TECHNICAL DATA
NAME:Cirtech UK Ltd
ORIGIN:Scottish Borders, Scotland (United Kingdom)
REGISTRATION:SC094086
STATUS:Historical (Dissolved on 22/07/2005)
SPECIALITY:Expansion Hardware / Hard Drives
DIRECTORS:John Angus Robertson and Jennifer Margaret Robertson
Description
Cirtech UK Ltd was a prominent hardware engineering and peripheral company based in the Scottish Borders region of Scotland. The company specialized in the highly sought-after niche of advanced expansions for popular British computing platforms, manufacturing critical mass storage devices, interfaces, and memory boards designed to push home and office microcomputers, such as the Amstrad PCW, Amstrad CPC, and the Apple II family (for which they produced highly regarded high-performance SCSI interface cards), to their absolute limits.
Corporate Information
The corporation was formally incorporated in the Scottish commercial register under company number SC094086 on July 1, 1985, as a private limited company. Under the joint strategic management of engineers and founders Mr. John Angus Robertson and Ms. Jennifer Margaret Robertson, the brand enjoyed immense prestige across retro ecosystem technical publications, standing out for its constant marketing campaigns in specialized magazines such as 8000 Plus and PCW Today. After twenty years dedicated to supporting computer hardware, the firm was struck off the register and officially dissolved on July 22, 2005.
Developed Hardware
CT Scanner
A hand-held scanner and digitizing device, representing one of the few comprehensive optical solutions marketed to take advantage of the high-resolution monochrome display of PCW systems.
Flash Drive / Flashdisk
Pioneering secondary storage units based on non-volatile solid-state memory. They offered an almost instantaneous CP/M execution environment free of mechanical wear and tear.
Gem Drive
Cirtech's benchmark professional hard drive system. It provided offices and industries with massive space to centralize databases, coming equipped with integrated utilities capable of natively configuring and installing the LocoScript word processor directly onto the hard disk.
RamPort / Parallel Printer Port
A dual module manufactured by Cirtech for commercial firms such as Creative Technology Ltd. It provided users with extra RAM expansion for the PCW's memory bank alongside a standard parallel Centronics port.
SpeedPrint / SpeedPrint Plus
An optimization module and intermediate hardware interface acting as a high-capacity print spooler. It allowed the computer's internal memory to be freed immediately by sending documents to be printed in the background.
Sprinter Accelerator Card
The pinnacle of Cirtech's engineering milestones for the Amstrad PCW8256/8512 series, launched in 1991. It consisted of an internal accelerator card that temporarily replaced the native 4MHz Z80 processor with ultra-fast variants, drastically increasing the processing rate for calculations, file sorting, and typographical re-pagination within LocoScript 2/3.
Known Addresses (Scotland, UK)
Historical Operational Site (Currie Road)
Currie Road Industrial Estate, Galashiels, Selkirkshire (Postcode: TD1 2BP)
Original contact: Telephone (0896) 57790 | Internal Source Mailbox: AAH555
Engineering and Technical Office Site (Monksford Stables)
Monksford Stables, Newtown St. Boswells, Melrose, Roxburghshire (Postcode: TD6 0RU)
Final sales and support contact
Telephone: 01835 823898 | Fax: 01835 822471 | Email: [email protected]
