The card may have 256K or 1MB of DRAM and its design implicitly includes two built-in serial ports, due to the Z180 MPU having the necessary circuitry included in it. There are connections provided for system expansion, but expansion products never materialized.
The CardZ180 comes shipped with the popular Z-System operating environment. This consists of ZS/ZDDOS, NZCOM, and ZCPR34. Together, these provide a CP/M-compatible environment with a level of functionality and ease of use standard CP/M only dreamed of. Z-System has been called a blend of the best features of MS-DOS(!), VMS, and UNIX.
The CardZ180 was designed and produced by long-time AppliCard enthusiasts James P. Lill, Rod Pederson, Paul Devy, and Steven N. Hirsch. Rod Pederson was the principal hardware designer and Steve Hirsch wrote the 6502 command processor, device drivers, ProDOS interface and Z180 CBIOS.
Seven League Systems was (is?) a Canada-based firm. The CardZ180 was marketed in the U.S. by Slot Eight Associates. At one time, there were negotiations to sell the CardZ180 to (now defunct) Applied Engineering, but the deal never went through.
The CardZ180 is not currently available. High DRAM prices in 1986-89 pretty much killed it off. I'm carrying the torch for it now, since I think it's a way-cool computer... :-)
More to come...
© 1995 John D. Baker,
jdbaker@NoSpAm!blkbox.com
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