Sharpworks
@sharpworks.bsky.social
Retro gaming publisher for the Sharp MZ-80 and MZ-700 machines.
http://youtube.com/@mzsharpworks
https://mz-sharpworks.co.uk/
https://mz-80a.com/
https://basictoz80.wordpress.com/
Devon, UK
http://youtube.com/@mzsharpworks
https://mz-sharpworks.co.uk/
https://mz-80a.com/
https://basictoz80.wordpress.com/
Devon, UK
Yeah but it's no this...
September 29, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Yeah but it's no this...
#Sharptember A chance find amongst a bunch of tapes I won in an auction turned up something pretty interesting, a compilation tape of games written by Col Needham (the inventor of IMDb) and possibly his master tape from which he sold his mail order games. Here's his game "UFO Attack".
September 28, 2025 at 7:17 PM
#Sharptember A chance find amongst a bunch of tapes I won in an auction turned up something pretty interesting, a compilation tape of games written by Col Needham (the inventor of IMDb) and possibly his master tape from which he sold his mail order games. Here's his game "UFO Attack".
#Sharptember If you replace the CG-ROM file in the emulator with the Japanese one you can play Japanese MZ games with the correct graphics showing. Here's a bit of Namco's Galaxian demonstrating the much coveted single pixel graphic character that was not available in the western ROM.
September 27, 2025 at 6:05 PM
#Sharptember If you replace the CG-ROM file in the emulator with the Japanese one you can play Japanese MZ games with the correct graphics showing. Here's a bit of Namco's Galaxian demonstrating the much coveted single pixel graphic character that was not available in the western ROM.
#Sharptember The popular "Greedy Gremlins" game, this time for the MZ-80A. I recently rescued this from an official Knights tape - I don't think I realised there was an MZ-80A version until now! It makes use of the 80A's inverse display quite a lot.
September 25, 2025 at 4:57 PM
#Sharptember The popular "Greedy Gremlins" game, this time for the MZ-80A. I recently rescued this from an official Knights tape - I don't think I realised there was an MZ-80A version until now! It makes use of the 80A's inverse display quite a lot.
#Sharptember One of the more popular assembler environments on the MZ was Avalon's program Zen. It's a simple line editor and here I show a few of the commands. E to enter lines of code. P which prints x number of lines of the program and T to target a line of the program. /1
September 17, 2025 at 4:40 PM
#Sharptember One of the more popular assembler environments on the MZ was Avalon's program Zen. It's a simple line editor and here I show a few of the commands. E to enter lines of code. P which prints x number of lines of the program and T to target a line of the program. /1
#Sharptember So what makes the MZ-80A a bit unique amongst the other MZs available in the West? Well, it had double the VRAM. This meant, unlike other 8-bit computers, you could scroll the screen up and down as you can see in the video. Lines of BASIC could come back onto the screen! /1
September 11, 2025 at 4:40 PM
#Sharptember So what makes the MZ-80A a bit unique amongst the other MZs available in the West? Well, it had double the VRAM. This meant, unlike other 8-bit computers, you could scroll the screen up and down as you can see in the video. Lines of BASIC could come back onto the screen! /1
#Sharptember ! And here is a small bit of gameplay from the excellent adventure game Ropoko for the MZ-700, the English language version which will be available later this year. It's a tricky puzzle adventure with some bold big sprites and graphics that will keep you entertained for quite some time!
September 10, 2025 at 4:49 PM
#Sharptember ! And here is a small bit of gameplay from the excellent adventure game Ropoko for the MZ-700, the English language version which will be available later this year. It's a tricky puzzle adventure with some bold big sprites and graphics that will keep you entertained for quite some time!
#Sharptember Many people may not have noticed that the popular magazines of the time, e.g. C & VG and Your Computer were covering the MZ machines quite well. Having been through many homemade tapes from eBay auctions it's clear what one of the most popular type-ins was. Defender, of course :)
September 6, 2025 at 5:55 PM
#Sharptember Many people may not have noticed that the popular magazines of the time, e.g. C & VG and Your Computer were covering the MZ machines quite well. Having been through many homemade tapes from eBay auctions it's clear what one of the most popular type-ins was. Defender, of course :)
#Sharptember In Japan there were lots of games we didn’t have official ports of over here. Here’s two of them, Galaxian and Pac-Man, both by Namco and on cassette for the MZ-700! Pac-Man will even use the PCG add-on (rare here) for hi-res graphics.
September 5, 2025 at 5:15 PM
#Sharptember In Japan there were lots of games we didn’t have official ports of over here. Here’s two of them, Galaxian and Pac-Man, both by Namco and on cassette for the MZ-700! Pac-Man will even use the PCG add-on (rare here) for hi-res graphics.
Yeah looking in Audacity, it's 3 minutes in total which includes the backup copy, so probably around 1 minute 45 or so (after the header's included). I looked at S-BASIC and that's about 6 minutes including the backup copy! So indeed 3 minutes or thereabouts on the MZ-700.
