The Amstrad PC 1640 was the successor to the Amstrad PC 1512. It had the same characteristics as its predecessor except for added memory (640 KB instead of 512 KB) and the EGA graphics standard.
It also had great success, but to a lesser extent than the PC 1512. As the PC 1512, the Amstrad PC 1640 came with the GEM graphical user interface, from Digital Research, an alternative to Windows.
The PC-1640 was marketed under the name PC-6400 in the USA. It was also sold in Germany and maybe some other European countries under the name Schneider.
Three different kinds of monitors where supported, monochrome (-> Hercules), low-res (max 640 x 200) and hi-res (max 640 x 350). The hi-res monitor had a fan for the power supply as opposed to the other monitors which where fan-less. With the low-res monitor you could choose between a full CGA compatible mode (required for many CGA games) and an EGA mode (used for 640 x 200 x 16 eg. for GEM or 320 x 200 x 16 for several games).
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Contributors: André Janz
Charles Da Silva adds:
The 1640 was first introduced in the US and after a few months in Europe (which infuriated the British media, some of them having already been harsh critics on the 1512 : fan problems - forgetting that since the PSU was in the monitor, it was not needed - not 'fully' compatible as it was then thought. All of this proved to come from IBM itself, which made Alan Sugar really angry).
You can find all this info in 'Alan Sugar' from late D. Thomas.
Ex Cathedra's memories:
I did a large amount of development on these machines in the late 80s. They were surprisingly good, with only a few bugs and incompatibilities with the IBM PC standard. Bearing in mind the price differential, we had no problems living with these.
The RTC and BIOS settings were preserved by 4xAA batteries under the monitor - a configuration I wish we still had today! There was a minor (patchable) bug in the BIOS which caused a div/0 error at midnight each night if you'd left it running a long compilation...
This was my first experience of computers after the ZX81 and my first experience of DOS. It gave me a measure of how computers were developing from hobbyist little boxes like the ZX81 to much more useable desktop machines. I had a lot of fun messing around on it in the ''90s, I suppose it was old then. It came with a tetris game that had soviet space ships as background and I''d very much like to find that old version. I don''t know if it is the original version of Tetris, probably not, but the Russian theme seems very fitting to Tetris. I can''t find it anywhere on the net. 1995 seems a lvery long time ago! Somehow when I got my Win95 machine in ''96, I lost something like losing a childhood as I was swept into the modern world of windows and the internet..
Wednesday 11th August 2010
Dom (UK)
I have an 1640 and it still works!!. the only problem is finding disks that work:). Was a hand me down from my dad and has seen me though college and to this day(after 20 years still going,beat that laptops)
Friday 22nd June 2007
Ewan Cronin (UK)
I remember having a PC 1640, it had a strange mouse which i had trouble getting to work. My PC 1640 had a 20 MB hard drive from Conner which i still have. My uncle gave this to me with Space Quest 2 and 3.
Saturday 13rd January 2007
David P (Australia)
NAME
PC 1640
MANUFACTURER
Amstrad
TYPE
Professional Computer
ORIGIN
United Kingdom
YEAR
1986
CPU
Intel 8086
SPEED
8 mHz
RAM
640 KB
VRAM
256 KB ?
ROM
64 KB
TEXT MODES
40 x 25 / 80 x 25
GRAPHIC MODES
All EGA graphic modes (maximum : 640 x 350) Hercules mode for monochrome versions (maximum 720 by 350)
COLORS
16 among 64
SOUND
Beeper
I/O PORTS
Four 8-bit ISA slots (one being reserved of the internal HD controller), Centronics, RS232c, Mouse port (proprietary)
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