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Glenn Storey in Worksop, Notts, UK. at 22:54:14 Tuesday November 24 98 My parents have just bought my daughter a PcW16 for Christmas and I have a spare printer which I said she could use with it. The printer is a Xerox Xprint J5 thermal inkjet which, according to the manual emulates the HP DeskJet 500 using Windows 3.0 or below and other DOS apps. The printer seems to work OK, although I have had to adjust the margins to centre the text. The problem is that each page printed has "2400S" printed in the top left corner of the page. If you have any ideas I would appreciate it. Thanks. Amstrad answers: I'm not familiar with that particular Xerox printer but what you describe would seem to suggest that it isn't 100% compatible with the DJ500 - presumably the PcW16 is sending it an [Esc][something]2400S and it doesn't support the [Esc][something] that a real DJ500 does. One thing to try would be if the printer has a "hex dump mode" switch it to that and then try printing so that you can see all the codes being sent from the PcW16 - then find the "2400S" and look for the 1B ?? before it and then look that up in the list of Esc codes the printer supports. Maybe Xerox can tell you why that particular Esc code isn't supported or maybe there's a way to switch the Xerox printers emaulation so it does support the code. If all else fails I fear you'll need to replace the printer but you can get something like an entry level Canon BJ for not much more than about £50 these days. david gerard at 13:29:54 Tuesday November 24 98 correspondance entre une imprimante AMSTRAD DPM4000 et imprimantes compatible PC, IBM, ou NEC ou ? pour installation derrière un PC pacare bell. merci. réponse en français souhaitée. Amstrad answers: Excuse moi mais je ne parle pas beaucoup de Francais. Are you aksing how to use a DMP 4000 on a Packard Bell PC? I presume you mean - how do you get it to work in Windows 95? If that's the case then just select the Epson FX100 driver and that should work fine as the DMP is compatible with taht Epson printer. Pablo in LEÓN, Capital de la Corona Leonesa. PAÍS LEONÉS at 13:3:1 Tuesday November 24 98 Hi!, so, I forget to ask you if I can put a 3½ drive into a PCW 9512 and CPC 6128 as primary drive. If answer is "YES", How could I do it? Thanks Cliff. HOW IS YOUR MARRIED LIFE? Amstrad answers: 'Fraid the 3.5" question is "no" - you can only really add 3.5" drives as B: on those machines. Instructions on how to do that are given in the FAQ for the comp.sys.amstrad.8bit newsgroup. As for married life, it's remarkably similar to single life as I still live in England and my wife still lives in Ireland and we only get to see each other each weekend! andrew finch in nottingham at 11:2:6 Tuesday November 24 98 can you e mail me information about alan sugar to help me prepare for his tour on starting a business Amstrad answers: He's about five foot eight with a beard and glasses - what else did you want to know? David Thompson in Uppermill, Saddleworth, England at 3:17:7 Tuesday November 24 98 Hi Cliff I have been given an Amstrad pc2086s, and I need to know how to get into the bios so that I can change the HD settings, i.e. on switching on what keys do I need to press. If you can help I would be most grateful. Yours D.Thompson Amstrad answers: You've made the common mistake of thinking that the 2086 is an AT compatible computer - it isn't, it is an IBM XT compatible and as such does not have CMOS / Setup program. On XT computers (most people don't remember this as it was about 10 years ago!) hard disks did NOT need type numbers because every hard drive came with a matched controller card that had its own BIOS that knew all about the particular drive mechanism so that the BIOS did not need to be told using a type number. The bottom line wiith XTs was that if you had a hard drive attached, you switched on and the hard drive wasn't "visible" then there was only one reason for this - the drive was simply fubar. Shireen Alsalti at 11:49:46 Monday November 23 98 Do you have any information on the Year 2000 compliance of your products? Amstrad answers: Well if you scan the index of previous questions here you will see that I have previously given quite a lot of info about Y2K. Another thing you can do is email me with "Y2K" in the Subject: line and my email system will automatically send you back a Word for Windows file with some further Y2K info but as the number of emails/questions I am getting about this is increasing almost daily to the point where it is REALLY bugging me I think I might add a page to this site to give an overview. The bottom line really is that almost all our products are not Y2K compliant but this is not the world stopping problem that many would have you believe. ON the whole it means you are just going to manually have to use the DOS DATE command to put it right after the millenium change which is a 2 minute job that is being blown out of all proportion by a scaremongering press and a bunch of rip-off software authors who are more than happy to take £50 off you for a piece of software that does little more than that trivial task automatically! Cliff "the cynic". Martin Bowles in Chelmsford,Essex at 7:33:32 Sunday November 22 98 Hi Cliff, First I hope you and your wife had a nice honeymoon.i hope this does not mean you will be doing D.I.Y and gardening from now on! LOL. Thankyou for answering my first question it was not very detailed on my part so i will try to elaborate. As i said before the system is a 2386/65 it has a controller card for the hard drive with two ribbons plugged into it. One called 'Winchester' the other called 'Drive 0'. These two ribbons go to the hard drive. I take this as being normal in these systems. When I switch on the computer i can hear the hard drive working and see the LED flashing, Nomal so far. the setup programe has already been run with the hard disk type set at 10 so the hard drive LED flashes a few times and them the system respones 'Insert a system disk into drive A'. So i put in the systems disk and every thing loads in. Within few seconds it has finished and i am greeted with 'MS-DOS Version 4.01' and the A:\> everything normal so far. If i type C: i get a message 'Invalid drive specification' If i type FDISK i get a message 'Error Reading Fixed Disk' Whats going on Cliff? Is the hard drive shot? If so how can i get a new one i have been to some computer fairs but all i get is eerrrrrr and 'bin it'. Is there some software i can download to sort this out? Thankyou. P.S. I am not to worried about saving the contents of hard drive. Amstrad answers: Well the FDISK message is the most telling one as it attempts to access the hard drive at about the lowest level possible (it just tries to read the boot sector / partition table). The fact that even it is reporting an error even when you are sure you have set the type number correctly (you did try 1 and 4 as well didn't you?) would suggest that the drive is compoletely Fubar. In that case you'd be best off removing both the drive and it's old WD10006 controller card completely and fit a nice new IDE controller card and any size of IDE drive. The card may cost as little as £10 though it would be best to get an "intelligent" one that has its own support for modern, large capacity drives. You should be able to get several GBs of IDE hard drive for even under £100 and just attach that and off you go! Siobhan Watson in at home in brentwood essex (home of amstrad) at 17:18:40 Friday November 20 98 i have an amstrad 9486 with 16kb of ram. a new processer has been fitted (intel 486 dx). i tried to run windows 95 on it but it used up all the hard drive (130 mb). so i decided to revert to windows 3.1 (disks supplied with the machine). first i deleted all the windows files and tried to run setup on the windows 3.1 disks but got an error message 'wrong version of dos'. then i tried deleting *.