September 3, 2025 at 10:16 AM
Yeah looking in Audacity, it's 3 minutes in total which includes the backup copy, so probably around 1 minute 45 or so (after the header's included). I looked at S-BASIC and that's about 6 minutes including the backup copy! So indeed 3 minutes or thereabouts on the MZ-700.
Yep, it's #Sharptember and here is something which I've only seen once. In my own collection 😀 Indeed, CP/M was released for the Sharp MZ machines, even the MZ-80A. The ability for the 80A to switch out its Monitor ROM from $0000 to $C000 allows CP/M to run.
September 2, 2025 at 6:38 PM
Yep, it's #Sharptember and here is something which I've only seen once. In my own collection 😀 Indeed, CP/M was released for the Sharp MZ machines, even the MZ-80A. The ability for the 80A to switch out its Monitor ROM from $0000 to $C000 allows CP/M to run.
September is now (un)officially #Sharptember 😀🙂To kick things off here is the best photo ever taken of the Sharp MZ-80A and its disk drives - courtesy of @heredragons.be
The 80A came out in 1982 as a direct successor to the MZ-80K. It is a Z80 machine running at 2MHz.
The 80A came out in 1982 as a direct successor to the MZ-80K. It is a Z80 machine running at 2MHz.
September 1, 2025 at 4:41 PM
September is now (un)officially #Sharptember 😀🙂To kick things off here is the best photo ever taken of the Sharp MZ-80A and its disk drives - courtesy of @heredragons.be
The 80A came out in 1982 as a direct successor to the MZ-80K. It is a Z80 machine running at 2MHz.
The 80A came out in 1982 as a direct successor to the MZ-80K. It is a Z80 machine running at 2MHz.
My entry for the recent 'BASIC Card Game Jam' on itch.io was a reasonably accurate simulation of 2-player UNO. Here's a video which shows some of it working. I still have some improvements to make though but will release for download eventually. It also works better in the BASIC compiler :D
August 28, 2025 at 4:28 PM
My entry for the recent 'BASIC Card Game Jam' on itch.io was a reasonably accurate simulation of 2-player UNO. Here's a video which shows some of it working. I still have some improvements to make though but will release for download eventually. It also works better in the BASIC compiler :D
If you see this, quote this post with a title screen that is iconic to you.
August 9, 2025 at 7:19 AM
If you see this, quote this post with a title screen that is iconic to you.
Oh great! Turns out I can’t use it without a special I/F device / unit. Come on Sharp, please just make something that works straight out of the box for a change !
August 8, 2025 at 5:04 PM
Oh great! Turns out I can’t use it without a special I/F device / unit. Come on Sharp, please just make something that works straight out of the box for a change !
Reminds me of this gem
August 8, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Reminds me of this gem
Looking forward to seeing if this works anyway
August 8, 2025 at 10:50 AM
Looking forward to seeing if this works anyway
A fascinating arrival today! Brand new condition, unopened QuickDisk drive for the MZ-700. It’s not related to my recent IO Unit acquisition. Apparently, it’s more like tape but much faster. It’ll sit in place of the 700’s tape deck.
August 8, 2025 at 9:30 AM
A fascinating arrival today! Brand new condition, unopened QuickDisk drive for the MZ-700. It’s not related to my recent IO Unit acquisition. Apparently, it’s more like tape but much faster. It’ll sit in place of the 700’s tape deck.
Can’t necessarily tell from the diagram either if it’s the same sort of card :) I’ll unbox it soonish, once I’ve done a bunch of other things waiting in the queue
August 4, 2025 at 3:52 PM
Can’t necessarily tell from the diagram either if it’s the same sort of card :) I’ll unbox it soonish, once I’ve done a bunch of other things waiting in the queue
Another awesome arrival today :) The expansion unit for the MZ-700. This one appears to have never been opened or used!
August 4, 2025 at 9:39 AM
Another awesome arrival today :) The expansion unit for the MZ-700. This one appears to have never been opened or used!
My small book collection for the Sharp MZ series :)
July 27, 2025 at 3:23 PM
My small book collection for the Sharp MZ series :)
Just rifling through my stuff as a tidy up and found this!
July 27, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Just rifling through my stuff as a tidy up and found this!
Now that’s a nice cover!
July 26, 2025 at 11:05 AM
Now that’s a nice cover!
Another really bad tape opened up, transferred to new cassette shell, eventually read properly & digitised and now waiting to be written back to decent tape and re-glued together :) Only got this game very recently too, so it's a new one for the collection.
July 23, 2025 at 3:31 PM
Another really bad tape opened up, transferred to new cassette shell, eventually read properly & digitised and now waiting to be written back to decent tape and re-glued together :) Only got this game very recently too, so it's a new one for the collection.