Amstrad CPC 464
The CPC 464 is the first personal home computer built by Amstrad in 1984. It was one of the bestselling and best produced microcomputers, with more than 2 million units sold in Europe. The British microcomputer boom had already peaked before Amstrad announced the CPC 464 (which stood for Colour Personal Computer) which they then released a mere nine months later.
CPC 464 with Joystick | |
| Also known as | CPC 464 |
|---|---|
| Developer | Amstrad |
| Product family | Amstrad CPC |
| Type | Personal Computer |
| Release date | 11 April 1984 |
| Introductory price | £199 (with green monitor), £299 (with colour monitor) |
| Units sold | 2 million |
| Operating system | AMSDOS |
| CPU | Zilog Z80 @ 4 MHz |
| Memory | 64 KB |
| Display | Colour or green monochrome monitor |
| Graphics | Motorola 6845 or compatible with a custom-designed gate array (160×200, 16 colours; 320×200, 4 colours; 640x200, 2 colours) |
| Sound | General Instrument AY-3-8912 |
| Best-selling game | The Guild of Thieves |
| Related | Amstrad CPC |
Amstrad was known for cheap hi-fi products but had not broken into the home computer market until the CPC 464. Their consumer electronic sales were starting to plateau and owner and founder Alan Sugar stated "We needed to move on and find another sector or product to bring us back to profit growth". Work started on the Amstrad home computer in 1983 with engineer Ivor Spital who concluded that Amstrad should enter the home computer market, offering a product that integrated low-cost hardware to be sold at an affordable "impulse-purchase price".
Spital wanted to offer a device that would not commandeer the family TV but instead be an all-in-one computer with its own monitor, thus freeing up the TV and allowing others to play video games at the same time.
Bill Poel, General Manager of Amsoft (Amstrad's software division), said during the launch press release that if the computers were not on the shelves by the end of June, "I will be prepared to sit down and eat one in Trafalgar Square."