Despite having a line of business computers and an eventual move into PC territory that included portable machines, Amstrad never produced a CPC which wasn’t anchored to the desktop.

He decided that his portable Amstrad sessions would be far more enjoyable ... a modern display into the otherwise largely original computer. Getting the new LCD’s PCB ready for installation.

Amstrad had captured 36pc of the European PC market, had gobbled up rival Sinclair, and had launched the first of its affordable portable computers – a year before the Macintosh Portable came along.

Through the Cambridgeshire-based firm, he was involved with the design of the first Amstrad portable computers, early mobile phones and game consoles. The first news of Mr Dickinson's death came ...

In the early 1980s, he was one of the first kids to have a “portable” computer, a 10-kilogram Amstrad PPC512. Reed brought it to class until one of the school’s bullies knocked it out of his ...