Amstrad started life as a hi-fi brand in Britain. It was founded by Alan Michael Sugar.
Amstrad got into the microcomputer game just as the competition was beginning to hot up, and they did very well in the UK and Europe with Z80 based designs like the CPC464, CPC664, CPC6128 and PCW1512, later followed by even more successful clones of the IBM PC like the PC1512 "Airo." The PC20 of 1989 was a competitor to the Amiga, Atari ST and A3000 in the British computer market: all these had a similar form factor, but managed to differentiate themselves enough so that they eventually occupied quite different market segments.
You may have noticed that Amstrad liked to use product identifiers consisting of impenetrable sequences of letters followed by equally unfathomable numbers. Later, they did get a bit desparate and begin adding plusses to some of their identifiers, breaking their pattern. Here's a list of some of the prefixes we here at Kasoft can remember:
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Author and editor: Kade "Archer" Hansson; e-mail: archer@kaserver5.orgLast updated: Tuesday 19th September 2006