Cambridge Z88
| Cambridge Z88 |
The Cambridge Z88 was an A4-size, lightweight, portable Z80-based computer with a built-in combined word processing/spreadsheet/database application called Pipedream, along with several other apps/utilities, such as a Z80-version of BBC BASIC. Despite the lightness of the machine, its construction was surprisingly robust, including its membrane/chiclet keyboard which was both comfortable and almost inaudible.
The computer used memory slots for RAM expansion, removable mass storage and proprietary program use, although one might have some liberty for which purpose of these, the three slots were used. Since the slots genuinely did use RAM, EPROM and ROM for their data transfer, the transfer speeds were usually very high, but the maximum storage afforded by any one such card, correspondingly low and expensive to boot.
Though the display had only eight lines, the user manual claimed that it was only printing the "center lines" for "convenience" of the user reading the manual. A similar kafkaesque subterfuge extended to the display itself. When displaying a word processor function or its native DEC VT52-type terminal emulator, it wasted one line to display a square image of an "imaginary" full screen, which supposedly contained a computer screen, of which the current seven lines were merely a limited view.
The Z88 was designed by Sir Clive Sinclair and released by his company Cambridge Computers in 1987 (Sir Clive having been bereft of the right to market the computer as the Sinclair Z88 after selling Sinclair Research's computer business to Amstrad in 1986).