PicoGX Cartridge for the Amstrad Plus & GX4000

The PicoGX Cartridge for the Amstrad Plus/GX4000

So, this new bit of kit has just been released, it was pretty cheap and it's finally a decent alternative to the C4CPC which has been unavailable for what feels like an eternity.

What is it?

It's a multi-load cartridge for the Amstrad GX4000 (and 464 Plus/6128 Plus machines) allowing you to play cartridge images from a MicroSD card loaded up with images.

What it is NOT

This cart does NOT allow for tape images or disk images, or even, ROMs from ROM boards, it's only CPR images, however, there's tools out there to convert disks to CPR images.

How well does it work?

I've tried a LOT of games on this, and I've not found any compatibility issues yet (doesn't mean it's 100%, just means I've not found anything yet)

Games are easily selectable, the last used game ROM is remembered and if you have a 464 Plus / 6128 Plus, you are not limited to just game ROMs, even System Carts (like the ParaDOS cart or Amstrad BASIC cart) can be run from this device.

I'm super impressed with this and have had far more success regarding CPR images than I have with the M4 board

How do you use it?

It's really simple, download CPR ROM images, chuck them on a MicroSD card and put the cart in the GX4000 or CPC Plus. You will be greeted with a menu like the one pictured here. You can use keyboard or the controller to choose the game.

Powering the machine off and back on again shows the menu and the last used cart image is shown at the top. If you remove the SD card and power on the machine, it'll automatically boot the last used image (as it's uploaded in to the cart's memory)

There's also a USB-C connector on the cart, this allows you to plug it in to your computer and use the cart as a MicroSD card reader, so you don't need to remove the memory card if you don't want to.