Ha, finally I got something I did search for many years.

                                                  A HARDDISK SYSTEM FOR MY CPC 464

I bought it from someone, who toke away this Vortex WD20 Harddisk System at the HCC Meetings in 1990 just for me. Nothing the matter, he was faster.

After 1.5 years of struggling with connections in Germany, the manual, sheets and knowing the systemfiles were already on the harddisk available.
It's logical, I had to pay more for this configuration, than he did. But peace man. Work has to be paid and hoppa I got to pay him FL.500,00 those days and it was mine!!!!!
Just sad to say, the first buyer found out, that this systeem only was capable for a CPC 464 and NOT a 6128! So when I heard, he wanted to stay in hobby with a 6128, I took a sprint to the phone and GOT IT!!!!

After that all had to be build in a metal case, for a CPC and besides that an extern harddisk and drives was out of the question. The CPC Extended already did spoil me!!!

And these are the results of hard working. In 1993 this configuration was ready and running as hell.
All except the CPC has build in an old metal PC case, with less space for other things. Even there were old sheets, so I could program the leds, to show the 4MHZ speed of the CPC. See photo above.

Very easy to see on the photo is the so called clic connector, on which the CPC is connected. Easy and very safe. Describtion of the front panel is the following:

The number of Drives is 4x :
1x 3.5" 40 Tracks normale Drive (vertical placed), and can be A or B Drive, and also with a sideselect switchable
1x 5.25" 40 Tracks Amsdos Drive. , and can be A or B Drive, sideselect switchable
1x 5.25" 40/80 Tracks Vortex Drive (80 tracks for 720Kb), switchable 40 to 80 Tracks, also as A or B Drive and a sideselect, to use both sides apart in 80 Tracks mode. Normally if side 1 is full, it goes furtheron side 2, just like PC Dos.
1x 3" Tracks Amsdos Drive and just as the others, switchable as A or B plus a sideselect.

Furtheron in the front an On/Off- and a Hard Reset button. There's one switch left, and that to set an epromcard from 40Kb CP/M 2.2 mode to 42Kb CP/M Plus mode.

In the case is a 220 Volts Power, a main connector for the clic connector. Through de main connector you go to the switchable epromcard, capable from 40Kb to 42Kb as described above.
Behind the epromcard, there is a place for an extra 64KB Memory, but not working fine, don't still know why it isn't going with VDOS.
All to the left is the Harddisk MFM Controller for a 20Mb MFM Harddisk and partitioned in 4 equal parts of 5Mb. So we have 4 harddisk drives (C-D-E-F). It also means we have 4 different CP/M versions on the harddisk. Oh boy all the possibilites! You can't see the harddisk here, for it's been placed behind and under the drive-unit with the 3 drives. Beside the drive-unit is the 3.5" drive.

I know now, why the harddisk freezes some time. It's cause is the overheating of some chips. So I've to make cooling on the chips an have to place a cooler, to keep temperature low. Besides there's only one working in the Netherlands.

There's not so much to see on the photo, but it's to complete the story. Up above in the middle you just can see the harddisk and to the left again the 3.5" drive. I've been busy with this system for about 2 years and programmed a menu build system to it. With all the utilities and programmes, normal working from diskettes.  Just now after 10 years I did started the system again, had to think a while, for I did forgot that VDos only is starting automatic with Basic 1.0 and with extra memory with Basic 1.1 it's not working fine. But it's fun to see all things going.

And with the 4 CP/M booting partions with their utilities I control this system as a usual PC. All systems these days are children of Digital CP/M. Bill Gates idi know that very well.

Basic also has been divided in the 4 partitions with Utilities, Grafics, Data storage en a part for Textwriting. With help of the VDos commands in the basic, you can jump form one partition to an other one.

Furtheron, there can be a 128Mb in totals, switchable with more harddisks, but these disks are hard to find the days.

A lot of work has been made to the manual. The index was wrong in page numbering, so I did to go all through the book, to make a correct index with textwriting (those day with WP in DOS)

For this machine I've nothing to do this days. I have tried to connect a cdromplayer to the CPC, but did loose connection with that person in Germany. A PITY!!!!!