Oh no, not another computer museum - Sharp MZ700-800

The pre-PC Sharp computers all had a memory structure different from most home computers. It had mostly RAM and a small program to load software from cassette or disk. Most home computers had build in Basic. Nice if you start exploring the computer but it gets in the way if you want to use other programming languages.
Sharp delivered several on cassette.
MZ700

Sharp introduced the MZ700 series in November 1982, two months after the Commodore C64. As it came with very, very limited graphics capability (can you call 80x50 graphics?), it only had a chance in the education market. As it is constructed better than the C64, this might be its target audience.
Other siblings from the Sharp line (MZ80A, MZ80B, MZ800) had at least graphics and expansion for a disk system. There was even a CP/M for these machines.
The MZ711 is the basic model, the MZ721 had a build in cassette recorder and the top model, the MZ731 had a cute four color plotter.

MZ800

The MZ800 was de successor of the MZ80 line, with an MZ700 compatibility mode added.

FDC800

This is a third party floppy controller interface for the MZ800, build around the WD1773 floppy controller chip. It has a standard floppy drive connector which allows you to connect most standard floppy drives. Sharp marketed several drives for this, including the MZ-1F02 dual floppy Drive, looking exactly like the CE510F drive for the Sharp PC5000 line.

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Last updated: 2009-12-18

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