* on c: and reinstalling ms dos version 6.2 (disks supplied with machine). this didn't work - i can't remember the error message. then i reformatted my hard drive and re-booted using the dos system disk. dos works ok (it runs theme park and lionking and amstrad desk top) but doubledisk and scandisk (and maybe other things i haven't tried) don't work. i reinstalled all the amstrad software (adt) and that worked ok. when i try to run setup.exe on the windows 3.1 disks i get a lot of error messages: file midimap.drv open/creation access denied file mmsystem.dll open/creation access denied file timer.drv open/creation access denied winsetup caused a general protection fault in user.exe at 0001:40b6 standard mode: bad fault in ms dos extender fault: 000d stack dump: 0000 0000 0070 raw fault frame: ec=0000 ip=5ef7 cs=0367 fl=3087 sp=ffee ss=02c7 please help me i don't know what to do. i tried looking at the c drive using pctools but it said 'fat appears to be damaged'. i tried xtree and it worked but it could not report on the amount of space on the disk or the amount of free space. i tried fdisk.exe and it said that there was only a primary dos partion of 125mb set active. no other drives or partions exist as far as i know. i deleted this partition and rebooted using the ms dos system disk but it didn't make any difference. what can be done? Amstrad answers: Sounds suspiciously like a faulty hard drive doesn't it? If I were you I'd see about getting a whole new drive (you can get about 2-3GB for just £100 these days!) then just remove the existing drive completely, fit the new one, FDISK and FORMAT it and then you should be able to install Win95 without any problem. Michael Mc Ardle in uk at 0:31:31 Friday November 20 98 Hello, I have an Amstrav LQ 3500 printer which I cannot get to print properly in Win 95. Can I by pass the operating system and print in DOS or can you tell me a driver to drive the printer. I have tried all the epsom drivers in Win 95. Amstrad answers: This is really strange - I keep getting people with LQ3500s who have used them successfully in Windows 3.1 using an Epson LQ driver but have then switched to Windows 95 and they stop working. Also, I would say that about 50% of the people who ask about LQ3500s and Win95 DO get it working OK so I really don't know what is going on but I'd love to get to the bottom of it. One thing you can try is switch the printer on while holding down the button combination that make it work in "hex mode" so that it prints the hex codes of what is sent to it rather than the actual data. Then print a VERY simple piece of text from a Windows program to it and let me know the exact hex codes that are produced. I might then be able to determine what it is that the Epson LQ print driver software is sending to the printer that the LQ3500 doesn't like. I wonder if it's something to do with one of the DIP switch settings because, like I say, about 50% of LQ3500 users DO find that it works. Pablo Estrada Fernández in LEÓN, Capital de la Corona Leonesa. PAÍS LEONÉS at 0:15:10 Friday November 20 98 Hi, Cliff! Recently, I've bought three CPC 6128, and I would like to know if exists C compilant (or compiler, my English is not very improved). So, THANKS... Amstrad answers: I think that Arnor did produce a C compiler for the CPC but I'm not sure. If you post this request to comp.sys.amstrad.8bit you will find a gentlemen called Brian Watson there who now sells most of the old Arnor products and he may be able to tell you if there is a C compiler. David Hardy in USA Ann Arbor, Michigan at 15:30:13 Thursday November 19 98 Please send me a catalog of your products. David Hardy 6655 Jackson Rd., Lot 792 Ann Arbor, Mi.USA 48103 Also, Please let me know if their is a local distributor for your product. Thank you for your kind attention. Amstrad answers: Sorry but we do not produce such a catalogue as we do not sell directly to the public. All of our products are only sold in the UK (these days) and they are sold through high street electrical shops such as Dixons, Currys, Comet, Argos etc. D. Behen in Belgium at 10:25:52 Thursday November 19 98 Is it possible to connect a 3"1/2 floppy disk drive (1.44 Mb) for standard PC on an ANB 386SX40 in order to realize test in laboratory ? If it's possible, what is the connection diagram of the original drive on the notebook ? Amstrad answers: I think the 1.44MB 3.5" drive fitted to an ANB is exactly the same as a "standard" 1.44MB drive except that it takes it's 5V operating power from the 36 way ribbon cable instead of having the usual, separate 4 wire power connector as well. It is also 5V only rather 5V/12V as "normal" drives. BEVERLEY SCAIFE at 9:32:5 Thursday November 19 98 WHAT DOES AMSTRAD MEAN? Amstrad answers: As explained here it is Alan Michael Sugar TRADing Mike Diamond at 16:47:15 Wednesday November 18 98 I'm sorry for being a pest, how was your honeymoon ? Where did you go ? I'm sure everyone who visits this page would be interested to know how you both got on !!!! Amstrad answers: No problem about the "pest" thing and I'm glad someone asked about our honeymoon as it was just total and umitigated sheer paradise. I intend to add some information about it to my private site but in the meantime the Malaysian Pangkor Laut Resort already has it's own web site which gives a small taste of exactly how idyllic it is. Basically it's a private island about 1 mile by 0.5 mile that sits off the West coast of Penninsular Malaysia (13 hour flight to Kuala Lumpur from Heathrow). It was just an island covered with a 2 million year old rain forest until the developers very tastefully and ecologically built the hotel there occupying just 20% of the island leaving 80% of the equitorial rainforest untouched. On one side of the island is a beach called Emerald Bay that appears in the list to top beaches in the world - total Robinson Crusoe if you know what I mean! The facilities and level of service in the resort are at or above