Amstrad Mega PC

I need to restore as "factory store" my Amstrad Mega PC.

What I need?

Ms-Dos 5.0
Counterpoint

and what else?
driver?



anyone here has this fantastic machine?

 

An other question: is it possible develop MD games with this computer?

 

i am looking for one of these Amstrad Mega PC
i did look on the net and there is recovery flopplys
made by amstrad hard to find

 

thanks for your help. If you find any cool stuff please post in this thread.


This is my set up:








I delete the ADT directoy, and now I have some problem with startup.
Some know how to edit the autoexec.bak ?


Here you can find the DOS's GUI installed on Amstrad MEGA PC:
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/joe.gentile/Text/amstradCP.htm

 

nice bit of kit these mega pcs

 

I'd like to get my hands on its service manual or good quality scans, at least scans of the part on the schematics where the Sega ASIC is.

 

The MD is entirely separate to the pc on these so you can't use it for MD dev in that sense.

 

I think you could interface between the MD and PC on the Teradrive..

 

The Teradrive had basic game development software on it, as seen here: http://assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22709

I'm not sure about this computer though. It would be neat if you could get those recover disks and tell us whats up with that thing.

 

Amstrad is an electronics firm based in Brentwood in Essex, England and founded in 1968 by Sir Alan Michael Sugar in the UK. The name is a contraction of Alan Michael Sugar Trading. It was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1980. During the late 1980s, Amstrad had a substantial share of the PC market in the UK. As of 2006, Amstrad's main business is manufacturing Sky Digital interactive boxes. Amstrad was bought by BSkyB on the 4th of September 2007 for £125 million.

 

I had one when I was younger, back in 1994 when such a beast set you back £399. Whilst having a Mega Drive in a PC was awesome, the PC itself was almost completely out of date the moment I got it, almost entirely un-upgradable, and was pants in comparison to my brother's Amiga. There was an updated version with a 486 processor towards the end of it's lifespan, but relatively few of those are around.

@MrHard: If I remember correctly, the default installation was just Counterpoint booting to DOS 5. I think I may have upgraded to DOS 6.22, rather than it being the standard install. The stock installation had 1MB of RAM, upgradeable to 4MB.

Aside from that, there wasn't any drivers to install, AFAIK. The PC hardware was fairly stock and required no special drivers. The config.sys & autoexec files, as I remember it, didn't contain any drivers. It had no CD drive, there was no special drivers for the video or sound card, it was unexciting that way. I may have an old boot disk somewhere (not the default one, a home-made one) that I used on that, but it's unlikely to match the original config.sys and autoexec.bat.

If I remember correctly, it also came with a pile of CGA games (I think they were on a set of floppy disks rather than pre-installed). Aside from that, it had very little.

To be honest, I wouldn't know why ANYBODY would keep Counter-point installed, especially after Win 3.11 came out. It was known as the program you hit the ESC key on every time you started it.

No. The two elements are completely independent of each other, unlike the Teradrive.

Yes, the Mega Drive board also had an Adlib-compatible soundcard on it, used by the PC.

 

Unfortunately, the Mega-PC is pretty uninteresting. The Megadrive is mostly a stock system, right down to the 15.6kHz RGB video signal; the monitor is the "special" part, being a multiscan unit that supports both 15.6kHz for the MD and 31.2kHz for the PC. Without it (or a similarly capable screen) you won't be switching between the two platforms.

I've seen them go for £10-20 on Ebay, so I don't think there's even that much value in them.

 

i would want one

 

cant find any on ebay

 

Oh, they're still quite scarce. Just not very valuable - especially if you're buying just the main computer.

 

From what I understand, it is possible to hook a Mega CD up to one of these beasts. However, you need a special cable that was apparently only available direct from Amstrad. I've no idea if these cables were even manufactured though.

 

Wasn't it simply called xt harddisk controller? It would in fact be the 8 bit version of the IDE interface.