The name Amstrad means different things to
different people. For some it means this. Others this, but for most of us, it invariably
means THIS. The Amstrad CPC is an iconic computer from
the mid 80s. Released in 1984, it was somewhat of a late-comer
to the flooded British 8 bit micro scene, but despite the odds managed to become the
third biggest selling 8 bit home computer in the UK and dominated in other parts of
Europe. It's often seen as an also-ran to the Commodore
64 and Sinclair Spectrum, but once you delve into the story you begin to see that actually,
it was anything but. Alan Michael Sugar was born in 1947 and spent
his early years in a Northwold estate, cramped into a room with his siblings and bearing
witness to a rather modest upbringing in East London. Although his mother recounted times when Alan's
future bashful character came through, he was reportedly a reserved child, but clearly
took a lot on board. In his teenage years it didn't take long for
him to seek a more prosperous life for himself. Working at the electrical wholesaler R. Henson
Ltd in Finchely, his job was to take electrical samples to retailers and strike a deal. This quickly enabled Sugar to develop a large
knowledge of retail outlets and products in the capital, but the Hensons management left
a sour taste in his mouth. Despite instigating some lucrative ideas for
the business, Hensons never seemed particularly grateful for Sugar's work. One of the rounds involved collecting goods
from Binatone's owner, Gulu Lalvani, and it didn't take long for him to realise he could
go solo and make more money for himself than working for Hensons. Thanks to the friendship he'd established
with Lalvani, he slyly struck up a deal in 1966 with Binatone and handed over a 7 day
postdated cheque for a van of goods. He then promptly sold these goods the same
day and returned with to pay off Lalvani with cash the very same night, tearing up the cheque. At the age of 19 and armed with an unreliable
mini-van costing just £80, this was the beginnings of Amstrad. Sugar initially kept his stock in a shed in
the back yard of the Redbridge based house he had bought with his recent wife, Ann Simons. However after £1,500 of merchandise was stolen
he began to rent a premises in St. John Street, a base for many a small business and workshop
and in November 1968 registered as a limited business under the name of A.M.S. Trading (General Importers), the A.M.S. representing
Alan Michael Sugar. At this stage the business was very much a
buying and selling operation, however it didn't take Sugar long to realise that putting his
name on these wholesale products would not only gain credibility, but also create an
image among his buyers. This brand name, more out of luck from the
original company name than anything else, would be Amstrad - an amalgamation of A.M.S.
and Trading, creating an immediately flowing and memorable name. The first products to possess this brand were
imported cigarette lighters and room to room intercoms, and the branding involved a simple
stick on badge. 1968 would also be the year which another
entrepreneur, Clive Sinclair, was causing a stir in the audio hobbyist community by
placing four page colour adverts for small audio amplifiers and it didn't take Sugar
long to cotton on to this new and exciting electronic market. Over the next few years Sugar built up an
astute knowledge of the cheapest suppliers, and the best places to sell them, whilst also
himself delving into electrical repair on shipments of faulty goods, gaining extra income
and boosting his own knowledge of the trade, and it wasn't long that he would open his own retail business on the side. Along with friend Ashley Morris, the pair
opened Global Audio, a shop that would sell audio equipment, much like the ones Sugar
was already selling to. But Sugar was a man with fingers in many pies,
and although this side operation was successful, he sold his share to Morris so he could concentrate
on launching the first in house developed Amstrad product. In a strategy that would become his main playing
card, Sugar had noticed that people were spending a lot of money on dust covers for turntables
and identified a way to reduce costs. This was by moving to injection moulding,
rather than vaccum forming, which was the norm, and soon shifted the cheaper alternatives
using the contacts he'd established from the beginning. Like Sinclair this move into audio would follow
with a range of amplifiers and other components for hi-fi, although with a more value orientated
approach than the technical innovations Sinclair was offering. Sugar wasn't one to sit in one place for long,
and armed with his brash, cockney attitude, which usually went completely at odds with
other people in the industry, Amstrad soon launched their first consumer electrical product
in the form of the Amstrad 8000 Stereo Amplifier, pushing sales to over £200,000 and allowing
the business to move into a small set of warehouses on Fleet Street. This was in 1970 and Sugar would later go
on to term the 8000 as the "biggest load of rubbish I've ever seen in my life" and a number
of improved versions evolved, but each bearing the same advantage of completely undercutting
the cost of the competition. Sugar was making products for what he would
term, "The truck driver and his wife". By 1972 Amstrad's sales had almost doubled
allowing another move to yet bigger premises on Ridley Road, operating as a large scale
British manufacture. But Sugar realised that he could make further
savings by sourcing components directly from manufacturers in Japan, rather than using
