RC2017/10 is over, and it’s time to sit back, have a bit of a rest, and do one final write up. Before carrying on with the PCW project anyway, because I still have lots of ideas of more things to do.

I set out without a huge amount of direction. I had just bought an Amstrad PCW for £5.50 the day before the challenge began, so I thought doing something for RC2017/10 would be a good idea, but I wasn’t sure what, and I didn’t think I’d have enough time. I started doing my project anyway, before deciding about a week later that, since I was starting to really get into the project, I should actually join the challenge.

My plan initially was to get the PCW’s motherboard working outside of its case, so that I could have a PCW which didn’t take up so much space. I found a small form factor PC at work which was being thrown out, and planned to put the PCW into it, but it needs to be properly wiped and signed off by IT before I can use it, and unfortunately that hasn’t happened yet. So my initial aim hasn’t quite been completed, although I did get the PCW motherboard running without its case, PSU, monitor and floppy drive as a proof of concept, so I should be able to do this once the case is available.

I did manage to do the following things though:

• Get composite video output being displayed on an LCD monitor
• Add a simple joystick interface
• Add an AY-3-8912A sound chip, which also replaced the simple joystick interface
• Add an extra 512Kb of external RAM
• Add an EEPROM, and get the computer booting from it
• Add an SD card, and get the computer booting from it and get CP/M to be able to access it

And I learnt quite a few things as well:

• How video signals work, and how the PCW’s video output works
• What the MDIS signal does
• A lot about the internals of the PCW’s CP/M implementation
• How to type on a PCW keyboard without getting lots of ghost keypresses. (I found that if I typed more rhythmically I tended to press multiple keys at the same time less often.)

What plans/ideas do I have for the future:

• Put everything on github
• Write better SD card drivers, which can access more than one logical drive per card.
• Get a PCB made
• Put everything in a case
• Add VGA output
• Add a USB keyboard
• Add a real-time clock
• Add a USB serial interface