Date   : Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:57:17 +0100 (BST)
From   : tim.fardell@... (Tim Fardell)
Subject: Free Stuff Tranche 1 (Sheffield)

On Wed, 7 Apr 2010, Alex Taylor wrote:

> On 7 April 2010 00:00, Tim Fardell <tim.fardell@...> wrote:
> 
> > comp.sys.sinclair might be a better place.
> 
> I was going to say the same thing!
> 
> I'm quite interested in the Amstrad PCW, as I have a bizarre obsession
> with these machines, depsite the fact that there are clearly more
> interesting and useful things available (the Beeb, for example).

I've got a PCW9512 which I fixed the disk drive in and is now
fully-working, and in very clean condition (if a little dusty now!). It
came with a daisy-wheel printer, which I foolishly threw away. The printer
connector was a humongous DIN plug the like of which I have never seen on
anything else.

The supplied Locoscript software has a very strage quirk that effectively 
renders the "write protect" function of disks inoperative - it will refuse 
to *read* any file if the disk is write-protected! So you can't actually 
access any of your documents unless you un-write-protect the disk, which 
of course means you can accidentally overwrite or erase them! Completely 
barmy design!