What was your first computer? Were you a Commodore Kid like me? Or did the low-cost Sinclair capture your heart? Perhaps it was one of Lord Alan Sugar's Amstrad machines that introduced you to Computers? On the playground is where Commodore, Sinclair and Amstrad fans would battle for supremacy while swapping cassette tapes filled with games.
This project, Amstrad-Explorer from faulkie666 is a delightful throwback to when 64 Kilobytes of RAM and a Zilog Z80 processor was all we needed to have fun. It turns Pimoroni Explorer into a self-contained Amstrad CPC 464 that fits in your pocket. And we don't mean cargo pant pockets!
The project boots the original CPC ROM, plays games using our Qw/ST Pad controller for input, and you can even run Locomotive BASIC (I'm a Commodore kid, but I really like Locomotive BASIC.)
The project claims to offer an authentic CPC 464 OS experience, with a fast Z80 engine, 320 x 240 display and a launcher for games. You have up to 16MiB of flash storage for your games, which are saved in 64KB snapshots. That is plenty of classic gaming on the go.
The project looks gorgeous on Explorer's 2.8 inch IPS display. Developers for Amstrad games certainly made the most of the saturated colour palette (unlike my beloved C64's many shades of brown.)
Pimoroni Explorer
A feature-packed, no-solder electronics playground with a colour display, mini breadboard, speaker, buttons, servo outputs, analog inputs, GPIO, Qw/ST connectors and battery support.
Head over to the project's GitHub repository for details on how to build your own version of the project, including a guide on how to compile your own firmware.
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