Sharp MZ-80K

The Sharp MZ-80K is a home computer manufactured by Sharp, released in 1978 in Japan and introduced to Europe in 1979. It was one of Sharp's first personal computers and a founding member of the long-running MZ series. The MZ-80K features a Sharp LH0080A CPU (Z80A-compatible) running at 2 MHz, 48 KB RAM (approximately 32 KB usable), and an all-in-one design integrating a monochrome CRT monitor, a 40×25 character text display, a keyboard, and a built-in cassette tape recorder. Graphics are character-based only — preset shapes and icons via a character generator ROM, with no native high-resolution pixel-addressable graphics. The MZ-80K's most distinctive feature is its “clean computer” philosophy — the ROM contains only the SP-1002 monitor program for basic I/O and cassette loading, with no built-in BASIC or operating system. Users had to load their chosen programming language from cassette tape before doing anything. This approach invited third-party development — companies like Hudson Soft produced multiple languages and operating systems for the platform, and users could choose from various BASIC interpreters, Pascal, FORTRAN, and assembly language tools.