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SPRINTER.

The Sprinter 'Accelerator Card' was manufactured by Cirtech (UK) Ltd and it was claimed by them to accelerate the basic performance of the PCW by an amazing 25% or more. The CPU speed went up from 3.57Mhz to 8Mhz. This board (see fig:1) was suitable for the full range of PCW models (not the PcW16) and it came with up to 1 meg of memory. It was also claimed that ALL PCW programmes ran at lightening speed and that it is 100% compatible with ALL software and most hardware ad-ons. It will not work with the SCA RamPacks, Isenstein memory boards, MasterScan and Vortex Hard Drives, I have found that it will not work with my Cirtech GEM Hard Drive. The Sprinter will not speed up (well very little) loading from Disc Drives or Printers as it can not accelerate hardware items. A full list of Sprinter options in offered at the bottom of this page and these taken from 'PCW PLUS' July 1992, page 33.

Game players be warned that fitting a Sprinter could make your favorite game unplayable, by making it to fast.

Please note that Cirtech (UK) Ltd are no longer in business, at least as far as the PCW owner is concerned, therefore anybody wanting one of these boards will have to look to the secondhand market. Do ensure yourself that the board is in full working condition as they do develop faults (I do not know of anyone willing or able to repair them) .

FIG. 1.
This is a sprinter board

A Sprinter board as supplied by the manufacturers. Note that this Sprinter board contains only a half megabite of memory (512K).

FIG. 2.
This is a sprinter fitted to an 8000 series CPU board

A Sprinter board as fitted to an Amstrad PCW 8000 series Mark 2 CPU board. The Sprinter board contains 1 Meg of memory and the CPU board contains 512K of memory, giving in total 1.5 Meg of RAM. The PCW is only able to use 2 Meg of memory at maximum.

It is worth remembering that if your CPU does not plug into a socket on your CPU board, and therefore you are unable to remove it and plug in the Sprinter board, you will have to solder a 40 pin socket onto the top of your old CPU. I have found this does cause problems when fitting back the CPU Board with the Sprinter board mounted on it, as the available space on the 8000 series machines means things are very tight.

An external version of the Sprinter was released and this fitted onto the expansion slot and was offered with the same options as the internal version but you still needed to make some internal connections.

PCW PLUS, July 1992.
Sprinter Basic (without any memory) £91-65.
Sprinter with 256K of RAM £126-90.
Sprinter with 512K of RAM £162-15.
Sprinter with 768K of RAM £197-40.
Sprinter with 1024K of RAM £232-65.

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