This is the first release of Pico MZ in 2026. It fixes a number of problems that I've found since the 3.0 release last November and introduces the ability to read and write multi-block BSD (BASIC sequential data) files. For ease of use (and code maintenance) it combines the MZ-80K,A…
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…
When I first started thinking about writing an emulator for the Sharp MZ-80K in September 2024, I decided that I was only going to attempt that model and no more. 15 months later (and a surprising RetroChallenge 2024/10 win)[^1] and here I am with a MZ-80A and MZ-700 emulator as…
I'm making decent progress with adding MZ-700 emulation to the Pico MZ. As far as I can tell I have functionally correct code and I haven't broken the MZ-80K and MZ-80A emulations. I've even managed to update the documentation! I've limited testing to the Pico for the moment, as my…
Autumn is here, so it means that the Caterham is SORNed until the spring, giving me time to tinker with some retrocomputing projects. The first project I'm attempting is to write a MZ-700 emulator for my Pico MZ platform. I've started off by creating a branch of the Pico MZ-80K/A…
I was recently sent a copy of Knight's WEE FORTRAN by Sharpworks who had rescued it from a tape belonging to HereBeDragons. There are a couple of references to it in issues 3 and 4 of the Knight's International Sharp User Group newsletters. In 1981 it retailed for £30+VAT and…
I've been working through a number of ideas to produce a Monster Chase / Robots hybrid for Sharp MZ series computers. I've been using my Pico MZ-80K/A emulator in K mode as the development machine. It's working well, except when I forget to save my work to SD card before…
Monster Chase is a 48 line BASIC program from "Stimulating Simulations", published in 1977. The book is 64 pages and is available from the Internet Archive. This program (the second in the book) attracted me as it reminded me a little of an old BSD game (Robots) that I used…