an electronics importer as they had been. Several Eastern bound trips allowed Sugar
to grasp the potential of OEM (original equipment manufacturing), where products are fully assembled
abroad to requirements and simply badged with the Amstrad name. This led to several new Amstrad products,
which involved Amstrad doing very little other than paying for the equipment and shipping
them to the retailers, much like the early days. This new sub-contract operation, later formed
an alliance with a British sub-contractor L&N, allowing Sugar more control over the
presentation of his products. Something he was quite concerned with, much
more so than the actual technical manufacture, which was often echoed in magazine reviews. By 1980, the company had bought premises in
Tottenham for £300,000. Sales were up to £8.76 million Sugar had
got himself a Rolls, aquired a pilot's licence, snapped up some 30% of the car radio market
through imports and established a solid reputation. Companies found him easy to deal with, being
straightforward and essentially acting as the chairman, sales director, financial chief,
technical guru and everything else, all rolled into one representative, although expansion
had enabled him to take on a larger management team to cope with increased pressure. Amdstrad's technology also looked good and
had become reliable. The only two things which Sugar essentially
cared about in a product. The company had also gone public, providing
some £2 million investment and widening the opportunities available. It was his next card trick which really solidified
things further. Over in Japan audio companies had begun to
group separate hi-fi elements into one package. However Sugar would take this idea, improve
it, simplify it and lower the cost. All of these things would emerge by combining
all the separate elements into one signal unit, made to look like separate pieces; something
that we've taken for granted ever since really. Sugar's attention to aesthetics ensured the
units looked expensive, with an array of flashing lights, fake switches and anything else that
would match it to more expensive separate units, an image that Sugar would term "a mug's
eyeful". The towers were beautifully simple compared
to existing hi-fis. Simply plug it in and you were away, instead
of the usual collection of wires spooling out the back. Woolworths snapped up the TS-40 Tower Hi-Fi,
along with Rumbelows, Curry's and Amstrad's existing stockist, Comet. It would be the first product to sell in the
hundreds of thousands. Priced at £199, this left some £130 for
Amstrad, a hefty margin and a great source of revenue. The hi-fi buffs weren't enamored by the kit,
but like all Amstrad's products, this wasn't made for them. Legalisation of CB radios in the UK allowed
Amstrad further success, poised and ready to pounce as they were, along with lines of
other electronics including televisions, both imported and manufactured in house as well
as video recorders and various other electronics. But Amstrad wasn't a company to sit in a marketplace
for long, with Sugar only interested in profit margins. If he felt that a line was in danger from
competition or natural market decline, it would be cut without hesitation. With Japanese competition mounting, Amstrad
quickly exited both the VCR and TV markets in 1984. But, after all, a new line of electronics
had caught their eye. The Personal Computer. To be fair, Amstrad were already making waves
in this arena. They had just released several high speed
tape to tape recording machines with the advertising "You can make a copy of your favourite cassette". Something which would stir the music industry
into a frenzy, resulting in various court cases against Amstrad, with Amstrad finally
prevailing, but also allowed users of the emerging tape based home computers to quietly
copy their tapes and perhaps pass them onto friends, instigating the dark, dark world
of PIRATE games. By now, Amstrad's turnover was some £85 million
with profits of almost £10 million, resulting in Alan Sugar receiving Guardian young businessman
of the year. At the end of 1983 he announced that "new
products to be unveiled in the coming year would be in true Amstrad fashion, one step
ahead of the market and most definitely the competition". ============ Time to build a Computer ============ By now the UK home micro scene was in full
swing, starting with the Sinclair ZX80 at the turn of the decade, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum
had now been selling in steady numbers for just over a year, the BBC Micro for two years
and 1983 had seen the emergence of the American Commmodore 64 strolling onto our shores. But the arrival of the home micro hadn't gone
amiss from Amstrad, it's just that Sugar had to wait until the market was just about right
for Amstrad to do their usual tricks. Back in 1982, Sugar had realised that the
home micro market was big. Far bigger than what they were making in hi-fi,
and at the time big enough to hold companies like Sinclair, Acorn, Commodore, Oric, Dragon
and a slew of others businesses all competing for business. Sugar and Bob Watkins, Amstrad's technical
director had initially asked a couple of engineers, who had previously worked with Amstrad to
take on the task, however by mid 1983, underestimating the work needed to produce a computer, they
had concluded that this duo were struggling somewhat. This was compounded when the software designer
disappeared and the hardware designs were demonstrated as seriously behind schedule. In this time, the outer casing for the machine