the five star level. The same is true of the three restaurants that one can choose from to eat in at night. There are only a limited number of guests and a huge number of staff so your every whim can be catered for at any time of day and night. The accomodation is in very traditional Malaysian architectured villas (on the outside) but inside they are the very most modern rooms with ALL mod-cons but they still retain the polished wood and bamboo to preserve the oriental look and feel. In summary I doubt whether Joan and I will ever go on such a luxurious holiday ever again (it was pretty expensive) but the plan always is that one's honeymoon should be the holiday of a lifetime and this one certainly was. For anyone else getting married (or with a few bob to spare) I'd have no hesitation in recommending the resort and, just maybe, Joan and I will return for a future anniversary. LEE Mccann in WIRRAL ,MERSEYSIDE at 21:37:54 Tuesday November 17 98 HI I'M THINKING OF BUYING AN AMSTRAD 950S SATELLITE SYSTEM CAN YOU E MAIL ME SOME INFORMATION ON THIS PRODUCT EG:HOW MANY CHANNELS IT HAS ? IS IT CAPABLE OF VIEWING ALL SKY CHANNELS ? DOES IT HAVE A REMOTE ? AND BASICALLY ANY RELEVANT INFORMATION YOU THINK I MAY NEED THANKS HOPE TO HEAR FROM YOU SOON LEE Amstrad answers: For questions about satellite systems you need to mail/phone/fax (but no email) to the Satellite Support Dept. which is found here D. Behen at 14:34:10 Tuesday November 17 98 Comment peut-on raccorder temporairement un "drive 1.44" standard sur un notebook ANB 386SX 40 Amstrad answers: Excuse moi mais je ne parle pas beaucoup d'Francais - Parlez vous Anglais? Mike Diamond in Below at 12:15:52 Tuesday November 17 98 Are you still answering questions ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Amstrad answers: I presume you didn't read that BOLD note at the top of this very page then? I said I'd be back on the 17th and today IS the 17th and here I am! I will be adding answers to the other questions that have been left here while I was away on my honeymoon in the next day or two - please be patient! LATER: You'll see that I have now added answers to your questions below Michelle Bryan at 10:21:46 Tuesday November 17 98 Hi there I am a year 2 uni student from Staffordshire Univeristy in England. I am currently undertaking a piece of course work - the subject being Alan Sugar and Amstrad. COuld you possibly let me know when VIGLEN was demerged out of Amstrad? Any other information would be appreciated. Michelle Amstrad answers: De-merger was 4th August 1997. The question of "any other information" is far to general for me to answer. If you have specific questions I can probably have a pretty fair stab at answering them but your question is a bit like the single entrance exam question to the Chinese civil service which is simply "Please write down everything that you know". :-) John Culbertson in Oklahoma City OK 73122-1407 USA at 14:31:27 Monday November 16 98 I have a PCW8256. Over time the boot disk has been increasingly difficult to load, e.g., more and more and retries to load. Now, it won't load at all. Lots of grinding noise when the power is turned on. Any suggestions on where I can get maintenance? John Culbertson 4508 NW 31st Pl Oklahoma City, OK 73122-1407 USA Amstrad answers: 99 times out of 100 the reason 3" drives stop being able to read the discs is that the rubber band has stretched. It is fairly cheap and easy to replace and there is more information about this here. Scott Ramsey in Stone, Staffordshire, England at 13:46:54 Monday November 16 98 Is the Amstrad ALT 386 SX year 2000 compliant ? Amstrad answers: No, you will have to manually use the DATE command to put it right after the millenium change (or pay through the nose for one of those rip-off programs that offers to do this automatically). Martin Bowles in Chelmsford ESSEX at 8:2:19 Monday November 16 98 Hi Cliff, I Have a 2386, hard drive dosent work try all your suggestion 1,10,4 in the setup but no joy. What can i do now? please keep it basic lay-mans terms. Thanks alot. Amstrad answers: In what way won't the hard drive work? When you set the type to 1, 10 or 4 can you DIR C: even if it won't boot? Failing that does FDISK admit to the existence of the drive? Failing that do you really want to get data off the drive? If yes then there are companies that offer a no recovery, no fee service to try and recover data from faulty hard drives but if they do succeed it can be VERY expensive! Nicholas Wood in Auckland, New Zealand at 4:41:7 Monday November 16 98 Dear Sir, Could you please let me know if there is a way I can make our 386SX computer (running with MS-DOS version 5.0 and Windows 3.1) read the document files created on floppy discs with our Amstrad PCW9512 (which uses the "LocoScript 2" programme)? Thank you very much! Kind regards, Nicholas Wood. Amstrad answers: Sure, there are various options for getting PCW data to a PC outlined here. Sounds to me like the best answer for you might be Locolink in which case you should have a look at this Dave in PENNSYVANIA at 1:2:42 Monday November 16 98 i need 4 keyboards for Amstrad pc's kE12377105KeyPS2 please imform Thanks dav Amstrad answers: Because those keyboards are PS/2 type you don't need to specifically get Amstrad ones - you can use ANY PS/2 keyboard as sold in just about every computer shop in the world. Expect to pay anything from about £15-20 upwards. Themis Chalikias at 12:23:15 Sunday November 15 98 I recently got my hands on a PC1512. Can I connect it with my existing computer? If it is possible, what do I need? Amstrad answers: Sure, just get a null modem serial cable and you can wire any two PCs together. On Windows machines you can then run Terminal or Hyperterminal that comes with Windows while on the PC1512 end you need to get a DOS based terminal program such as Telix or Procomm or similar. As an alternative you might be able to use Laplink (a commercial product) or even Interlink (a DOS command) if you have the right version of MS-DOS. John Underwood in London, England. at 21:52:46 Friday November 13 98 We want to connect a HP Deskjet 420 to a 1640. The printer and cable both work (on a Win98 machine) but nothing happens with the Amstrad - tried printing a text file using DOS, and installing another parallel port. Amstrad answers: I'm not familiar with that printer but unless its one of these that only work with Windows then on any PC you can normally type the command: COPY C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT LPT1 and expect to get some text printed. If nothing appears then it suggests that either the printer, the cable or the printer interface electronics in the PC are faulty (always assuming you have checked the obvious things like the printer being switched On-Line!!). Sounds to me like the interface in the 1640 is faulty. Willi Roetmann in Germany at 22:22:38 Thursday November 12 98 Hi! I´m looking for all kind of information