![]() History of the MZ-2500
written by Maurice Hawes / SUC/UK
Source: SUC-magazine November 1999, Volume 19 Number 3, p. 21 |
A Brief History of the MZ-2500 |
We checked that, using the MODE switch, the MZ-2500 can indeed run software from the MZ-2000 or the MZ-80B. We also found that in MZ-2500 mode we could redefine the 5.25 drives as MZ-80B and thus transfer the B version of Tanswells Disassembler to the MZ-2500. We were then able to tweak that Disassembler to run on the MZ-2500, and use it to sort out the BASIC and unravel the RAM / ROM memory map ( see Vol. 18 Nos. 1 - 2 ); in a nutshell it uses sophisticated bank-switching to handle a maximum of 384KB, and with this amount of memory, BASIC announces 234655 Bytes Free ! There is also a version of Personal CP/M ( PCP/M ) for the MZ-2500. So far we have been unable to obtain a copy of this system; but we do have its Manual ( in Japanese ! ) and this contains enough English words to deduce that MZ-2500 PCP/M is similar to MZ-800 PCP/M but more extensive, as it includes the extra files TRANS.COM, SPOOL.COM, MEMDISK.COM and WM.COM - the last being a stand-alone wordprocessor called WORDMASTER ( v2.03 ). BASIC 6Z002 puts date-stamps on its files; the earliest file on the
MZ-6Z002 master disk is dated 2nd October 1985, but the most important
system files are dated 6 - 7th February 1986. |