Amstrad PC1640 HD20 Hard Drive

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posted by DarkRain on Aug 20, 2012:

I have an Amstrad PC1640 HD20 with 16 colours monitor, single floppy (5,3") drive, user manual, original Amstrad utility discs (MS-DOS one boots bad) and the 20 MB HD.

The machine






The floppys






The manual cover






Actually i can't take my own pics, i'll upload them later.

The HD was broken when i got it. Fortunately i have more than one backup copy of all the data wich was stored on it disk, but with only one floppy drive, using the sistem is painful.
Actually idk why the HD is broken, probably because it wasn't "parked" when stored away...

Anyone knows how to repair the disk or where to get a new one (never found it on EBay)?

Thanks
DR
 

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posted by cauldron on Aug 21, 2012:

Hello there, you have a descent machine! You cannot easily find a HD for 1640 nor repair it because this is a very old and rare MFM hard drive. What you need is an 8bit ISA-to-IDE controller (google XT IDE project). This is an expansion card that fits in one of the 1640's expansion slots and lets you plug a standard IDE HD, which you can easily find everywhere. This is what i did for my AMSTRAD 1512. check my blog for pictures: http://eightiesbits.blogspot.gr/2010/04/amstrad-1512-ide-hard-disk-xt-ide.html http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/XT_IDE_disk_controller
 

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posted by DarkRain on Aug 22, 2012:

cauldron said:






Hello there, you have a descent machine! You cannot easily find a HD for 1640 nor repair it because this is a very old and rare MFM hard drive. What you need is an 8bit ISA-to-IDE controller (google XT IDE project). This is an expansion card that fits in one of the 1640's expansion slots and lets you plug a standard IDE HD, which you can easily find everywhere. This is what i did for my AMSTRAD 1512. check my blog for pictures: http://eightiesbits.blogspot.gr/2010/04/amstrad-1512-ide-hard-disk-xt-ide.html http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/XT_IDE_disk_controller

Sounds good, thanks! Finally i can get my machine working again... anyway where i can find an 8bit ISA-to-IDE controller? I already have the disc and i think it's 10-10.2 GB. Can i put multiple partitions on it?

Thanks alot
DR
 

[Archive]

posted by cauldron on Aug 22, 2012:

This controller is a do-it-yourself kit. You order the kit it from here http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showwiki.php?title=XTIDE+project . You build it yourself or ask them to assemlbe it with an extra fee. I don't know if now they burn the BIOS too. I had to download the BIOS utility to a diskette and burned it inside the AMSTRAD. IF (and this is the tricky part) if you can't write a 5,25 diskette in an other computer, you must transfer the bios utility to the AMSTRAD using a serial interlink cable (25 to 9 pins), dosbox on windows and fxlink DOS utility running in dosbox. see picture:



Using this cableand utility you can transfer any software to the amstrad. The you partition the HD using the fdisk MS DOS 3.2 in 32 MB partitions, The whole above is quite a task, but i did all of it because i love those old machines. good luck
 

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posted by DarkRain on Aug 22, 2012:

The cable will be useful, i'd love to transfer more data to the amstrad from my PC and save it on the disk. Actually i may need it... where i can find it?
I may also need an already-assembled chip because i suck with hardware.

Thanks alot
DR
 

[Archive]

posted by syntax error on Aug 22, 2012:

someone had a ISA CF adapter and an adapter to write to SD cards via parallel port. That would load GEM very fast. GEM was a cut down port of the Atari ST GUI supplied with some Amstrad PCs.
 

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posted by DarkRain on Aug 22, 2012:

GEM actually is a visual interface based on dos, it looks similar to Microsoft 1.0, the difference is that GEM loads separately and Microsoft 1.0 loads on boot. Anyway you can edit main .SYS file to make it load imediately, but this works only if you have an hard disk. M1.0 had also more options than GEM
 

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posted by cauldron on Aug 23, 2012:

You must find a serial 25 to 9 interlink (or laplink) serial cable. Both ends are females. The 25 pins plugs in the Amstrad, the 9 pins in your desktop. It is easy to built yourself if you have a solder iron. The wiring schematics are here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/142324. It's hard to find so i built it myself. Then you need DOSBOX with proper configured file for serial connection and a program called fxlink to access the amstrad through dosbox. I can give you a configured version of dosbox and the fxlink utility, but for the hardware you are on your own
 

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posted by DarkRain on Aug 24, 2012:

cauldron said:






You must find a serial 25 to 9 interlink (or laplink) serial cable. Both ends are females. The 25 pins plugs in the Amstrad, the 9 pins in your desktop. It is easy to built yourself if you have a solder iron. The wiring schematics are here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/142324. It's hard to find so i built it myself. Then you need DOSBOX with proper configured file for serial connection and a program called fxlink to access the amstrad through dosbox. I can give you a configured version of dosbox and the fxlink utility, but for the hardware you are on your own

Thanks for the software!

But, as i said, i suck with hardware anyway i'll try!

EDIT: http://www.ebay.it/itm/1M-USB-Male-...USB_Cables&hash=item35b1a6e790#ht_2952wt_1089 what about this?
 

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posted by cauldron on Aug 24, 2012:

No, it will not work with USB. Also that is a simple printer cable. Printer cables or normal serial cables have a different wiring than the laplink cable, altough they look similar.