Presumably a lot of people have been waiting for this; and at last here it is, a complete book with almost everything about and for your SHARP MZ-800. This book will make you able to make ( better ) programs yourself, in BASIC as well as machine code. This book will also help you understand how your SHARP MZ-800 is built. This book is in the first place meant for the standard configuration of the SHARP MZ-800 with only a tape recorder. Of course the extra peripherals ( QD, FD, RAM-card, printer / plotter and HARD-DISK ) will also be discussed. For a few things in this book the VIDEO-RAM expansion will be required. We assume in this book that you have the standard tape BASIC ( 1Z016 - BASIC 800 and 1Z013 - BASIC 700 ) and the standard QD-BASIC ( 5Z-009 ).

Before this book could be written, a lot of research was needed. First we had to look at the market and the general interest had to be charted. Then we contacted some people to gather all information. Besides that a lot had to be done, but we will not discuss that here.

Without the assistance of certain people and clubs it would have been so much harder to get this book on the market, that is why we want to thank them extra in this introduction. Here are the names:

• SHARP Computer Club Elst, especially
• the whole editorship.
• the board of chairmen.
• the staff.

• The MZ users group of the HCC, especially
• Mr. C. Gans.
• Mr. H. Niessen.

• SHARP Computer Club Edam.

A special word of thanks goes to Han Bleeker, the chairman and editor in-chief of SHARP Computer Club Elst. He was the one that came up with the name of this book ( originally: De SHARP MZ-800 ten voeten uit. ). After this short word of thanks, some more information on this book. This book is made for everyone, from beginner to advanced programmer. This has only been made possible by collecting information from the best programmers in the land. Some things you will find here are up till now been known by one or two people. So you will find much new information here.

Although this is a very thick book (about 240 pages A4) and contains a lot; it is impossible to write all that is known about the SHARP MZ-800 in this book, that is why there is a reasonably big chance additions will come out. Those additions will cover about thirty pages. Whether or not there will be any additions, will depend on the interest in this book and how it will develop in our little world.

Anyway it is certain we will bring the software ( the BASIC-800 as well as the machine-code programs ) to the market. Enclosed in this book there is probably a paper with the programs we expect to publish ( on short term ).

We are also busy developing our own BASIC, a GAME-BASIC. This BASIC will lack lots of instructions not needed for making games and a few new instructions will be added that will improve the quality of the programs. Because of this approach it is possible to use more memory, another thing that will improve the quality of programs.

This book ( the original ) is made with a word processor named WordPerfect version 4.2 on an OLIVETTI M240 computer and was printed on an OLIVETTI DM-100 printer.

We would also like to thank you, the reader, for your interest. We hope that our book will help you in the world of the SHARP MZ-800.

With kind regards,
Arjan Habing and Mark de Rover

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