Around the same time as the PC1512 and PC1640, Amstrad also offered two “luggable” portable computers – PPC512 and PPC640 – with tiny green monochrome screens and build-in keyboards. Basically, these were “portable” versions of the PC1512 and PC1640 with very similar technical stats to the larger machines. A “Sprint” variation added an internal 10mb hard drive.
I’ll come back to this post to write more on these machines, but for now, here are the system disks for them.
Aside from MS-DOS 3.30, the real interest is the included “PPC Organizer” program. This application was exclusive to the PPC machine bundles, and in fact contained hardware locks to prevent it running on other machines!
Thankfully, Amstrad expert John Elliot discovered a way to fix this, by hex editing the exe file. A patch for this, as well as lots more information, is included in the download below. A standalone copy of PPC Organizer, pre-patched, is also included to use in DOSBox or on real machines.
3/4/22 – EDIT: I have updated the package to include two versions of each disk image: one for UK keyboards and one for US keyboards. If you use these on a real PPC machine, you will need to use the UK version (you can chance the country settings manually if you wish). If you want to try these disks on an emulator or other old non-PPC computer, you might need the US versions to match your keyboard.
Download Links:
Amstrad PPC System Disks (includes PPC Organizer) + Patch [v2.0]
Old Versions (obsolete, only retained for archive purposes):
Amstrad PPC System Disks (includes PPC Organizer) + Patch [old version]