The Amstrad PCW8256 and the PCW8512 were part of a line of personal computers produced by Amstrad from 1985 to 1998. They were sold in Germany under the brand name Joyce.

The PC8256 was launched in 1985. It came with 256KByte of RAM and wa equipped with a single floppy disk drive. Only a few months later the PCW8512 was launched with 512KByte of RAM and two floppy disk drives.

Both systems came in a package that consited of a printer, a keyboard and the computer/monitor. The monitor and computer came in a single case. The keyboard had 82 keys, with some keys specifically designed for word processing. The PC8256 machine could be expanded to 512KByte RAM and an extra floppy drive could be mounted so it could be made compatible with the PCW8512.

The Operating system for the PCW8256 and the PCW8512 was CP/M, and the system came with the word processing application Locoscript.

PCW stood for Personal Computer Word-processor, which was the main purpose of these machines. The main focus of the marketing campaigns was the price which caused many people to use the PCW for word processing over more game oriented machines such as the spectrum and the earlier Amstrads.

The Z80 quickly became popular in the personal computer market, with many early personal computers, such as the TRS-80 and Sinclair ZX80, using the Z80 as their central processing unit (CPU). It was also widely used in home computers, such as the MSX range, SORD, and the Amstrad CPC, as well as in many arcade games. Additionally, it was also used in other applications such as industrial control systems, and embedded systems. The Z80 was widely used until the mid-1980s, when it was gradually replaced by newer microprocessors such as the Intel 80286 and the Motorola 68000.

The Z80 microprocessor was developed by Zilog, a company founded by Federico Faggin in 1974. The Z80 was released in July 1976, as a successor to the Intel 8080. It was designed to be fully compatible with the 8080, but also included new features such as an improved instruction set, more powerful interrupts, and a more sophisticated memory management system.

The Z80 quickly became popular in the personal computer market, with many early personal computers, such as the TRS-80 and Sinclair ZX80, using the Z80 as their central processing unit (CPU). It was also widely used in home computers, such as the MSX range, SORD, and the Amstrad CPC, as well as in many arcade games. Additionally, it was also used in other applications such as industrial control systems, and embedded systems. The Z80 was widely used until the mid-1980s, when it was gradually replaced by newer microprocessors such as the Intel 80286 and the Motorola 68000. The design was licensed to Synertek and Mostek as well as the European SGS.

The Z80s instruction set is binary compatible with the Intel 8080, so that 8080 code such as the CP/M Operating System and Intel's PL/M compiler for the 8080 can run unmodified on the Z80. The Z80 had many enhancements over the 8080 such as 16-bit data movement instructions, block copy and block I/O instructions, single bit addressing of all registers, IX/IY offset registers, better interrupt system and a complete duplicate register file for context switching during an interrupt.