th April 2018: Post: 2 Amstrad PCW 8256 Time was that all I used at home was an Amstrad PCW. For the years from 1987 right through to 1993 I only had the PCW9512 at home and I was broken hearted when she packed up. A lot of small architectural practices of the day used the PCW for most of their paperwork. We were still drawing using traditional pen and tracing sheets but for invoices and letters the PCW was not only a magic typewriter but also a great file manager. There were days when I worked for myself that I would spend all day doing paperwork and I'm sure the heavy hammer on the old daisy wheel printer must have kept the neighbourhood awake. A good friend of mine had the 8256 and during the day he would get visits from other small companies wanting to use his computer. It was a real work horse. Personally I could never be dealing with the green screen. Great tool all the same. During last year I fixed the drive belt on my 8256 and 9512. Both are working fine though I robbed the keyboard for the 8256 recently for the 9512+. The keyboard attached has a real problem as it keeps chundling out garbage in CP/M. Works with another keyboard so it is not the computer. This unit has a banged up 3.5" floppy drive which is on a very long ribbon cable. Unlike the 9512 you have to flip the floppy disk over to fire up CP/M and then use the disk formatting facility to create a disk to use with the word processing software. Once formatted the drive will appear as a Drive B on the menu. Useful but not, given that the Amstrad PCW series was a law unto itself and didn't really cross over into any other platform. I guess the years 87-93 were busy for me in an office admin kinda way and so my priorities were somewhat different from my ZX81 and Amiga years. I probably spent a lot lot more time on the PCW as when I wasn't working with it I was writing books and fiddling with Mallard BASIC. Seems a long time with the Amstrad now I think about it, but it really always did what I needed, and so I just used the thing till it fell over. I have a working PCW9512 so can still access all my 3" disks... er that's 3" not 3.5". Locoscript is still my favourite word processor of all time and I do miss not having CP/M on tap at times. The PCW9512 handled disks better I have to say though both systems work perfectly fine. Happy days. PCW8256 as made by Amstrad around 1985 in the UK Came with Mallard BASIC, Locoscript and CP/M Runs on the Zilog Z80A at around 4 MHz RAM is 256 KB The rather battered floppy drive Just not very convenient on the end of that very long floppy ribbon. And yes, my disk from 2003. Still in the drive Familiar PCW boot lines on start-up First up Locoscript Boot up CP/M and use Disc Kit to format a disk External drive kicks in Drive active on the system

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Last updated 30/04/2018

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