It must have been around 1988 or so when I sold my original Schneider CPC464 (also known as Amstrad CPC464) for a small part of the money needed to buy my first PC. And then I have forgotten about it for a long long time…
As mentioned before in an earlier blog post, I had decided to check back on old times and – thanks to eBay – the first success was the acquisition of an original CPC464 with green monitor. The seller was not giving anything more away than the types and the fact that the computer still worked “perfectly” – but given the age, nothing too good was expected.
Then, this morning, the door bell rang and the poor mail man arrived with two packages (not too heavy, I have to admit) which I opened at once. What came out earned me a wry smile of my better half and the confirmation that a lot was to be done to this one…
But first things first, I plugged it in and switched it on – and yes, it is still alive, 26 years after it had been assembled.
A quick inspection shows that there are a couple of “restauration activities” required:
- The whole thing has the dust of two decades in it – and it has solidly attached to every element of the computer.
- The tape device buttons got stuck – most likely to owed to the dirt within.
- The monitor works but the cable has been tampered with and the brightness of the display has suffered (unless you tighlty squeeze the cable where it has been put back together).
Besides that, I am worried about the stability of the Monitor (and the display quality) so one other thing to do is to investigate the possibility to hook it up to a modern VGA Monitor.
One of these days (possibly tomorrow) there will be an additional package coming in with a matching Schneider 3″ Floppy Drive…
But there was also a surprise in it: the included manual dates back to 1984 so this may be one of the early build (given that the CPC was built and sold from 1984 to 1990). I will find out when I open it up…
Total Investment so far: about 20€ for the system plus shipping…