abaut Amstrad satellite receiver SRX-200 (maual etc.). Send me a short E-mail! Thanks! Amstrad answers: As stated in several locations on this web site I can ONLY help with questions about computers. For other things such as satellite you need to contact our Support department by mail, phone or fax - you can find the contact details here. Mohamed in FRANCE at 17:39:28 Thursday November 12 98 how receipt the TV with a cpc 6128? And how can I buy it? Amstrad answers: There was a device called an MP3 that used to allow a CPC monitor to be used as a TV but these haven't been made for over TEN years now so your only hope would be to try and find one second hand. The best place to look would be to post a request to comp.sys.amstrad.8bit where there is sometimes (though quite rarely) peopkle selling MP3s. Miguel Angel Guisado Cardenas in MADRID ( SPAIN ) at 11:13:53 Thursday November 12 98 Excuse for my english. I need tecnical information about VIDEO TAPE AMSTRAD MODEL 4600 for to sell this machine to my clients. this model or another new model. Thank you. Amstrad answers: Sorry but I can't help with questions about video, satellite, TV etc - I only know about computers. For questions on those other things you need to contact our customer support department at the address/phone/fax shown here - they don't have email. Dave Evans in Bangor, Wales at 14:29:20 Saturday November 7 98 Hello: trying to help a friend with PCW16 problems: she has a new (august 98) pcw16 attached to a Hewlett Packard Deskjet 400; which had been working fine but now will not print anythingother than control characters when asked to produce a text file (it gives ALT characters and smiley faces etc). Have checked out the cables and they are connected ok, the printer itself seems to be happy (it works when attached to a PC) so it's presumably a configuration-setup issue. Have tried installing it as just about every emulation on the setup menu and none of them work. To add to the problem we don't (yet) have the handbook for the HP; so cannot tinker with any DIP switches. Any suggestions would be gratefully recived, as she has to produce a dissertation for University on this setup!!! Thanks Dave Amstrad answers: Well I don't know what can have changed if it WAS working one day and not the next. My only thought is that maybe the document has got so large that when it tries to print it is hogging so much of the memory that the system is running out of memory for its print buffers. Do you get the same effect even with a short one page document? I would normally suggest totally re-installing everything (use Update OS) and then reconfiguring the printer but it sounds like you've already tried that. If push comes to shove maybe export the document to an MS-DOS disk and finish editing / printing in a Windows based WP on a PC to get the dissertation in on time. Mike Diamond in NW London Massive !!! at 11:15:2 Friday November 6 98 In regard to my previous question, which seems to have disappeared, I wish to find out the compliancy status of two of your machines that we have on site. These are the 1640 and 2086 versions. If you have tested these machines to be non-complianct with the Year 2000 issues, then, do you have a recommended testing method that we can use to verify its compliance status? I could not find anything on the web site in concerns with this matter. Amstrad answers: Oh no, it's there, right below this one, cos I just added an answer to it.... Mike Diamond in Edgware at 16:6:3 Thursday November 5 98 Can you tell me if he following pieces of equipment are fully Year 2000 compliant. We have on site an XT 1640 & 2086. If these PC's are not Y2K compliant, then do you have a recommended testing method that we could use to verify its compliancy? Amstrad answers: No, those PCs are not Y2K compliant which means that you wil have to manually use the DATE command to put them right after the millienium change. If that all sounds a bit too arduous (typing a single MS-DOS command!) then you can splash the cash on one of these £30+ programs that will do it automatically for you but personally I think they are an utter rip-off (or a great way of making lots of easy money if you happen to be the author of one!!) Narinder Kalia at 10:29:10 Thursday November 5 98 Dear Sir , I have an Amstrad Fax ( Model FX 9600 AT ) Serial Number is S/2982/3/K/501574. I have some problem with It. It receive tha fax clearly. But When I transmit a documents A black paper is transmitted to next end. Even when I copy a local document, Only black paper is coming out. So will you please help me to ractify the problem. Is there any problem with scanner or in Mother Board. If Yes please quote me the price of the same. Is there any other fax model you have in the stock with new features. What is the price of the same model which I have? An early response will be highly appreciated. Thanks & Regards, Amstrad answers: Sorry about the delay in replying but I did say that replies would be delayed until 17th Novemeber! I can't help much with your query except to point out the obvious that it is either the scanner or flourescent light source used for scanning that has failed and this must be replaced. For more information you need to contact the Fax Support Dept at the address/numbers shown here. GUY SCHADECK in Luxembourg at 22:45:22 Wednesday November 4 98 I have heritated an old FAX and Answering Machine from my father today, Can anybody help me? The product name is FX8600AT Thanks a lot Amstrad answers: I suggest you contact the fax support department at the address/numbers shown here and see about getting a copy of the user manual. I think you should also be able to get it from www.cpc.co.uk Paul Hibbert in West Bromwich at 12:31:21 Wednesday November 4 98 I am currently doing a year 2000 audit and my organisation have several PCW 9512's and the like. Do you have any information with regards to how they will cope with the year 2000, as we are very pleased that they are still in use (we use them to train people basic word processing) and would like to continue to use them. Amstrad answers: Ah well, you may not have spotted this but the PCW does NOT include any form of clock circuitry so it has absolutely NO WAY of knowing whether it is the 17th November 98, 1st Jan 2000, 3rd August 3062 or any other date you care to nominate! Therefore it is one of the few pieces of computer equipment that you can be sure will be blissfully ignorant of the fact that it is the 1st Jan 2000 when the fateful day dawns!! Michael in Ireland at 0:51:42 Wednesday November 4 98 Hello, I have an amstrad LQ3500 printer it worked ok untill I installed win95 (from win3.11) . I cannot get it to print properly. I have tried a number of drivers to no avail. Can you help. Amstrad answers: Well if you pick the same Epson printer in Win95 as you used successfully in Windows 3.1 I can't see any reason why it shouldn't work unless Microsoft / Epson have introduced a