[[Category:Operating System]][[Category:Amstrad Products]][[Category:CPC Internal Components]]
[[Image:Amstrad firmware.jpg|right|thumb|250px|The CPC firmware]]
Hardware and software, we all know about. One means wires and silicon chips, the other means word-processors and shoot-em-ups.
You might think this is a given. After all, you couldn't really expect people to guess these obscure addresses. But several computer companies did, among them Sinclair.
The book was called the [[Firmware Guide]], and you can tell how essential it was by the fact that when it went out of print – late ’80s, I think – practically every other issue of [[Amstrad Action]] would carry a letter begging for information on where to get a copy. It's also known by its Amstrad catalogue number, [[Soft SOFT 968]], though there was an earlier version ([[Soft SOFT 158]]) which just detailed the features of the 464. The firmware was substantially expanded with the advent of the 664, and a couple of minor improvements were made for the 6128.
==Measure for measure==
The operating system took up 16k of memory - one ROM chip. BASIC took up another 16k chip. AMSDOS takes up 8k (the spare memory in its chip is taken up either by [[CP/M ]], [[Logo]] or by [[ParaDOS]]). So we have 40k of firmware in total: as big as most games, and a lot bigger than the 16k of [[Protext]].
Discounting BASIC, this is 24k of ready-written code that the machine code programmer can use. Why's this such a big deal?
==Real programmers don't use firmware==
The firmware isn't a universal panacea. By and large, it's not suitable for fast-moving action, which means arcade games or demos, though can be implemented into simple [[Programming:Coding_a_simple_BASIC_game_into_Assembly#Assembly_Version|Text Orientated games]] from Assembly. But it's a robust, bug-free piece of programming that was a key factor in the CPC's progress.
'''This article was written by [[ChaRleyTroniC|Richard Fairhurst]] for [[WACCI]] issue 141, which was never published.'''