Difference between revisions of "Plus System Cartridges"

Revision as of 08:26, 5 December 2010

Introduction

The Plus system cartridge is essential to the 464 Plus and 6128 Plus systems because it contains the Operating System, BASIC and AMSDOS. Without this cartridge, you cannot use the Plus as none of the system ROMs are contained within the machine (unlike the classic CPCs). This method was used as it meant that it would be very difficult to copy other cartridges (such as games) because the operating system is not present when another cartridge is inserted.

English System Cartridge

Contains the Plus Operating System (v4), Locomotive BASIC v1.1, AMSDOS and Burnin' Rubber game. This cartridge is for use with the English keyboard of the 464 Plus or 6128 Plus. The color of the label of the cartridge is Yellow.

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  Front

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  Back

French System Cartridge

Contains the Plus Operating System (v4), Locomotive BASIC v1.1, AMSDOS and Burnin' Rubber game. This cartridge is for use with the French keyboard of the 464 Plus or 6128 Plus. The color of the label of the cartridge is Green. On the back of the cartridge on the right-hand lower corner you can see the letter "F" for French.

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  Front

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  Back

Spanish System Cartridge

Contains the Plus Operating System (v4), Locomotive BASIC v1.1, AMSDOS and Burnin' Rubber game. This cartridge is for use with the Spanish keyboard of the 464 Plus or 6128 Plus. The color of the label of the cartridge is Blue. On the back of the cartridge on the right-hand lower corner you can see the letter "S" for Spanish.

'Downgrade' System Cartridge

A French cartridge was made which contained the classic CPC Operating System (v3), Locomotive BASIC v1.1 and AMSDOS. This cartridge was made to address the Plus range incompatibilities with some software designed for the classic CPC range.

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  Front

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  Back

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  PCB Front

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  PCB Back

Patched Cartridges

Due to the annoying 'f1/f2' menu presented on the Plus range, programmers have patched the Plus system cartridges in several ways to remove the menu.

One method was to replace AMSDOS with ParaDOS. This had the benefit of having the ParaDOS disk ROM available without a ROMboard, but it also disabled access to the Burnin' Rubber game.

Another method was to patch the Operating System ROM to skip the menu meaning the Plus went directly to BASIC, much the same as with the classic CPCs. Users can still access the Burnin' Rubber game by using a RSX command (either |GAME, |JEUX, |SPIEL or |JUEGO) as this feature was included in the original Plus system cartridge.

Downloads

Downloads of the system cartridges are available here. The CPR file is for use in emulators such as WinAPE and the BIN file is the actual ROM image for use with EPROM programmers.

• Amstrad Plus EN Patched Menu System by Redbox
• Amstrad Plus FR Patched Menu System by Redbox