Introduction

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KnaxMax
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Feb 05, 2018 3:53 pm
Location: Munich - Germany

Introduction

Post by KnaxMax »

Hi,
just discovered this Sharp Forum and wanted to introduce myself a bit:

- male
- *1974
- living in south of Germany
- MZ-821 was my first computer in 1986

I did some BASIC coding with it, before switching to a more popular and powerful machine in mid 1988 (an Amiga).
But I never forgot the Sharp completely and never gave it away. Some weeks ago I took it from it's decades of sleep to show it to my sons.
They are 7 and 9 years old and to my own astonishment they liked some of my old BASIC games.

So I'm a little bit motivated to dive deeper into MZ-800 coding again. Just ordered some RAM chips to update VRAM to 32K and bought some Quickdisks.
I started a PacMan clone in MZ-800 BASIC and searching for information how to speed graphics up a bit.

I never managed to get into Z80 machine code back than (at age of 12-14) but later did some 68k and i86 assembly.
Also want to look at some emulators to do coding at the PC.
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mz-80a
Posts: 403
Joined: Thu Jan 25, 2018 10:46 am
Location: Devon, UK
Contact:

Re: Introduction

Post by mz-80a »

Welcome to the forum!

Not a bad idea having an introduction topic.

- male
- 1974 also!
- southwest uk

My MZ-80A was my 2nd computer (after the ZX-81). I was pretty young when it came out so didn't make a whole load of games myself. I used to type out all the BASIC programs in the manual and loved playing the Space Invaders game and Lunar Lander. Now, many years later I'm in the process of teaching myself Z80 and have begun (last year) a MZ homebrew label to publish games etc for any MZ machines (although focusing on MZ-80A to begin with). Always looking for more games to publish if anyone's making anything! Would really love to give the MZ-80A the sorts of games that it could have had all those years ago (if it had had more love :) ). It's the 'forgotten' MZ really.... in my opinion.
MZ-80A Secrets
https://mz-80a.com/

Sharpworks (Sharp MZ homebrew)
https: //mz-sharpworks.co.uk/
Jo Even
Site Admin
Posts: 152
Joined: Wed Jan 17, 2018 9:28 pm

Re: Introduction

Post by Jo Even »

Welcome to the forum :)
goev
Posts: 18
Joined: Wed Jan 17, 2018 9:33 pm

Re: Introduction

Post by goev »

Yes, welcome to the forum!

- male
- Also 1974 :D
- Live in the southernmost town in Norway.

MZ-721 was my first computer. Got it in 85. Started programming BASIC on it. Made a few, mostly crappy, games for it.
Upgraded to the insanely cool MZ-820 with QD in 1986. Loved that machine so much that I cried when my parent sold it for the Atari ST the year after :lol: Got heavily addicted to the ST as soon as I saw the ultra crisp HiRes monitor, so my sad face didn't last long.

My parents bought back the MZ-700 when they sold the MZ-800, so that is the one I have now. My wife bought me a MZ-820 as a gift (after a tip from Jo Even) a few years back.
pango
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Feb 14, 2018 7:51 pm

Re: Introduction

Post by pango »

Hi all!

- male also
- 1969
- southwest of France
- PC-1211 was my first (pocket) computer, in autumn 1980

I discovered computers the summer prior thanks to an parents' friend industrial drawing professor that was also in charge of his college (Micral computers, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micral). Apparently I was obsessed enough with those computers that my parents brought me to an office machines shop in the next provincial town (named Laussucq after manager's lastname, the shop doesn't exist anymore), and bought me a Sharp PC-1211 pocket computer, and some time later, its printer.
I remember using it a lot, experimenting my own stuff, or tricks found in the press (like the trick to control individual pixels, sort of). Resources where limited (1.4KB for program, not very fast either), I remember that writing a program to play tic-tac-toe has been a challenge. It had a long lasting bug, that turned out to be a 0 instead of an O (or the reverse) somewhere.
The shop manager liked me (or maybe he knew that those machines would be nothing without people to write programs for them, but my young self was totally unaware of similar considerations), so he lended me other hardware, like the PC-1500 (even its amazing 4 colors mini tracer for a while!), a MZ-80A, and later a MZ-80B (with full graphical upgrades: two 320x200 bw individually switchable graphical planes). I wrote many BASIC programs back in the day, from games, 2D drawing programs, 3D landscapes attempts, to language interpreters,... All those are who knows where, it's quite probably that the tapes are now long gone.
Anyway, the PC-1211 is now dead (no display for some reason) and I gave back all the rest, but all this bootstrapped by developer career, and just watching resources about them, I smell new plastic odors :o

Regards
KnaxMax
Posts: 19
Joined: Mon Feb 05, 2018 3:53 pm
Location: Munich - Germany

Re: Introduction

Post by KnaxMax »

Hi and welcome to this forum.

I found that there are quite a bunch of old french Sharp user magazines on archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/Sharpentiers
hlide
Posts: 681
Joined: Thu Jan 25, 2018 9:31 pm

Re: Introduction

Post by hlide »

I know them very well :)
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mz-80a
Posts: 403
Joined: Thu Jan 25, 2018 10:46 am
Location: Devon, UK
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Re: Introduction

Post by mz-80a »

KnaxMax wrote: Thu Feb 15, 2018 3:36 pm Hi and welcome to this forum.

I found that there are quite a bunch of old french Sharp user magazines on archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/Sharpentiers
Wow! That's excellent, thanks! Never knew about these...
MZ-80A Secrets
https://mz-80a.com/

Sharpworks (Sharp MZ homebrew)
https: //mz-sharpworks.co.uk/
sharpmz
Posts: 19
Joined: Wed Feb 07, 2018 4:41 pm

Re: Introduction

Post by sharpmz »

KnaxMax wrote: Thu Feb 15, 2018 3:36 pm I found that there are quite a bunch of old french Sharp user magazines on archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/Sharpentiers
I know them too. I got some by a fan (and one of the makers of old-computers.com) for scans some years ago:
https://www.sharpmz.org/sharpentiers.htm

Very interesting content, but couldn't read them.
hlide
Posts: 681
Joined: Thu Jan 25, 2018 9:31 pm

Re: Introduction

Post by hlide »

Well, if their text can be retrieved by a tool, I could have them translated with a translator then correct them.
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