Acorn Z80 provides the speed

ACORN’S long awaited Z80 second processor for the BBC micro is now available.

Aside from providing a significant increase in speed of program execution, the system also makes the industry standard CP/M operating system and software available to the machine.

The Z80 processor, in a separate unit, also houses the operating system for CP/M 2.2.

The unit makes 55K of memory available for software and enables task handling to be split, with the Z80 running the software and the BBC’s 6502 concentrating on input/output screen graphics and system routines.

Although CP/M 2.2 is considered a somewhat elderly version of the system, it is becoming the standard for home micro’s — it is used by the Amstrad CPC464 and the Tatung Einstein (PCW, April 26).

Price for the processor is £299, but this figure includes three business software packages — wordprocessor, database and spreadsheet, Nucleus applications generator and the business language CIS Cobol. Two versions of Basic are also included — a ‘professional’ Basic and a Z80 version of BBC Basic.