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Amstrad PCW 16 Maintenance Guide

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Amstrad PcW16 (Amstrad Direct catalogue)
PcW16 display unit. The floppy drive and its eject button are below the screen.

The Amstrad PCW 16 keeps its processor, memory, monitor and floppy drive in one display unit, with a separate keyboard and serial mouse.[1] Its operating system, applications and the owner's documents all live in 1 MB of flash memory, so looking after a PCW 16 means keeping backups of the flash and a working Rescue Disc as well as the usual care of a CRT machine.[2] Faults are covered in the Amstrad PCW 16 Troubleshooting Guide.

Safety

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Warning: the display unit contains a CRT monitor and a mains power supply. Unplug the machine before opening it and discharge the CRT before touching anything near the tube, the anode cap or the flyback transformer; see CRT Discharge Procedure.

The PCW 16 does not switch off completely from its own controls: it goes into a standby mode and can wake itself to sound a diary alarm.[3] Remove the mains plug before working on it.

Controls and connections

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Controls and ports
Position Item
Front On/off switch, floppy disc eject button, contrast and brightness controls
Rear Parallel port, serial port
Keyboard PC-style 102-key layout; F9–F12 coloured blue, yellow, green and red
Mouse Three-button serial mouse

Source: the Amstrad Direct catalogue description in 8BIT.[4] The serial mouse uses the Mouse Systems protocol.[3]

Flash memory and backups

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The file manager stores documents in 16 folders in the flash "cabinet" or on floppy disc.[3] John Elliott notes that a program crash can lose the contents of the flash and force a slow reload, and an owner reported a lock-up that left the machine showing "Fatal Check Sum Error" until the system was reloaded from the Rescue Disc.[5][6]

  1. Copy every folder in the cabinet to floppy discs regularly, and keep the discs away from the machine.
  2. Keep the Rescue Disc that came with the machine, and a copy of it. A disc image of Rosanne 1.12, the last release, is on the Internet Archive as BOOT112.CFI.[7]
  3. Check the system version in the System Setup window; later releases fixed faults in earlier ones.[3][6]
  4. Fonts take about 120 KB of flash each, so there is room for few extra fonts. Deleting the help files frees space for about two.[6]

Discs

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The floppy drive is a PC-compatible 3.5-inch unit, and new discs are formatted in MS-DOS format. John Elliott notes that the file manager is meant to handle 720 KB and 1.44 MB DOS discs and 720 KB PCW discs.[2][4] For cleaning and drive faults see Floppy Drive Repair.

Upgrades and board sites

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There is no expansion port; anything added goes through the parallel or serial port, or through the reprogramming socket in the base.[2] John Elliott records unfitted space on the main board for another 1 MB of RAM, another 1 MB of flash, a hard drive interface and a colour VGA interface, which "would probably have to be fitted professionally".[2] Cliff Lawson of Amstrad said in 1998 that the board has a bare site for an Intel 28F008 or similar flash chip, and that fitting one needs the machine dismantled and the chip soldered in.[6] He judged that the work would make a flash upgrade cost about £50–£70, against £129 for the whole machine at the time, too much for anyone to offer it commercially.

The first 64 KB of the flash holds the BIOS and can only be rewritten through a reprogramming cartridge plugged into the socket on the underside; the rest of the flash is rewritten by software, for example from the Rescue Disc.[2]

Printers

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Use a printer that works without Windows drivers, on the parallel or serial port, and choose it from the PCW 16's printer list. Printers that depend on Windows, such as the Canon BJ150 that Dixons sold with some machines, cannot work.[6][3]

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References

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  1. ↑ Wikipedia, "Amstrad PCW", section "PcW16". Retrieved 2026-10-02. The display unit contains the processor, motherboard and RAM.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 John Elliott, "The PCW16", seasip.info, written 1995, updated 30 April 1999. Retrieved 2026-10-02. 1 MB RAM and 1 MB flash; BIOS in the first 64K, rewritable only through a cartridge socket on the underside; no expansion port; unfitted board space for more RAM and flash, a hard drive interface and a colour VGA interface; DOS disc formats and \PCW\CATALOG.TXT.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Nathan Lineback, "Amstrad PcW16", Toasty Tech GUI Gallery. Retrieved 2026-10-02. Standby mode and wake-up for alarms; 16 folders in the flash cabinet; Mouse Systems-compatible serial mouse; supported printers.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Mike Elliston, "The new Amstrad PCW16", 8BIT issue 9, Christmas 1995/January 1996, pp. 2–3, with the Amstrad Direct catalogue page reproduced. Scan at archive.org/details/8Bit-fanzine-09. Retrieved 2026-10-02.
  5. ↑ John Elliott, ANNE v2.5 documentation (Docs/anne.txt in the JOYCE 2.5.5 distribution), seasip.info. Retrieved 2026-10-02. A real PcW16 has 1 MB of flash holding the system and settings; a program crash can lose its contents and force a time-consuming reload.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Brian Watson (ed.), "The PcW16 pages", 8BIT issue 19, May 1998, pp. 23–27, reprinting comp.sys.amstrad.8bit postings by Cliff Lawson (Amstrad) and Howard Fisher (LocoScript Software), April 1998, and Tony Velate's article for the Crawley PCW club. Scan at archive.org/details/8Bit-fanzine-19. Retrieved 2026-10-02.
  7. ↑ Internet Archive, "Rosanne OS v1.12 for Amstrad PcW16". Retrieved 2026-10-02.


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