bug into that driver in the Win95 version. martin cooper in at home in my room. (Scotland) at 21:34:48 Monday November 2 98 I know it's possible to connect my nc200 to my PC. I have all the required cables and I use win95 on my pc but what software do I use and How do I use it? Amstrad answers: Well, at the NC end you use the serial terminal program that you get into by pressing [Function]-S while at the Win95 end you just want to be running Hyperterminal which is found in the Accessories group off the Start Menu. Set it for 9600baud, 8data, 1 stop, no parity direct to COMn. Adriaan in Maarssen, The Netherlands at 14:23:58 Monday November 2 98 How can I get a bios-update for my Amstrad 9486? Thanks in advance. Amstrad answers: Impossible, no such update exists, why do you think you need an upgrade anyway? Danilo Bernini in Italy at 12:6:53 Monday November 2 98 Can you help me? Where can I repair my Sattelite Receiver model-SRX501, in Italy? Who is the italian Representative of Amstrad? Thank you for your attention. Amstrad answers: No, as stated elsewhere, I cannot help with questions about satellite systems. You need to look at this page and write/phone/fax to the Satellite Support dept. at the address/numbers shown there - they do not have email or a web site. Charles Applegate at 15:38:37 Sunday November 1 98 I need to find the system disk(s) for the amstrada PPC 512.(is this right?). Please could you suggest anything which is necessary. Thank you for your time and support, Chalres Amstrad answers: You just need to get ppcdisks.zip from this very web site. Abdelkader el kanbi (morocco) at 12:56:43 Sunday November 1 98 i want to know where i can find the driver for printer Amstrad 4000 thank u Amstrad answers: As stated in MANY places on this web site there aren't Amstrad specific drivers - instead you use Epson FX100 and that should work fine as the DMP4000 is compatible with the Epson. leo in australia at 8:24:48 Saturday October 31 98 can iuse a maxtor 212hd on my 386sx amstrad & is there any procedures to follow. thanks Amstrad answers: I'm not familiar with that specific Maxtor drive but as long as it is and IDE drive then it should be quite possible to use it in a 3386SX (I presume that's the model you have?). You just attach the drive to the cable (maybe jumper it as master/slave if working alongside an existing drive) and then enter it's details into Setup. You should then be able to FDISK and FORMAT it and that's all there is to it. need keyboard-pin-usage for PC4386SX in germany at 14:55:22 Friday October 30 98 i have no keyboard for the Amstrad PC4386SX but i want to use this little machine.. Amstrad answers: Unfortunately for you the 4386SX was the last PC we made using a weird and wonderful, Amstrad only keyboard interface which means that you would need to get an Amstrad keyboard for it - they may be available from www.cpc.co.uk but my guess is that it would probably cost more than the whole 4386SX is worth (About £40-50). Pascal BRIZARD in France - Paris at 10:55:39 Friday October 30 98 Excuse me for my poor english..... Where can i get spare parts (floppy disk) for a cpc6128 in France (in Paris or near Paris of preference) Thanks in advance...Best regards Amstrad answers: I'm not aware of anyone selling them in France but there are several companies such as Pinboard, Trading Post and SD Micros in the UK who sell 3" drives but you probably don't need a whole drive - like I say elsewhere on this web site, 99 times out of 100 the problem is just a stretched band in the drive which can easily be replaced with any rubber band and the "real" ones only cost a few pounds. Mike Firth in Wickham Market, Suffolk at 21:42:53 Thursday October 29 98 I've got a CTM644 colour monitor being used as a TV via a box of tricks (made by Amstrad) which is now good few years old and now not working properly. Is there a replacement? If so, where can I get it from Amstrad answers: Nope, the MP3 hasn't been made for almost 10 years now so your only hope would be to get one secondhand but everytime I see an advert posted for one on comp.sys.amstrad.8bit it is snapped up within seconds as everyone wants them! Rod Stewart in Kinloss, NE Scotland at 20:7:20 Thursday October 29 98 Where can I get Information and mainly games for the GX4000 Games consul any information would be appreciated Amstrad answers: You won't find any better forum for discussing all things GX, CPC and PCW than the comp.sys.amstrad.8bit newsgroup and the FAQ (linked form my CPC page) has loads of info on the GX as well as the CPCs. Andrew in Italy at 19:42:53 Thursday October 29 98 I have an old Amstrad Printer. The model is : Amstrad DMP 3160. I have a problem with this printer and I try to ask if someone wants to repair my printer, but nobody wants. The problem is that : when I open the printer ,it doesn't matter if the printer is connected with the PC or not, I listen tree shoort bip and at the end just a long bip. Could you show me what is the problem? Sure of your fast answer I thank you.Bye Amstrad answers: Well I just had a look at the user manual and on page 14 it says "Switching On: The print head will move about for a few seconds, and you will then hear a bleeping sound. This sound is the paper out alarm, but do not worry about it for the moment". Is that not all it is? Daniel Crow at 9:32:10 Tuesday October 27 98 I have an old Modem and i mean old it is an Internal modem that has a casing around it but when i use it with Win95 it is not recognised which obviously means that it is not Plug 'n' Play compatible so i request where i might find some software and Drivers for Amstrad Modems. Amstrad answers: I hope you'll pardon me being brutally frank but you'd be a total idiot to try and use that modem. It is an MC2400 which means that it's fastest speed is 2,400 baud. Consider that most modems these days are 56,000 baud - that is TWENTY-THREE times faster. So to download a 1MB page on a 56K modem might take 4 minutes while on an MC2400 it would take AN HOUR AND A HALF!! Imagine how much extra you will be paying in phone charges if you use that out-dated modem! As a 56K modem only costs about £50 and a 14K or 28K one can be got for much less than this you'd find that the money you wasted on using a 2400 baud modem would pay for a modern, fast modem about 10 times over in only a few weeks! Just scrap the thing and spend a few quid on a decent modem and save yourself some money. Robert in Australia at 11:30:48 Monday October 26 98 Thanks anyway You're welcome my amstrad FX9600 AT personal facsimile transmitter turns on with a blank screen in bath,uk at 23:36:55 Sunday October 25 98 How can I get the whole keypad assembly to work again?! Amstrad answers: I've said it before and I'll say it again (unfortunately!) but for questions about fax machines (or satellite/TV/hi-fi/etc.) you have to resort to the old fashioned methods of communication and phone/fax the numbers shown here Gordon Armstrong in Glos U.K. at 21:41:6 Sunday October 25 98 I want to continue using (PCW 8152 version ) Money Manager by Connect Systems on my new PC.