had already been completed. Sugar's headstrong image for the machine had
taken president, meaning that the final motherboard and technical components would have to be
designed to accommodate the space allocated. So armed with this case, Bob Watkins had taken
a stroll down to see Roland Perry at Ambit International. Another company who had worked for Amstrad
in the past, whose main business was running an electrical component mail order catalogue,
which allowed funding for side products such as calculators and other electronic kits. His question to Roland was whether they could
finish what had already been started. A tall order, but after speaking to his MD,
William Poel, the pair decided it was an opportunity they could not turn down. Amstrad wanted the system completed fast. Within 5 months fast. So Poel and Perry's task was to oversee the
project and recruit the staff they needed to get the job done. Their first meeting, with the original designers
apparently yielded that most of the work had so far been completed by the hardware designers
14 year old son, and could only currently display a few characters on screen. Impressive for a 14 year old. Less impressive in the eyes of Amstrad. Perry quickly sought a new team of engineers
from the technology centre of what seemed the world then, Cambridge and set about finishing
the hardware whilst acquiring a suitable operating system and BASIC interpreter. Microsoft BASIC, the most common go-to was
expensive to licence, so Sugar decided that it would be more cost effective to write their
own interpreter. Richard Clayton was apparently the man to
turn to for this, operating Locomotive Software from his back room, and although highly impressed
by the already completed outer casing was a little miffed by the state of the hardware. The current system was using a 6502 processor
at it's core, and given Locomotive's lack of familiarity with this chip, Clayton estimated
it would take some 8 months to get an OS and interpreter up and running. He suggested calling up his friend Mark-Eric
Jones operating under the name of MEJ Electronics. Their suggestion was to scrap the current
design and build something around the Z80 processor. Clayton's exposure to this chip meant he could
adapt some work he'd recently completed for Acorn in a much shorter time frame and MEJ
knew the electronics inside out. It was also around this time, under a shroud
of secrecy that the Amstrad prototype gained the nickname Arnold. Perry had given the system a temporary badge
to hide the backer behind this project, with most people assuming that it was General Electric
Company, run by Lord Arnold Weinstock. It wasn't until later that Roland Perry realised
that Arnold was in fact an anagram of his own name. The secrecy didn't last long however as MEJ
and Locomotive were called to a meeting with Alan Sugar to finalise terms and plan out
a timescale. Chris Hall was the only member of Locomotive
to own a suit, and so attended, along with MEJ, William Poel and Bob Watkins. The engineers had assumed that Bob Watkins
was in charge. That is, until Sugar arrived late, and everyone
fell silent. Sugar then laid out his vision. Whilst other manufacturers were fiddling about
with what Sugar described as pregnant calculators, the new Amstrad machine would have "perceived
value for money". Just like the hifis, having a "mug's eyeful"
was central to the mix. The pre-designed CPC case with it's wide footprint,
bold coloured keys, grilled edges and high tech finish were designed to do just that. A machine that looked like a real computer
you see in airports or offices was his core vision. Something that the lorry driver and his wife
would look at and think, now that looks the deal. Incorporating a tape deck (straight from their
hi-fis) into the machine and bundling a monitor was also core to this premise. Not only did this make the machine look the
part, but it turned the whole package into something incredibly simple to plug in and
use. Just like the all in one hi-fi, there would
be only two wires connecting the keyboard to the monitor, and a single plug, with the
PSU for both units built into the monitor itself. Sugar had dabbled with the existing micros
and found them utterly aggregating and unhelpful to setup. His ability to see things as the average working
joe allowed foresight that just wouldn't register with the likes of Sinclair or Acorn Computers. The bundled monitor would also eliminate the
problem of the family TV set being unusable during the computer's operation, meaning it
was likely to be used more and for longer periods of time. All the engineers needed to do was make it
work. The specifications Amstrad provided were pretty
basic, with the only insistence's really being to have colour, sound and 64k of memory to
match it to the highest capacity found among competition and to do it "as cheaply as is
humanly possible". Here was a team, given a few months to design
the basis for a complete computer system. Something that would usually take 5 times
the personnel, and 5 times the time. But the engineers were actually pretty excited
about the challenge and set to work immediately. One of their early strokes of genius was to
use a ULA chip to combine multiple functions and reduce cost, much like the Sinclair machines. In fact, the final CPC technical specs, were
not too dissimilar from that of Clive's little machine, and although price was key, it even
had a number of improvements. As well as being able to display up to 16
colours from a palette of 27, there were two other resolution modes allowing a CGA style
