retrocomputing ephemera

Celestial BASIC – Lunar Eclipses

Posted on 7 March 20257 March 2025 by Tim

I used my Pico MZ-80K emulator to create a version of the ECLIP program from Celestial BASIC by Eric Burgess. The code correctly predicts that the next lunar eclipse is

Displaying Sharp BASIC programs on modern computers

Posted on 2 March 20252 May 2025 by Tim

I’ve been working on a way of displaying Sharp MZ BASIC programs from a digital tape file (mzf/mzt/m12 formats) on a modern computer. I’ve used a Raspberry Pi 5 as

Pico MZ-80A – First release

Posted on 8 February 202510 February 2025 by Tim

With winter dragging on, I’ve had plenty of time to add the code needed for MZ-80A emulation into the Pico MZ-80K/A, as I’m now rather inelegantly referring to it. From

A Pimoroni VGA Demo Base and Raspberry Pi Pico 2 - supported hardware for the Pico MZ-80K

A Pico MZ-80A ?

Posted on 30 January 20257 February 2025 by Tim

When I set out to create the Pico MZ-80K, I swore that I’d only attempt to emulate the Sharp MZ-80K and not the whole MZ range. But it is very

A Pico MZ-80K using the RC2014 RP2040 VGA terminal card to run the Sharp version of Space Invaders

Pico MZ-80K and the RC2014 RP2040 VGA terminal card

Posted on 8 January 202516 January 2025 by Tim

A new year and I’m back to tinkering with the Pico MZ-80K emulator. I’ve started work on support for the RC2014’s RP2040 VGA terminal card. I’d not had very much

Advent of Code 2024

Posted on 1 January 20252 January 2025 by Tim

Happy new year! This year’s resolution is to blog a little more frequently, so I thought I’d start with a retrospective of last December’s Advent of Code. I chose Fortran

Pico MZ-80K now with Pico 2 support

Posted on 22 November 20241 January 2025 by Tim

I’ve temporarily given up on the floppy disk emulation for the Pico MZ-80K. I’ve managed to get the read emulation working reliably, but not writing. I appear to be missing

Pico MZ-80K floppy disks (2)

Posted on 16 November 202412 June 2026 by Tim

The quest continues! The disk images I found a couple of days ago turned out not to be MZ-80K compatible ones (at least, not with the original drives and SP-6015

Pico MZ-80K floppy disks (1)

Posted on 11 November 202412 November 2024 by Tim

Now that I have a release 1 of the Pico MZ-80K, I’m starting to work my way through a number of enhancements that have sprung to mind as I’ve tested

RetroChallenge 2024/10 reflections

Posted on 31 October 202412 November 2024 by Tim

I started this year’s project with a challenge from an old Sharp Users Club magazine. “Who on earth would want to emulate an MZ-80K … ?” We do hobbies for

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retrocomputing ephemera