(Intel 333 mhz).. Where can I get a copy of this program ? :-) Amstrad answers: Well I think your only hope might be that Connect Systems maybe grew up to be a "real" software company and started writing their software to work on PCs. If so they may well have a Windows version of the software that would work on a PC and I guess there'd be a string chance that they have a web site that you'd probably find by doing an internet search. As an alternative, I'm not entirely sure what the Money Manager program did, but if, as it's name suggests, it is a program for tracking personal finances then I'd forget about it and by a really good program such as either Quicken or Microsoft's "Money". Personally I use Quicken and think it is one of the best computer programs ever written. jay molyneux in england at 18:7:26 Sunday October 25 98 just bought a second hand hand amstrad NC200 notepad it might sound daft but i cant seem to find how to save to floppy disk can you help Amstrad answers: Having created a document you will probably be appear that it appears in the file list that you access by pressing [Function]-L. If you press the [Space Bar] while the cursor is over a file you'll see that it turns BOLD to show that it has been selected. Once you have one or more files selected in this way press the [Seecret/Menu] key and choose the "Copy marked files to disk" entry. Once you have copied the files to disk you can reaccess that menu and use the "List disk files" entry to have a look at what is now on the disk. Once again, while looking at THIS list of files you can highlight files with the space bar then access the menu and this time choose "copy marked files to memory" if you want to. PS Don't forget that the disks must be formatted before you start trying to copy files to them. The fomatting options can be found on the menu you get when you press [Menu] having first switched to [Function]-L Francois Bel in France at 23:55:2 Saturday October 24 98 Object : to transform a 1512 screen into a tv monitor. I have a pc 1512, with a cga colour screen, which is rotting in my cave. I'd heard Amstrad build a TV-Tuner for cpc6128 some years ago, and as the cpc and pc1512 screen have quite the same characteristics and the same 6845CRT, I thought that I could perhaps use the 1512 screen as a tv screen. I read your answer about a tv-tuner for cpc6128, which seems to be to complicated to make/or find, but I have the intention to use the tuner of a tv recorder. I have a CPC adaptator (mp-1) to play cpc on tv, in fact the tv-converter seems to consist only in 2 resistors and a peritel plug... I wonder if it could be use in the other way, to plug a tuner on a screen, or maybe the peritel pins for output are not the same than for input ? Im very surprised i found nothing to help me on the web, if it works it would make a 2nd life for all those old screens ! Amstrad answers: Personally I wouldn't have thought this was possible and even if it was the results would probably be inferior to a brand new 14" portable TV that you could probably buy for about £79 which is probably less than it would cost you to build the circuit. If I were you I'd forget the idea. Fred Stead in Stoke-on-Trent Staffs ST6 1RL at 22:42:21 Saturday October 24 98 I have purchased a new repaired Amstrad 15" monitor type JD156H,but there is no instruction book, can you please tell me the specifications for this monitor. Thank You Fred Amstrad answers: Sorry but I don't recognise the model number. I think the model numbers of ALL our PC monitors start with the letters PCxxxxxx - can you find a model name/number of that format on it anywhere? The fact that it is a 15" monitor probably suggests that it is one of our later SVGA monitors so it should be good for at least 800x600 and possibly even 1024x768 and might have a dot pitch around the .28 mark. Robert in Australia at 11:41:38 Friday October 23 98 I have an amstrad Pc which is not usable anymore but the monitor still works but it has a round connector on it. What I would like to know is the pinouts for that connector so I can put a standard monitor connector on it and use it with one of my other machines the model number on the monitor is pc-cm Amstrad answers: 'Fraid you are out of luck there. The PC-CM was the colour monitor used on the PC1512 which had the most weird and whacky video system imaginable that was quite unlike any other PC before or since. It was kind of CGA but rather than TTL outputs it used analogue signals (so it could do a special 16 colour mode). As such there is no way you can re-wire the monitor cable to use on a CGA card (but why would anyone want to use CGA in this day and age anyway when it's maximum resolution is either 320x200x4 or 640x200x2?!?) james cowie at 15:20:28 Thursday October 22 98 Any idea where I can get a memory card for the amstrad notebook nc200 Amstrad answers: Sure, because we chose to use PCMCIA cards on that machine it means you aren't tied to using a weird Amstrad-only type of card. PCMCIA is the industry standard for memory cards and so you should be able to find them at ANY good computer supplier. The only proviso with the NC1/200 is that the cards MUST be static RAM card (so forget DRAM or Flash) and that the maximum usable capacity is 1MB. Chris Hogg in North Shields, Tyne & Wear at 22:37:19 Wednesday October 21 98 My father in-laws Amstrad 1640 is reporting RTC error on bootup (real time clock?) - any suggestions on how to cure this please? Amstrad answers: Well, as you correctly surmised, what it is trying to tell you is that the real time clock (RTC) is not responding how it expects it to when it first tries to access it at switch on. Sometimes this can be purely because the batteries have a problem and replacing them with a fresh set will make the error go away but if that doesn't fix it then you'd need to look at getting a service agent to replace the RTC chip but a) it might be obsolete and b) it might cost more to have it repaired than the whole machine is worth (about £20) Hugh Bower in Guildford,Surrey at 15:50:43 Wednesday October 21 98 My father has a PC1512SD which uses the Ability software (migent and amstrad) which he uses to run wordprocessing,databases and spreadsheets in the main. He is about to upgrade the machine to a 'current' spec PC probabaly using Windows95 or 98. Is there any way of converting the existing files to be read using either Microsoft Office 97 or Lotus Smartsuite software bundles? Amstrad answers: I just did a little bit of a web search for you and can tell you that complete nirvana is to be found at www.ability.com. It sounds like a right bargain at just $40!! Gismo raton in Sweden at 15:4:21 Wednesday October 21 98 I have an Amstrad modelSRD 650 my problem is that I cannot input new secret codes. Can I input new codes even when the PPV