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elf69

macrumors 68020
Original poster
So 3 old amstrads from 1987 came into our work shop for repairs.

2x pcw9512 and 1x pcw9512+

The elderly gent still uses them every day!
ok he has a windows laptop as well but prefers the Amstrads.

Yesturday and today I got to taking a look at them.

the two 9512 models are dead. One shows no signs of life the other makes a momentary click when powered on and that's it.

The 9512+ works but the 2.5" floppy is intermittent at reading discs. It brays a lot, like a horse/donkey.

The customer requested if we could swap drive from 9512 to the plus model.
After stripping down the plus model the drives cannot be swapped.

the non plus models have a different type of floppy I never seen before.
A CF2 type disc.

Due to differences inside the case and the case facia we cannot swap to drives.

It is an unusual machine in our repair shop so I took plenty photos.
 
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Not familiar with that model, think it was a dedicated word processor I had the 1986 Amstrad 1640 with 20mb HD 51/4 floppy 640k memory 😀

It also ran a window type environment call Gem that sat on top of DOS 3.1
 
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I'll get photos up tomorrow.

These models have no HDD.
They boot from floppy disk.

They are word processor only and this is what the gent uses them for.
 
all 3 he dropped off the tubes sill work.

don't make 'em like they used to!
 
Not familiar with that model, think it was a dedicated word processor I had the 1986 Amstrad 1640 with 20mb HD 51/4 floppy 640k memory 😀

It also ran a window type environment call Gem that sat on top of DOS 3.1
Bliss! Ours had no hard drive and only 512k of RAM... but we did have a second floppy drive so that's something 😛

Gem was interesting at the time!
 
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Bliss! Ours had no hard drive and only 512k of RAM... but we did have a second floppy drive so that's something 😛

Gem was interesting at the time!
I also had a separate unit that used your TV as the screen and your standard phone as a modem and allowed home shopping for groceries and that was 30 years back 😀 it never took off but way ahead of the curve we take for granted now
 
One of these got me through my undergrad. I was using a Smith Corona manual for my papers, and it was killing me. Bought one of these babies at Sears, and I graduated Magna Cum Laude. Seriously.
 
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