This mini forum is intended to provide a simple means of discussion about the Vector Graphics  MZ computer. If you want to share your own experience or memories, or add relevant information about this system: post a message!

Jay writes, "It did, in fact, have a rough graphic facility. Each character cell was divided into six parts, and by changing the character ROM offset you could draw monochrome graphics with 160 x 72 resolution."

"Rough" is a good word for it. As I recall, the monitor display was memory mapped $ but there was a bug in the mapping that caused several of the memory locations to display in the wrong place on the monitor. I wrote a subroutine that took in the *intended* screen location, made any necessary corrections to the coordinates, and wrote to the correct$ed$ areas of the memory map to get the intended pixels to display properly.

To be sure, the vast majority of pixels displayed properly. There was only a handful that displayed wrong $ but enough to mess things up.

I worked at New Dimensions in Computing in East Lansing where we sold Vector Graphics (and Exidys and Ataris). They used some CP/M accounting programs on the Vector Graphic, including a buggy sales tax program in MS BASIC. They asked me to fix it and that''s when I learned about inexact decimal values in binary floating point numbers (as opposed to Atari''s exact BCD values). I added some rounding and fixed the bug.

I wrote using Memorite running under CP/M on a Vector Graphic System Z from 1984 until it became impossible to port files or support the hardware. In 1987 I found a man in Florida who offered to transfer from hard-sectored floppies at a ridiculous rate, so I spent 20 hours porting files over the parallel (printer) port (from the Vector to a 286 machine), using pip.com. ("pip a:*.* > com1:"-- I think) It worked, but Still miss Memorite!

I have several Vector MZ's and Vector 3's. My original Vector MZ was purchased in June of 1980. It was configured as a System B (Two floppies, software, and a Qume impact letter quality printer). I still use one of the machines to this day.

workked with this equipment until the arrival of the Pc.
At the company where I worked we where runnig accounting an word procesing. The last configuration we had was a multiuser CPM with 3 stations sharing a 8" winchester.
The software was wrote in basic and I compile some modules except one because the compiler had a bug and with the next version of the compiler the size of the program was very big and can´t fit in memory. Old Days!

We had a bunch of these machines back in the mid-80s, and I still have some hard-sectored floppies. Does anyone know of any company that can read these? They are standard 5.25, CPM 2.2 disks, but with 16 sector holes. It would be good to get back the source code that is still on them!