PEARSON@sumex-ki10 (01/13/83)
I have been using the Z-100 now for several months and have been very happy. We got one low profile with NEC hi-res color monitor, and then bought 3 more. The CP/M 85 that comes with it is almost completely compatible with the old HEath CP/M, and completely compatible with standard 2.2. It features using the 8088 for most bios functions, with full track buffereing, so the machine is fast at disk i/o (within the confines of CP/M). This gives you a 61K TPA, but means you don't get to fiddle with the bios much. The MSDOS is also fine, I have gotten to like it, disk i/o is very fast and no more logging in new disks, but the languages ( at least Fortran and possibly Pascal) are terrible. The Lattice 'C' compiler is nice, however. Physically the machine is great. The keyboard/terminal emulate a VT52 for timesharing operations, every key repeats and the key board can be customized to send out whatever characters/key you desire. You get a bios that supports 2 5" and 2 8" drivess on either OS. The system comes with a plug for the standard 50 pin 8" drive interface. The system has 128K from the factory, you can buy the next 64K to plug in on the main board for < $65 from anyone but Heath (4164 200ns). Same with color RAM, forget heath, who sells 32K chips, and buy 64K for much less. The 3 blocks of color ram can be used with a high res color or black/white (you get gray) or low res NTSC composite monitor (TV). In fact, I think you can use both the b/w and color at once. You can't beat the price for the kit (perhaps now the MPX-16 will come down) but don't buy memory from Heath and you can probably get the software package from Zenith mail order distributors for 20% off. (Note there are several very good Zenith discount distributors that give 15% to 20% off assembled list prices - but then the kit is only take 6hrs assembly). Any language that runs on the IBM-PC will probably run on the Z-100, this is definately ture for IBM Fortran and Pascal, and Lattice and Computer Innovations 'C' compilers, but not true for DBase II or anything that uses the screen in a sophisticated way (IBM screen use often uses a direct IBM system call, instead of MSDOS, which gives a WILD INTERRUPT on the Z-100. This could be fixed). There is no provision for an 8087. I like it, I recommend it to my friends, the best part is the graphics, and it is a very good deal. Now if I could only afford it. Bill Pearson -------