Amstrad Em@iler Plus

Investigating (and maybe resurrecting) an Amstrad Em@iler.

The Em@iler is a standalone email appliance, marketed by Amstrad (and BT) in the UK during the 2000’s. It used a dial-up (PSTN) connection to reach (the now discontinued) services platform using local rate phone calls. Devices that were active when the service was shutdown received a final “update” that locked them to only provide telephony functionality. Devices that weren’t active never received the update, and are “time-bombed” which will disable all functionality after a timeout.

When the devices were originally marketed I’d already got internet and email access via university, so never experienced them in their prime, but they’ve always interested me as a quirky device.

There a good summary of the device on Wikipedia, based in part on this archive of information https://amstrad-e3-hacking.freeforums.net/thread/15/amstrad-iler-mailer which also provides good background to the issues with continued use of these devices (if they didn’t receive the final config “update”).

Having purchased a couple active (not “time bombed”) devices from ebay I’m aiming review and document the hardware (and ideally software). Ultimately I’d like to get the devices doing something interesting .. this may or may not involve the original mainboard (and software). Blindly recreating the original server-side will be near impossible (not to mention having to also run PSTN infrastructure!), so interfacing the display, and peripherals to another SBC will be a likely first step … unless investigation of the flash and current SOC proves fruitful.

This collection of pages will document my progress.