This page is a small tribute to the Amstrad CPC, computer which during many years I enjoyed, I learned and mainly I played its countless games, nowadays pieces of cult and collecting.

There have been several changes in the website. It has definitely separate English and Spanish throughout the web, mixing the languages are over. You can switch from one language to another by clicking on the flags above left. the navigation menu of the web has been modernized a bit. It has been verified that everything works correctly in IE6, IE11 and the latest versions of Chrome and FireFox, if anyone has any problem, let me know it.

This year there will be many new developments on the website, after a period of inactivity. Several people have warned me (complained about) that some programming tutorials did not work well with the latest version of SDCC 3.4.0 (April 11th, 2014) so I reviewed, arranged and checked all the tutorials to work with this latest version of SDCC.

For those curious here are the statistics of this website in 2014:

• 20.664 visits
• 48.505 page views
• 1243 downloads of CPCDiskXP v2.5.1
• 3.038 visits to the section Programming Tutorials
• 2.593 visits to the section GX4000/CPC+ Games
• 1.256 visits to the tutorial of Compiling and testing a "Hello World" with SDCC
• ...

CPCDiskXP v2.5.1 Changelog (since v2.5):

• DSK to Floppy - Now you can choose between two methods of writing to disk: "Low Level Driver" and "USB Floppy Drive". The option "USB Floppy Drive" will be only enabled when the format is compatible with the USB floppy writing method.


• GENERAL - Now the program is able to format the disk when writing on USB floppy drives. Now that the program format and write, is no longer necessary to preformat the disk from windows.


• GENERAL - Eliminated warnings that the Low Level Driver is not installed at starting the program. Now that you can write to USB floppy is not necessary to show the warning every time.


• DSKEditor - New feature/button to "Add Files From Another Dsk" (or zip containing Dsk's) to easily add files that are in other Dsk without extracting them. As you can add files from one Dsk format to another Dsk format, this is also a format converter.


• DSKEditor - Support for creating/editing two new IBM formats: Single Side, 42 Tracks, 168K (162K Free) and 65 Tracks, 260K (254K Free) [3.5" only, hack for AMSDOS]. Both can be written on USB floppy drives and both can be used / read in standard Amstrad CPCs.


• DSKEditor - Support for creating/editing a new PCW/+3DOS format: Single Side, 42 Tracks, 189K (182K Free). It can be written on USB floppy drives and it can be used / read in standard PCW or ZX Spectrum +3.


• DSKEditor - Support for creating/editing a new ROMDOS D1 format: Double Side, 80 Tracks, 720K (716K Free). It can be written on USB floppy drives.


• DSKEditor - Support for creating/editing a new CPC DATA format: Single Side, 57 Tracks, 256K (254K Free) [3.5" only, hack for AMSDOS]. It can be used / read in standard Amstrad CPCs.


• DSKEditor - Support for creating/editing a new CPC SYSTEM format: Single Side, 59 Tracks, 265K (254K Free) [3.5" only, hack for AMSDOS]. It can be used / read in standard Amstrad CPCs.


• DSKEditor - Now when creating a new Dsk you can filter the list of formats to choose from. There are 5 filters: "All Formats", "Amstrad CPC Standard Formats", "Amstrad CPC With Modified ROM Formats", "USB Floppy Drive Compatible Formats" and "Amstrad PCW / ZX Spectrum Formats". With these filters is very clear on which platform each format works.


• Thank you very much to KaosOverride, I always learn new things thanks to you :-)

Go to CPCDiskXP web section

CPCDiskXP v2.5 Changelog (since v2.4):

• DSKEditor - Support for creating/editing IBM Dsk's (Single Side, 40 Tracks, 160K) in Editor and command line.
• DSKEditor - Support for writing IBM Dsk's on USB floppy drives with Windows/FAT preformated floppy disk. This format can be read on a standard Amstrad CPC.

Go to CPCDiskXP web section

USB Floppy Usage:

• You need a formatted disk from windows. Once covered the "high density" tab on the floppy, you have to format it in FAT 720Kb using the windows command line "FORMAT A: /T:80 /N:9".
• Start CPCDiskXP, press 'DSK Editor' button.
• 'New', select IBM format (last in the list).
• Now Add the files you want to write
• Press 'Write USB Floppy' button to write the Dsk.
• Test/Load on your real CPC...

USB Floppy FAQ:

• You can't write protected games or existing Dsk in other formats different from IBM.
• You can easily make your own dsk and add games and utilities using the program Dsk Editor.
• You can try for example this Dsk containing Abadia del crimen and Army Moves I & II
• You can use this method to create one Dsk with WriteDSK program, write it to a floppy diskette with your usb floppy drive so you can use WriteDSK from CPC to write protected games and / or existing DSKs.

CPCDiskXP writing a disk in a NetBook with a USB floppy drive:

NEW AMSTRAD CPC PROGRAMMING TUTORIALS

Two new tutorials on the section Programming Tutorials:

• Sound I: The easiest way (C & ASM with SDCC)


• Loading files from disk using firmware (C & ASM with SDCC)

CPCDiskXP v2.4 Changelog (since v2.3):

• DSKEditor - Small changes to fix problems with PCW. Single side dsk's seem to work perfectly in the editor and the emulator.
• GENERAL - Sometimes the main interface buttons are cut off and can not be pressed (as shown in the image above), usually in Vista and W7 if you increase the default font size, is finally solved.Thanks to everyone who wrote to me to tell me the problem.

Go to CPCDiskXP web section

SDCC (Small Device C Compiler) v3.3.0 released:

• A new version of this magnificent compiler has been released a few days ago. From now on we will use this version in the new tutorials. The bug in the previous version has been fixed, so from now on instead of compile using the parameter "-oldralloc" will use "-fno-omit-frame-pointer".
• Updated the tutorial SDCC vs z88dk: Comparing size and speed of the binaries generated for Amstrad CPC including in the last test the results with this new version of SDCC.

NEW AMSTRAD CPC PROGRAMMING TUTORIAL

One new tutorial for the new section Programming Tutorials:

• PongC: Clone of the classic Pong in mode 2 (C & ASM with SDCC)
  

NEW AMSTRAD CPC PROGRAMMING TUTORIALS

Two new tutorials on the section Programming Tutorials:

• Keyboard: Reading HW, multiple simultaneous keypresses, redefine, Firmware vs. HW (C & ASM with SDCC) (02/07/12 Updated)


• Fire: Attempt to make a fire effect and optimization (C with SDCC)