function is lock? . I have tried to unlock this function but is it is not possible. I put the arrow on open and thenpush the return butom but when I open this window again the PPV function still lock. I wonder what to do. I would like to enter new secret codes when ever I like. According to the instruction the OOOO codes will reset this function PPV but nothing happen how much I tried. And other problem I have is that the remote control is not working satisfactory all the time. Some time works OK and with no reson it gets block and I cannot change channels or enter the menu. It is very annoying. I had talked with some stores and they said that it can not be repared and try to sell new one. I think that this is a good product but I hope to get help from you. Amstrad answers: Well I'd love to be able to help but I'm afraid I don't know the first thing about satellite systems but I am thinkin about getting the new Sky Digital (using an Amstrad box naturally!). I'm afraid that for satellite enquiries you'll have to revert to the old comms. methods and contact the Satellite Support Dept. at the number/address shown here. ryan in pennsylvania at 21:28:49 Monday October 19 98 help
ryan in pa in pa at 21:26:48 Monday October 19 98
ryan in penn in pennsylvania at 21:25:20 Monday October 19 98
ryan in pennsylvania at 21:33:51 Monday October 19 98 Kevin S. C. Keefe in Bury England at 13:24:34 Monday October 19 98 How do I enter the bios on a 2286 amstrad? My hard disk has been unaccesable since the batteries ran out. Amstrad answers: Boy you don't know how lucky it was that your question is still here - I was just about to upload some answers I'd just been adding and unlike normal I thought I'd just check to see if the page had changed since I download the copy to edit - lo and behold, there was your new question!! Anyway, to setup the CMOS on that machine (which is the same as 1286/1386/2386) you need a separate program called SETUP.EXE as those machines don't have setup built into the BIOS. You will find the program if you click the "File archive" link at the top of this page. Assuming the 2286 has the original 40MB drive you should find that type number 1, 16 or 17 wil make it spring into life again. Pablo Rodriguez in Jerez de la Frontera. España at 10:31:47 Monday October 19 98 How I can convert an Amstrad joystick to a PC joystick?. What are the conexions of the diferents conductors? Amstrad answers: You can't - the old Amstrad CPC joystick was digital (effectively just a few switches on the end of some wires) while an IBM PC joystick is analogue (variable resistors on the end of stick that vary a voltage depending on the position of the stick). There is no way you can turn one into another but as you can buy PC joysticks for as little as £5 I don't see why anyone would want to bother converting the thing anyway? Peter in North London at 22:54:55 Saturday October 17 98 Cliff, can you help ,I have a ST20TV satellite intergrated system,for some reason I can can no longer receive normal programs bbc1 ect, tried retuning but just blank on these channels.Sky channels working fine,what can be the problem. Amstrad answers: Well on the whole, no, I can't really help with TV/satellite questions cos my day job is just designing computers but if you think about it, that TV effectively has two tuners in it - a terrestrial receiver and a satellite receiver and it's fairly obvious that the terrestrial one has died. I doubt that there's anything you can do about it - you need to get a telly repair man to have a look at it. Nathan Beard in London UK at 22:53:37 Friday October 16 98 I just bought a 2nd hand PC2386/65 for a neighbour, and I am having a nightmnare configuring the mouse. I found the files MOUSEFIX & MOUSFIX8 and have tried them both, but still no joy. Is there any other help you can give me at all? Please! Amstrad answers: I think you emailed me about this didn't you? Like I said there "still no joy" is not enough of a fault report for me to give much constructive advice on. I presume that after MOUSEFIXing you then found that the "interrupt jumper missing" message no longer appeared on trying to load MOUSE.COM (that's the ONLY thing that MOUSEFIX is for!). After that the other thing that most people forget is the need to delete the MOUSE.INI file out of \WINDOWS. Suggest you have another read of this. michael godfrey in Tooting London at 2:21:43 Friday October 16 98 I have a collection of 3 inch floppy discs which may contain a virus. How do I clean the discs. If I formatted them would this kill all viruses ? Ofcourse to format them I would have to put them into my disc drive which I am loath to do in case they infect my Amstrad 9512. Amstrad answers: Virus on 3" disks? No I don't think so - 3" discs are CP/M discs not MS-DOS discs and thankfully, back in the days of CP/M there weren't (m)any idiots writing viruses. If (as your next message suggests) you are getting address mark missing errors, I think you'll find that it's just that the discs are very old and magnetic storage deteriorates with time (almost all of my 10 year old 5.25" floppy disks are now totally unreadable!) michael godfrey in Tooting London at 1:15:22 Friday October 16 98 PCW 9512 with 3 inch disc drive. Is it possible to get files from a disc which refuses to open. The folowing message "disc data error" is displayed when I try run the disc. It is the disc which is bad since other discs are ok on the drive. Can I retrieve the locoscript files somehow ?. I tried inserting the bad disc in to the drive while in CPM but the locoscript files were not shown only sytem files. Amstrad answers: Go to my PCW page and then follow the link to "Dave's Disk Doctor Service" - I think he's the most likely person to be able to salvage anything form that damaged disc. Jonathan Briggs in London SW4 at 0:3:13 Friday October 16 98 Dear Amstrad, thanks very much for answering my recent question regarding my 2086/30. I thought I'd give you some more background. The machine had been used pretty much to full capacity for 5/6 years and then had been upgraded.It was then decided to clean it up and give it to a friend. I (an amateur) began deleting files in dos, to my knowledge no system files, just applications. As I did this it appeared to have an A: and a C: and also an E: I couldn't work out whether it had been partitioned or somebody had created a double drive system on one hard disk - there is definitely only one physical hard disk, the computer was bought from new - no changes. Anyway I got cocky and I deleted everything off E: There were system files on both C: and E: so then I got daring and deleted the E: directory. Okay,then for some reason, I forget, I did a ctrl/alt/del and wham!non-system disk, replace, etc.My immediate reaction is "Dad get the original boot-disk" He brings me the 5 system floppys and the only one wiped of "boot" files is disk 1. The floppy drive was working perfectly and I'm pretty sure