I was a field engineer hitting that stuff with assorted things to fix faults back in those days. The first AMSTRAD PC that came out was a simple clone - PC1512 and 1640 I think. They sold well as they were cheap but worked.
Then they went all clever on themselves and designed their own to cut out the middleman. The PC2286 was a disaster. They replaced the proven western digital hard disc controller with some bit of dodgy east end pap. You would use it for a few months and then it would just fail to boot up and your data was no longer there.....big burp.
I worked with a brilliant sales guy called George Georgiou who was king of the last minute tender responses. He would work overnight and then print and deliver it on his way home in the morning.
We bought a couple of the 2286's and one morning I came in to find it spread across the car park in a thousand bits. It rebooted at 2am and then never came back. He literally went postal and sent it out the 2nd floor window at about 3am.
Never bought an amstrad product since.
