Pico MZ at the RC2014 Assembly 2.0

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When the RC2014 assembly 2.0 was announced for Saturday 26th September 2026 at The National Museum of Computing, I decided to sign up as an exhibitor to give the first public outing of my Pico MZ Emulator. I had an enjoyable time at the first assembly last year. Everyone was very friendly, so it seemed less intimidating than diving into the deep end at another retrocomputing event.

The Pico MZ is RC2014 adjacent for a number of reasons, not least that it will run happily on a Pi Pico VGA Terminal with an SD card backpack or on a RP2040 VGA Terminal card.

My plan is to show it running ‘The Valley‘ (and other programs) alongside a real MZ-700. I’m intending to bring along my own RC2014 also running ‘The Valley’ – a port I created from my Sharp MZ version a little while ago. It was an interesting exercise getting it to run on a VT100 terminal emulator rather than a memory mapped display, but the code remains true to the original.

A Sharp MZ-700 with a Pico MZ (a repurposed RC2014 RP2040 VGA Terminal card).
Getting ready – a Sharp MZ-700, a Pico MZ on a repurposed RC2014 RP2040 VGA Terminal card plus handouts.

I’m currently trying to make sure that everything works properly and that I have a foolproof system1 to ensure that I don’t leave a vital cable or three behind at home in Devon.

I look forward to seeing fellow RC2014 and retrocomputing enthusiasts at the Assembly.

  1. You’ll have to attend in person to see whether my foolproof system works, as I won’t be admitting to any failures afterwards! ↩︎
Update 30/09/2026

I made it to the Assembly and had a very enjoyable time meeting everyone and showing off the Pico MZ. It was also a great event for hatching my winter plans to extend the Pico MZ, tinker with the emulator on the Pico RomWBW to see if I can make it run more quickly and generally think of dozens of possible new projects.

The Pico MZ and Sharp MZ-700 both playing the 1982 game Painful Man.
The Pico MZ and a Sharp MZ-700 playing the Painful Man game. In the middle is an RC2014 running CP/M which I used to show my port of “The Valley” during the afternoon session.