still is. Something is telling it to read from E: which is no longer there, maybe? Last clue is when I put in any old floppy it spins,reads and comes back fairly quickly with "non-system disk" but when I put in my msdos622 on 720k floppy it "hangs up" and doesn't give me the "non" message. You're my only hope!!!! Thanks JB Amstrad answers: Ever heard the expression "deep shit"? It sounds to me like the computer was actually using a storage doubling program such as Stacker or DriveSpace. The way they work is that you have a "real" drive that's maybe 30MB or whatever but when the software loads it actually moves this to be visible as a new drive (such as E: or F: or something) and then decompresses the contents of the one big drive image file on E/F and makes it appears as C: - if you go and delete the files on E: you will effectively have deleted everything that was stored on the "normal" drive C:. However this doesn't explain why you can't boot the machine from a floppy because, whatever state the hard disk was left in you SHOULD be able to boot from a floppy. The only thing is that if that floppy, itself, has the stacker or doublespace support files it may be getting confused during the boot process so, on another computer, delete any hidden files from the root directory of that floppy that are called anything live drvspace.bin or doublspc.bin (or similar) and then try booting from it again. However, like I say, you are probably going to find that EVERYTHING on the hard drive has now disappeared - like I say - deep shit! Nathan Hunt at 6:28:8 Thursday October 15 98 My friend has a amstrad computer pc 5286 and it does not boot up proper -ly and it says: non sysyem disk or disk error i think that the disk drive has gone have you got any disk drives for version 5 amstrad computers if so can you send it to Mr Nathan Hunt 33 Maxwell avenue Orange N.S.W Australia 2800 thanks Nathan Hunt Amstrad answers: I think you'll find that the drive in that PC is a totally standard 1.44MB 3.5" drive so just pop down to your local computer store and buy a new replacement - it's the same drive as used in all current PCs. Andrew Mclean in Chicago, USA at 14:54:56 Wednesday October 14 98 I have an Amstrad 9486 dx. When I purchased it in 1994 I had the RAM upgraded from 4MB to 8MB. According to my Amstrad sales manual I can upgrade further to 64MB. I have 4 x 30 pin simm and 1 x 72 pin simm. Could someone please advise what boards I need to upgrade the RAM and most importantly where I can get the boards from. Amstrad answers: Not sure what you mean about "boards", the fact is that the 9486 takes totally bog standard SIMMs so you just buy larger SIMMs and use them to replace those already fitted inside the computer - it's as simple as that. Glenn Millward in Milton Keynes at 14:46:38 Wednesday October 14 98 Is my Amstrad CTV 3028N 28" Television year 2000 compliant? Amstrad answers: Can I turn that question round and ask you "Why the hell you think it matters?". I can just about understand all these worry-worts who are petrified that their computerised stock control system may crash and burn on Saturday 1st Jan but why on earth would it matter if your telly didn't correctly know it was 1st Jan? Craig Pearce in South Manchester at 11:2:52 Wednesday October 14 98 I wonder if you could supply me with a wiring diagram for the 15 pin "D" plug on the monitor of an Amstrad 736SX. If not, perhaps you could tell me the nearest supplier who may be able to help me. Amstrad answers: Well I was all set to break out my IBM PS/2 technical reference manual and type in the pinout list for a standard VGA but then I thought it might be quicker to search for "VGA wiring diagram" on the internet and, lo and behold, I instantly found this which includes just what you need (and a whole lot more!). Jonathan Briggs at 22:30:30 Saturday October 10 98 Dear Amstrad, I have a PC2086/30 and I keep getting the message - "non-system disk, replace & strike any key" I have tried 3 floppy disks formatted at 720k containing MSDOS 6.22 and it just seems to "hang". My questions are firstly is there a certain order of files that the machine looks for, because I had to copy files from one MSDOS 6.22 floppy on to three 720k formatted floppys, do I need a machine specific system disk? Is there any kind of BIOS on this model machine or any other way of getting round this? How can I get hold of exactly the right files for this to work? Please help me yours learningly jonathan Amstrad answers: What you are doing SHOULD work, it is fine to just do a FORMAT A: /S /F:720 in a machine running DOS 6.22 and then put that floppy into the 2086 and it should boot. My only guess is that there is a fault in the floppy mechanism that means it cannot correctly read discs. Is it possible for you to temporarily "borrow" the floppy drive out of some other PC to see if that's the problem? Peter coton in London at 21:44:26 Saturday October 10 98 My Integra P75.I would like to upgrade to 2oomx or higher and not sure if this can be done,if it can what settings do I have to change,I have upgraded the ram to 64mb, are there any other upgrades I can do to improve performance on my machine? Thanks Cliff (in anticipation) Amstrad answers: I don't think the Integra can run such a fast Pentium so your best bet would be to look at the possibility of something such as the Evergreen upgrade processors that people like Simply and Dabs have in their catalogue. However, you may find it far more cost effective to just increase the RAM as double or quadruple the RAM may have far more impact on the speed of the machine than a processor upgrade. For example, this machine I use everyday is just a P90 but I find it perfectly acceptable in terms of speed now that I have filled it with tons of RAM. (though my233MMX at home is, admittedly, a lot better!) Simon Liu in Shanghai, China at 10:12:30 Saturday October 10 98 Dear sir, I noticed Amstrad has an operation in Hong Kong. Could you please tell me the contact information including telephone, fax and e-mail address there? Thanks & regards Simon Liu Amstrad answers: Sure... Amstrad International Ltd. Unit 2701, 27/F, Well Tech Centre, 9 Pat Tat Street, San Po Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong Tel: +852 2796 1660 Fax: +852 2795 5832 Philippe in France (44) at 21:59:1 Friday October 9 98 Bonjour J'ai un Kit satellite SRX200. Je voudrais savoir si il est possible en rajoutant un commutateur 22Khz d'avoir accès au fréquence de la bande haute (11700 à 12700) sinon qu'elle est peut-être l'autre solution ? Est-il possible d'avoir le schéma électronique de ce démodulateur. Merci d'avance Thank you Amstrad answers: Excuse moi mais je ne parle pas beaucoup de Francais - for enquiries about satellite you will need to write, phone or fax to "Satellite Support Dept." at the address/numbers shown here but you will have to write/speak English I'm afraid.
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