The Cromemco Z-1 uses an IMSAI chassis, with 22 card slots and a 28 amperes (about 300 watts) power supply. The major innovation of the Z-1 is the use of the 4 Mhz version of the Z-80 processor. It is also equiped with its own 2708 type EPROM burner card.
Like the IMSAI, the Basic version of the Cromemco Z-1 is programmed through the front panel switches, and results are read from the front panel leds... Hopefuly, it is possible to connect a standard Video terminal through the serial port.
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The computer in Wargames was a Wang, and it had an 8" disk drive, which these certainly didn''t, it was quite a callenge just to connect a hex keypad and a cassette recorder !
Thursday 26th May 2022
david
The Z-1 had 3 significant changes from the Imsai 8080 upon which it was based: 1) The Motherboard was replaced with a Cromemco Blitz Bus (the rare version of this bus with the front connector offset to accept the front panel) 2) the CPU was replaced with the Cromemco ZPU, and 3) the film in the front panel was replaced with one that says Cromemco Z-1.
The Blitz Bus was supposed to handle higher frequency better, to support the 4 MHz ZPU.
On my Z-1, the fuse was relocated to the rear panel. I suspect this was also done by Cromemco when they created the Z-1, but I don''t have confirmation.
