Changes
ANT
,Vik Olliver
nov. 2019
《 We did an Amstrad machine basically a PCW with hi-res colour and sound synth, called ANT (Arnold Number Two) but it never went anywhere as production. It was really nice, but by then Amiga did everything we wanted to do, 8-bit was meh, and PCs were more important. 》
" Internally, the PCW design was based on ANT [Arnold Number Two], which would have been another computer for the CPC niche.The PCW hardware has some implemented-but-unused features from the ANT, such as joystick support in the keyboard controller, and a CPC-compatible memory paging mode."
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Finally, in April 1985, the Atari ST appeared with similar features to the ANT but with a 68000 CPU instead of an accelerated Z80. The resolution in 320x200 16 colours shares a lot with CPC/CPC+ ; and the same sound chip. Its STE version has DMA sound like CPC+, and graphic Blitter.
Recently the unreleased CP/M-68k appeared finished (will it be works with some not hardware dependent PCW programs?).
GEM gui is shared with Amstrad PC. But incompatible coded apps cause diferent 16bit CPUs
Amstrad abandoned the 3" format in the latest PCW/PCW16 models.
The user scene placed 3.5" drives in CPC.
B-ASIC for CPC+ appeared. Amstrad should do at the beginning of the machine.
Some utils read/write MS-DOS format in CPC with 3,5" drive.
Similar case in CPC+ design and ST.
Would we consider the Atari ST as the ANT that never came out? (Similar features but with diferent coding 16bit CPU).
CPC and ST shared many software development teams and projects. The music coding is almost direct and the graphics is somekind of close in CPC+
A software library very close to the ST/CPC would have been possible on a color PCW16? (16Mhz CPU)(Habisoft did Knight Lore and Total Eclipse ports)
[[Category:Stub]]