4 colours at 320x200 and 2 colours at 640x200. All without the colour clash attribute found
in Clive's machine. The system also sported basic 4 pixel hardware
scrolling, which was really a credit to the team's design and pride in their work. The Z80 CPU ran at roughly 3.3MHz to to prevent
interference with the shared video circuit memory, whilst the memory could effectively
be upgraded to 512kb through bank switching. Sound emits from an on board speaker and is
driven by a General Instruments AY-3-8912 sound chip, providing three channels and 7
octaves. A vast improvement over the Speccy's on board
beeper and much more similar to what the Spectrum 128k+ would accrue some 2 years later. Given the bundled 14" monitor, there was no
need for an RF output, with the display driven from an RGB connector resulting in what would
appear a much clearer display than most systems of the time. But there was a DB9 port for a joystick - allowing
two through a splitter cable, an expansion bus, printer bus, power switch, internal speaker
volume dial and a stereo output jack. Sugar wanted what was at it's heart, a games
machine. He understood this is where the money lay. But the machine needed business appeal, and
the team had certainly delivered the goods here, on both fronts. With Bob Watkins happy with the design, Locomotive
got the OS and BASIC interpreter up and running in an incredibly narrow space of time, taking
on more staff as they went. The initial prototypes were ready by November
1983 and presented to Alan Sugar. The first thing Sugar requested was that the
cursor be movable at all times using the directional arrows. Most interpreters at the time didn't allow
this, but in typical Sugar style, he wanted the machine to respond immediately to the
average chap in the shops jabbing the arrow keys, providing a reassuring response, regardless
of its advantages. The hastily built prototypes were then shipped
immediately to software developers around the country, along with some Amstrad televisions
to serve as monitors. An operation was then put into motion to convince
these software houses to write some programs for the system in time for it's launch. If a deal couldn't be struck with a particular
house, then someone would pick up the machine and take it to another software house, until
there were 50 machines in the hands of 50 developers, ready to create launch titles
for the CPC. Amstrad knew that the software line up was
key for any machine's success. They had witnessed Sinclair's market success,
and the demise of other machines which just lacked a suitable array of games. It's for this reason that several Ambit employees,
including Perry and Poel were brought on board under the name of Amsoft and put to task creating
their own line of software for the machine, along with setting up a user's club to duplicate
the same kind of support the Spectrum and Commodore 64 had naturally evolved. The current CPC prototypes didn't yet have
the ULA chips on board, instead they were simulated using an array of separate chips
and discreet components, which was handy because the ULA was initially riddled with problems. Ferranti, the company tasked with creating
these chips just couldn't create something that worked, so Sugar decided to get another
company, SGS, based in Italy, to have a go as well, keen to ensure that the machines
were launched as soon as humanly possible. Both companies soon enough created working
chips and the components were quickly shipped out to Orion for manufacture, in Japan. It was Orion themselves, who had vast experience
in display manufacturing, who then suggested using the high contrast yellow on blue colour
scheme to ensure maximum clarity. With the changes made, the OS was completed
in its final and shipped to Orion in the third week of January 1984 to be laid into silicon
for the final design. It was only when the firmware was mid-flight
that Richard Clayton discovered a minor bug in one of the BASIC operations. The DEC$ function required two opening brackets
rather than one. But given that its only use was to return
a decimal string representation of a supplied variable, it was a non essential operation,
and Sugar keen to be as professional with the Japanese as they were with Amstrad decided
to just remove it from the manual rather than request Orion to change it. This was more of an egotistical point with
Sugar who was always keen to Out-Japanese the Japanese. Apart from this tiny hiccup, Roland Perry
and Amstrad hit a winner with MEJ & Locomotive software. Not only was a decent machine, operating system
and interpreter delivered within time, it also didn't cause Sugar much concern in the
financials department. Like a lot of people neither MEJ or Locomotive
weren't convinced Amstrad could succeed in a saturated market, and so during negotiations,
rather than opting for royalty payments on machines sold, both companies opted for a
fixed lump sum. As Locomotive wanted to retain the intellectual
property rights, this was £45,000 for the first two years, and £15,000 per year afterwards. Amstrad had no problems agreeing to these
terms, and the machine was poised and ready to go. ======== A Baby Amstrad Arrives ========= The Amstrad CPC464 was unveiled in April 1984,
just 8 months since Bob Watkins had walked into Ambit's offices. The opening ceremony was orchestrated by Michael
Joyce Consultants to various members of the press, hiring the hall at Westminster School
and managing to track down people with the names of Archimedes, Einstein, Monet and Shakespeare
