Unfortunately, due to force of circumstances, I no longer have room for a PcW16, only for my PCW8512 and a PC. The text below was written in the days when I had umpteen computers of all types, but I hope it remains of interest
I first heard about the PcW16 some years ago and obtained a catalogue of
Amstrad products which had a picture of it and specifications. The price was
£299 plus VAT; if you bought a printer with it you could get a Canon BJ30 bubblejet
for only £100 + VAT or an OKI LED laser printer for only £200 + VAT. These were
excellent prices at the time.
As a PCW enthusiast I rang Amstrad to order one, only to be told that it would
not be available for a couple of months which actually turned into nearer a
couple of years. We know now that Amstrad was having problems with the operating
system; by the time this was solved the window of opportunity had been lost
and the machine was not now a good buy. It's price dropped like a stone until
Dixons was selling it for £99 inclusive of VAT; surely a bargain for the small
business user, but by that time I had lost interest.
Relatively recently I bought a PcW16 at auction in mint condition complete with
rescue disk and manual and have thus been able to try it for myself. Even so,
I have not given much time to the machine as it was intended to be used, because
as an ardent PCW8256/8512 enthusiast I was unable to find any common ground
with the PcW16 and was disappointed with it's performance. However, since the
arrival of a CP/M emulator for the machine, of which more later, my interest
has been rekindled.
In the same way that people mess about in boats, I mess about with computers.
Not for me the chore of mastering new spreadsheets or databases; as a retired
gentleman of leisure I can use the computer purely for pleasure and as fancy
takes me. I did try the word processor for a short time and found that it was
fairly easy to learn, at least superficially, although vastly different from
Locoscript. A useful feature is that the operating system will recognise CP/M
and Dos discs and ASCII files can be imported into the PcW16.
Having installed my Epson Stylus 800 printer I set out to write a page of inspired
prose, but was very disconcerted when the screen kept reforming itself. Was
it something that I was doing wrong? I have yet to find out. When I had completed
my Booker Prize masterpiece I went to print it out, but nothing happened. I
had just decided that I would have to reinstall the printer, rip the innards
out of the computer or start to chew the carpet, when the printer burst into
life and my deathless prose started to become hard copy. As I began to congratulate
myself, Alan Sugar and the Minister of Computing, everything stopped. After
a long think it then completed the job. Since then I have timed the printing
operation and it takes 30 to 60 seconds to start printing; even then it sometimes
stops a couple of times for 20 -30 seconds before completing a page. Thus it
can take two to three minutes to complete each page. Again, it may be something
peculiar to the Epson Stylus 800, but I know that I installed the correct driver,
namely ESC/P2.
I believe that the problem lies in the much-applauded operating system. I understand
that it's a graphics-based program, unlike the text-based program of the earlier
PCWs. Without going into technical details, which I am hazy about anyway, I
believe that it needs a lot more memory to function properly.
After that I stashed the machine away at the back of a cupboard until I discovered
that a CP/M emulator had become available for the PcW16, courtesy of John Elliott
who deserves thanks not only for the program itself but in putting it into the
public domain. I downloaded the relevant files and processed them, recovered
the PcW and had a go. To my amazement and delight it worked first time, and
if you want to know more read my files on CP/M for the PcW16 and Mallard Basic
for the PcW. Yes, you can actually write programs yourself at last for the PcW16.
It is my own belief that, after a great start with the PCW8256/8512, Amstrad
lost it's way with the PCW range. The PCW8256 was a revolutionary machine of
it's time at a price that persuaded many authors, including some very famous
ones, to chuck away their typewriters and get into word processing. Many were
bought by Government departments for senior personnel to write up notes. After
that came the PCW9512 which had a trendy white screen but the Z80 CPU and the
memory chips are soldered into the printed circuit boards instead of being plugged
in as with the earlier PCWs. This makes repairs difficult. After that came the
PcW9512+, similar to the PCW9512 but with a 720K 3.5" drive. Unfortunately the
drive is not compatible with standard drives. Following that the PcW9256, then
the PcW10 appeared, both with the same type of non-standard drive which I believe
was also used on the PC2000 series IBM compats. and probably others.
Writing with the advantage of hindsight, I wish that Amstrad had developed the
original concept rather than leaping from one concept to another. Then we might
have today a PcW16, still running on a version of CP/M, but with the undoubted
advantages of standard 3.5" 1.44M floppy drives and maybe a hard drive, plug-in
CPU and memory, and a colour screen. There are thousands of CP/M programs still
in the public domain and hundreds of good programs that have become lost and
are no longer available. Good CP/M programs are still being written but had
the PCW line evolved rather than gone in fits and starts there would have been
more incentive for programmers and I think that such a machine would still have
a good market today.
I'm sure (and indeed hope) that PcW16 users will disagree with me profoundly
on many points. I speak from the viewpoint of a user of one of the earlier PCW8256
machines. If you have a comment why not Email me?
Ron King
Andover, England
Email ... ron@king27.freeserve.co.uk