ANT

Arnold Number Two

• prototype board with a hybrid? Gate Array for PCW (color) and CPC compatibility
• 64 colour
• 256/512k RAM
• 6 Mhz Z80 CPU (Z80B ?)

Maybe exist two boards in possession of Richard Clayton (Locomotive Software) and William Poel (Amstrad Ltd.)

" After the CPC464. Never standing still, Amstrad went to work on two new machines: the PCW8256 word processor and a new computer which was described by Alan Sugar as a “full colour computer’. The new computer, codenamed ANT (Arnold Number Two), was planned to be an upgrade to the CPC464 and be compatible with the PCW8256. Unfortunately, the plug was pulled on ANT as Amstrad decided that the design team should concentrate 100% on getting the PCW8256 finished on time. A new computer did appear in April 1985, but it wasn’t the machine previously referred to as ANT, but rather the CPC664. Reacting to consumer's requests for a computer with an integrated floppy disk drive and more memory, Amstrad went away and designed a new model. With the codename IDIOT (Includes Disk Instead of Tape), initial reactions were that the new CPC664 was basically a CPC464 with a floppy disk drive in place of the cassette tape deck. " (Neil Reive)

Richard Clayton. July 2003

>>It was a shame not to build the "Ant" -- which was going to be the games machine that shared a lot of hardware design with the PCW ("Joyce"). But we just didn't have the time and effort to do it justice so perhaps it was best that it was cancelled.<<

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. 》

The CPC that never was.

Richard Clayton and Roland Perry reveal details on the computer that never made it to market. (RetroGamer28) Dec 2017

» The ANT computer would have used a PCW casing, with a more bespoke keyboard. Work on the original line up of CPCs appeared to grind to a halt following the release of the 6128. But while history shows that Amstrad moved on to the PCW and PC market until briefly coming back to the CPC with the short-lived Plus range, there had actually been plans for one more Colour Personal Computer.

Mark-eric Jones of Data Recall and Locomotive Software had been commissioned to produce a second machine as work got underway on the PCW 8256. Dubbed Arnold Number Two (or ANT for short), the computer was going to be compatible with both the CPC and PCW.

Having spoken to Roland Perry and Locomotive Software’s Richard Clayton, we have gained a tantalising look at what might have been for the CPC as it battled against its 8-bit rivals during the late Eighties.

The ill-fated computer would have been a colour version of the PCW with a CPC emulation mode. “It would have run CPC software in emulation mode and then allowed for more fancy things,” reveals Richard. “There was a lot of commonality with the PCW and that’s why some of the bit addressing in the PCW screen memory is the odd way that it is.”

It is likely the system would’ve had 256K of RAM. “Same as a PCW and with the same bank switching system,” Richard explains. But maybe it would have had more. “I’m guessing it would have had 512K like the bigger PCWS,” says Roland.

Gamers would have been well served, too. There was elegant screen-handling hardware and more RAM would be used for the screen. However, Richard adds, “If you had colour you did not get the same screen resolution as the PCW.”

Locomotive would have provided an updated Locoscript and CP/M and had the same firmware/basic as the CPC for that mode. The computer would also have loaded up a CPC 464 screen. “The boot loader told the hardware to emulate and it was just like the PCW in that all of the disk handling was software,” says Richard who actually owns a prototype of the machine.

“The whole point was being to run all of the available software for both the CPC and PCW in one box,” Roland continues. “The different screen modes would have been switchable as usual but I don’t recall how we were proposing to jump between the CPC and PCW engines.

“If I was thinking about that today, maybe this would be done by examining track zero of the floppy and then either booting the Locoscript or CP/M environment from the floppy, or switching in an image of the CPC firmware ROM.”

As for how it was going to look, Roland says it would have used the same case as the PCW. “One stumbling block included what the keyboard would look like. Some games needed the CPC keys in familiar places rather than scattered around a fundamentally PCW keyboard,” he says.

So why was it shelved? “That was partly our fault in that we were somewhat behind with Locoscript and so had not done very much coding for the ANT,” says Richard. “Amstrad then decided it did not make sense any more, with 16-bit machines becoming more important.”

John Elliot . June 2016. " 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."

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 little 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 was 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).(Not so powerful to replicate/emulate CPC/PCW?).(is needed hardware like in Aleste machine VDP?) [plain Amiga could move CPC emulator?]

CPC and ST shared many third party software development teams and projects. The music coding is almost direct and the graphics is somekind of 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)

The CPC+ and PCW16 machines share internal parts with the ANT.