Kevin Thacker

I am a big Amstrad fan having got my first Amstrad (a CPC6128) when I was 11 years old. (back in 1986) My father bought me a Firmware guide and in addition he had access to datasheets, and this expanded my knowledge of the cpc quickly.

In the beginning I spent a lot of time writing a sprite editor (now lost), converting games from tape to disc for friends at school, and converting pictures and music from the Atari ST.

To convert music from Atari ST, I had written a disc reader in assembler which could read Atari ST discs, or anything with MSDOS format, and a 68000 dissassembler in BASIC. I would then convert the 68000 to Z80 asm by hand.

Then I concentrated on writing documents for the CPC called "The CPC Guide". The aim was to present this using a hypertext/windowing system I had written (1994)

Following this I setup the first website documenting the Amstrad hardware called "The Unofficial Amstrad WWW Resource" (1995) which is still open today. A lot of these documents are my own work, with other documents by other authors.

During this time I developed a Amstrad emulator for the Amiga called A-CPC, which later became Arnold (for PC and Linux) and in addition this helped discover more accurate information about the workings of the CPC and to help make other emulators better.

I have released the following games and demos:

• Stranded for CPC and C64 (a conversion from Spectrum)
• Sudoku for CPC, Spectrum and PCW
• Balloonacy for CPC (a conversion from C64)
• Blue Angel 69 for CPC, CPC+ and GX4000
• Mayhem for CPC and PCW (a conversion from Spectrum)
• Hexavirus for CPC, CPC+ and GX4000
• On the Spot for a web based set top box
• A musical loader used in Pinball Dreams
• various tech demos, 4096 colours etc.

I am looking for a demo I made around 1990 which I shared with Warlock. The demo has 3 blue balls which grow and shrink depending on the volume of the played music (I think it was Warhawk music). At the same time the tape motor relay turned on/off and the disc motor flashed. It was a simple demo but I would love to see it again.

• Music conversions from ST: Big Alec, Mad Max, Count Zero, LAP

My websites:

• http://cpcfreak.cpc-live.com/ (Some of my games)
• http://www.cpctech.org.uk/ (Technical information, CPCWiki is more up to date)