Amstrad CPC
The ' ("" - which means "small computer" - being a rather literal German translation of the English "microcomputer") is a clone of the Amstrad CPC built by East Germany's ' in October 1989. Although the machine included various substitutes and emulations of an Amstrad CPC's hardware, the machine is largely compatible with Amstrad CPC software. It is equipped with 64 KB memory and a CPC6128's firmware customized to the modified hardware, including an unmodified copy of Locomotive BASIC 1.1. The KC compact is the last 8-bit computer produced in East Germany.
Amstrad PCW
The PCW 8256 was launched in September 1985, and had 256 KB of RAM and one floppy disk drive. Launched a few months later, the PCW 8512 had 512 KB of RAM and two floppy disk drives. Both systems consisted of three units: a printer; a keyboard; and a monochrome CRT monitor whose casing included the processor, memory, motherboard, one or two floppy disk drives, the power supply for all the units and the connectors for the printer and keyboard. The monitor displayed green characters on a black background. It measured diagonally, and showed 32 lines of 90 characters each. The designers preferred this to the usual personal computer display of 25 80-character lines, as the larger size would be more convenient for displaying a whole letter. The monitor could also display graphics well enough for the bundled graphics program and for some games.
The floppy disk drives on these models were in the unusual 3-inch "compact floppy" format, which was selected as it had a simpler electrical interface than 3½-inch drives. In the range's early days supplies of 3-inch floppies occasionally ran out, but by 1988 the PCW's popularity encouraged suppliers to compete for this market. There are several techniques for transferring data from a PCW to an IBM-compatible PC, some of which also can transfer in the opposite direction, and service companies that will do the job for a fee.
While all the 3-inch disks were double-sided, the PCW 256's 3-inch drive and the PCW 8512's upper one were single-sided, while the 8512's lower one was double-sided and double-density. Hence there were two types of disk: single-density, which could store 180 KB of data per side, equivalent to about 70 pages of text each; and double density, which could store twice as much per side. The double-density drive could read single-density disks, but it was inadvisable to write to them using this drive. Users of single-sided drives had to flip the disks over to use the full capacity.