Research Machines is based in Oxford, England and the RM-380Z was their first model. It was designed specifically for the education market and the vast majority of its users were in this area.
The computer was based around the Z80A processor. It had a clever physical bus made of ribbon cable with IDC crimp on connectors obviating the problems of poor connections associated with edge connectors.
The basic system was composed of a 4 KB main unit, a typewriter style separate keyboard and a monochrome monitor. Single or dual floppy disc drives could be inserted in the main housings. 8" floppy drives (2 x 500 KB) were also available as well as a ‘High resolution’ colour graphics board.
The CP/M operating system was used to run lots of educational software.
Before and during the time that the BBC computers were introduced in English schools, the 380Z and its successor the Link 480Z met a great success, mostly due to their high reliability.
The RM-280Z should be the kit version of the 380Z but RM never shipped any kits but only pre-built 380Z machine, thinking better of the support problems it would cause.
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Cassette tape version, by Simon Elliott:
I seem to recall using an early version of the RM380Z that used to load the OS from cassette tape, not floppy disk.
Once loaded, if the reset button was pressed, the 'J103' trick could be used to bypasss the reload; but the initial load was a real pain.
When the school I was attending purchased the disk drive and memory upgrade, all us CS students thought we'd entered computer heaven. ;-)
I also recall a very primitive add-on sound option, beeps from something not unlike a modern PC speaker.
Gary adds:
The 5.25" floppy drives were renowned for sudden failure caused by the rubber drive band coming off the drive. It was a simple matter to pop open the lid and re-seat the band.
Ben Jones remembers:
I remember using a 380Z in Canterbury, around 1980. As well as the excellent text editor (can't remember what it was called now, but I found nothing comparable for a decade afterwards), I loved the simplicity of programming it in assembler.
Two geeks I knew used to hang out in the school's computer room, one writing a version of Defender in 6502 Assembler on the BBC, the other writing Space Invaders in Z80 on the 380Z (I myself did a PacMan-like game on the 380Z - and I've still got the floppies). Any time the Space Invaders code hung, its author would pause an instant, look up, sniff, comment that he "could smell the 380Z's hi-res board burning" and dive for the white button. :-)
But best of all was the fact that even after a 'hard reset' like that, you simply had to enter "J103" to jump back to where you were before ("J100" did a full reboot). I think 0103 as a recovery address stayed around for years (or even decades) -- disassemble any .com programme even now, and you'll probably find that the first, 3-byte, instruction at 0100 jumps to the main start routine, while the next one jumps somewhere else. Oh if only that worked with Windoze... :-(
On your page, Ben Jones remembers: " I remember using a 380Z in Canterbury, around 1980. As well as the excellent text editor (can''t remember what it was called now, but I found nothing comparable for a decade afterwards), I loved the simplicity of programming it in assembler."
It was called TXED. Back in 1979-83 I was a grad student who went hacking at RML''s establishments (which varied over the years) at evenings and weekends. I was later the first employee of the spin-off company High Level Hardware where my principle role was writing the system microcode.
I still have a blue-box RM380Z in my attic, as well as a pair of black-box systems fitted with 5.25" floppies. Two sets of 8" floppy drives are up there too.
Happy days.
Tuesday 2nd February 2010
Paul (UK)
The 380z was the first computer I ever used at school in the late 70s. I''ve been in Computing ever since! That''s the inspiration for naming my Blog on IT 380z.blogspot.com.
As Alan Drew has commented, the machine I used had cassette as media, not diskettes. We upgraded to a 480z - that had floppies and CP/M
My first real computing program was a game on the 380z called ''Shoot the Rapids''. Taught me the basics and got me hooked on programming!
We had one of these at my school (Charters, Sunningdale), the tape deck (we had no floppies) was used to load Basic rather than the operating system. I think CP/M was in ROM. (though for all I know the Teacher had already loaded CP/M from the tape)
They were shipped in to schools when CSE Computer Studies was first introduced to secondary school education.
Ctrl-F bought up the CP/M Front Panel: register contents stack pointers and a dis-assembled memory map. My first introduction to Assembly language programming, much fun hass been had since with the knowledge gained from that front panel.
As per Ben Jones post, I was one of those geeks who used to hang around in the computer room Z80 Pontoon (blackjack) was my goal though.
Tuesday 1st July 2008
Alan Drew (UK)
NAME
RM-380Z
MANUFACTURER
Research Machines
TYPE
Professional Computer
ORIGIN
United Kingdom
YEAR
1977
BUILT IN LANGUAGE
None
KEYBOARD
Full stroke 60 keys QWERTY layout
CPU
Z80-A
SPEED
4 MHz.
CO-PROCESSOR
None
RAM
4 KB expandable to 56 KB
ROM
2 or 3 KB (Monitor)
TEXT MODES
40 chars (later optional 80) x 24 lines
GRAPHIC MODES
80 x 72 monochrome as standard 320 x 192 16 colours and 640 x 480 4 colours with optional HRG board
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