Roland is the star guest at the inaugural UKAG meetup, but if you are newer to the retro hobby you might not know his background or his impact on the computer we all know and love.
Roland says of the event:
“I’m looking forward to attending the UK Amstrad Group meeting. It’s always a pleasure to see these machines still being used, repaired, and enjoyed, and to chat with people who remember what made them work so well. The best part is the community, swapping stories, solving the odd technical mystery, and having a good laugh about the design choices that still get people talking.”
Interview
There’s a great article from Retro Gamer to find out more, and here are the essentials:
Amstrad’s lead technical figure on the CPC: Roland Perry was Amstrad’s group technical manager, often described as the person who made the CPC “tick”, leading the electronics design that turned the CPC concept into a working machine.
Engineering background: He studied at the University of Cambridge (Engineering, with Management Studies) and began tinkering with computers in the mid-1970s.
How he got pulled into the CPC project: Amstrad brought him in when an earlier CPC prototype effort was not delivering, and he helped assemble the right design team to get the computer finished.
Not just hardware, also the “day one” software ecosystem: He was heavily involved in ensuring there was a launch-ready software lineup, including distributing early prototypes to developers so they could build and convert games in time.
His name became part of CPC legend: The “Roland” character used in Amsoft games was named after him.
Broader Amstrad product work and timeline: He worked across multiple Amstrad ranges (including CPC-era developments and later machines), and he left Amstrad in 1990.
From: Interview archive (downloads a PDF) on Amstrad CPC Written Memory.
Video
At the UKAG meet Roland will be telling us more about his history with the CPC. If you can’t wait till then, there’s a great video interview with Roland when he was at The Centre for Computing History, here are the highlights:
How the CPC range came to be (and why it looked like it did): Roland explains that the CPC464 was largely developed by external contractors before Amstrad brought development in-house. Amstrad famously designed the case first, which was unusual at the time.
Practical design choices that made CPCs stand out: A key brief was “one plug” operation. The monitor contained the power supply and fed power to the computer, making it a self-contained setup.
From CPCs to PCW and PCs (the wider Amstrad story): He links the CPC line (464, 664, 6128) to the next “blockbuster” product, the PCW8256 (sold initially as a word processor/typewriter replacement), then on to IBM-compatible PCs like the PC1512/1640.
Written by:
Jo Cook