to demonstrate respective aspects of the machine. The press were impressed and it was quickly
dubbed "The People's Computer", exactly as Alan Sugar has intended. At £229 with a green monochrome monitor,
£329 for colour it was incredibly well priced, equaling, if not exceeding Commodore 64 specifications
and including a monitor, for roughly the same price a standalone C64 system was currently
retailing at. Users who purchased the green monitor version
were able to upgrade to colour through the purchase of a MP-1 or MP-2 devices incorporating
the modulator and power pack needed to hook machines up to a standard television. Whilst over in Japan Amstrad had also located
a stock pile of 3" disk drive components going cheap. The 3.5" format was beginning to take over,
so rather than going to waste, just before launch Sugar asked his engineers to create
an external disk drive for the CPC, to help push the business aspect of the technology. This was quickly done, conforming to the Hitachi
& Panasonic standard, and a swift deal was tied up with Digital Research to port the
CP/M operating environment to the CPC - like the 3" disks, an OS that was losing it's battle
to MS-DOS. Amstrad agreed to pay for a large number of
licences up front, demonstrating how firm Sugar was in his belief that the CPC would
make in-roads. To this end there was also a package including
the disk drive for £429, meaning the system could fall straight onto the desks of business,
as well as the kitchen table. Given the sturdiness of the 3" discs, they
would likely survive just fine in the kitchen as well. Guy Kewney of Personal Computer World wrote
"The Amstrad is a powerful, fast machine, with plenty of memory, easy to program, and
packaged in a way that means it will comfortably outsell the Acorn Electron, and give the Commodore
64 and Sinclair Spectrum a hard run for their money. I expect some 200,000 systems to be sold by
the end of the year". It's not hard to see why. From the moment you setup the CPC, it's blissfully
straightforward. You can plonk the monitor town using the built
in handle, connect the 2 cables into the CPC itself which extrude from the front, so you
don't have to scrabble around at the back, and you're good to go. Even after turning the machine on, everything
feels right. The image is crystal clear, thanks to the
RGB connection. The keyboard feels responsive, including the
arrow keys allowing you to chuck the cursor where ever you feel, and also, handy touches
like the "copy" key leap out. There's no need to mess around with a cassette
deck, along with all the wires and making sure the volume level is correct. Everything just feels like it's going to work
and keep working. Whereas, using a Spectrum can feel like an
experimental laboratory test at times. There's always a slight fear that something
will suddenly stop working. This fear itself is something Amsoft played
up to when Acorn attacked Sinclair's machine failure rate by announcing a game called "This
Business is War", featuring characters that looked incredibly similar to Clive Sinclair
and Chris Curry of Acorn, but apparently the source code was lost and the game never surfaced. The modest hour queue which formed when the
CPC first went on sale may seem insignificant by today's standards, but back then, it was
anything but. 60 people waited an hour for the Rumbelows
store in London's Edgware Sqare to open on the Thursday 21st June 1984. Wake me up before you go go by Wham was riding
the UK charts, and the Amstrad CPCs were certainly go-going. Within an hour 100 CPCs had been sold. Soon machines were available in many high
street stores thanks to Amstrad's existing connections. To further lure the crowds, Amsoft and other
willing developers had created enough titles for the initial bundle to ship with a whopping
12 titles, claimed by Amstrad to be worth over £100. This included Roland in the Caves and Roland
on the Ropes, named after Roland Perry himself. Other games included Oh Mummy, Harrier attack
and Sultan's maze, along with productivity applications like Easi-Amsword. This really was the complete package, and
thanks in part to it's industrial look, it radiated a feel of quality and professionalism,
which was somewhat lacking in the market. The all in one solution also lowered returns. Many of Sinclair's products were returned
because people just couldn't work out how to tune them in or work them. Whereas the CPC was as simple as moving the
fruit bowl aside, parking on the table and flicking a switch. However, only caring about numbers, the city
wasn't privvy to all this reasoning, and was still skeptical of another new machine entering
the already flooded market. Sinclair had by now sold well over 1 million
ZX Spectrums and excess Acorn Electron stock was waiting in warehouses, having missed the
1983 Christmas rush due to production problems. Something you'll note almost every other micro
manufacturer endured in the early 80s, apart from Amstrad that is, Bill Poel was even quoted
as saying "I will be prepared to eat one in Trafalgar Square if its late". Amstrad's shares endured a rocky patch in
the year following the CPC's unveiling, with some starting to realise that Christmas 1983
had been the peak for micro computer sales. Now, it was reckoned, "everyone who wanted
one, has one". But this was Sugar's strength. Identifying an unfulfilled area of the market
whilst creating something simpler, better, whilst using economies of scale and outsourced
manufacturing, to make it cheaper. Ultimately his strength was having conviction
in common sense.
