This mini forum is intended to provide a simple means of discussion about the Sharp  MZ 80K computer. If you want to share your own experience or memories, or add relevant information about this system: post a message!

My first proper computer. Built like a tank (well compared to the Sinclair ZX80). Felt like I could roll it down stairs and it would still work. Came with a booklet listing the ROM. You could follow step by step through the code and see how it read commands from the keyboard, displayed characters on the screen and loaded data from the tape drive. I learnt Z80 assembler programming on it. I also learnt Pascal using a neat little compiler from a company in Swindon I cannot remember the name of. You could inspect the compiler output to see how it implemented loops, subroutine calls, etc. This computer opened up possibilities to me that I hadn''t even dreamt of before. Two years later I had an MSc degree in Computing. Exciting times.

I am sitting in my office coding in .net and the like, and on my right is my Sharp MZ-80K that started it all! And it has a hi-res graphics card :-o

Like others, it was my first computer. My dad bought it for me, as I was a sickly child with really bad asthma and eczema and he thought that an active life-style wouldn’t be an option (he was wrong by the way).

I remember the Orange BASIC book that came with it, which I trawled through again and again to learn how to use this new machine. There was a TRON light-cycle like game in there over several pages called something like “Mr Smith and Mr Jones”, which I laboriously typed in with 1 finger. I remember being very upset when I accidentally cleared the screen and I thought I’d lost it all. That’s when I discovered the LIST command :-)

Though it looked like a Norse ship it was in fact meant to represent the Argo and thus a voyage of discovery.

If one sees the MZ80K M/C or Assembler Manuals the ship is larger and the figures on it can be seen to be Greek, also it is accompanied by a map indicating
Okeanos
Hippomolgen
Hyperboreer
Phonicien,etc

oh and what''s this just beneath the Argo
ahh THIS IS SPARTA!

sorry

P.S. Did anyone work out what the whole Norse Viking ship thing was about on all the manuals and software and branding?

That still puzzles me to this day....why?

Like Paul and Dean this was the first computer I used at age 9/10- at some point in the early 80''s, and started to learn BASIC on it. Early memories were trying to get Spectrum and other BASIC games to work on it (and failing).

I also played Space Invaders on it! Like the Spectrum it seemed to have a good catalogue of games.

One of the first computers I worked with, earnt me a fortune, with pre programmed letters I wrote in basic and pascal! I also doubled the tape speed of the cassette drive by halving the circumference of the drive wheel and also double the cpu clock speed with a switch at the back!! Those were the days!!! :-)

This was my first computer, bought in France, in the year 1983 (I think...). I was 17-year old at that time. I learned the basic and soon, the Z-80 assembly language : I needed speed for the plateform games I was trying to devellop. The tape was... so slow that I could spend hours trying to get something out of the 'Z-80 Machine language Reference Manual', while it was loading. *very* funny, as you can think ;)

Like Dean, the MZ80K was the first computer I ever used (I was probably about 8 at the time). I used to play "Block Kuzushi" and Space Invaders to death! Does anyone know if these games are available to download anywhere? I've still got the machine but it's not in full working order any more...

The MZ80k was my first computer in 1981 at the tender age of 11yrs old! I started writing games on it and at the age of 13, I sold my first commercial piece of software, the rest is history, thank you Sharp!

Hello,

does anyone know how I can copy my MZ-80K-disk into the PC ?

I tried CPDREAD, but it cannot. May be it is unable to read a sector size lower than 256 bytes ?

Best wishes
Karl-Heinz