Overview

MZ-700

The Sharp MZ-700 lacks easy expansion capability as afforded to higher end machines such as the MZ-80B with it's 6 slot expansion cage. It must generally rely on dedicated Sharp expansion devices which allow one expansion device at a time to be connected, ie. the MZ-1E14 QD Interface and MZ-1F11 Quick Disk Drive.

To address, in a limited way, the shortcoming, Sharp sold two options, a 2 bay external expansion cage for the MZ-700, the MZ-1U06 and a 3 bay external expansion cage, the MZ-1U03. These devices allowed two/three standard MZ series expansion cards to be connected with the MZ-700 along with adequate power provision. Unfortunately, they are very rare so you could be waiting a long time for one to come up for sale.

If you have an MZ-700 and want to connect a dedicated MZ-Series expansion card, ie. not one dedicated for the MZ-700 via its expansion port such as the MZ-1E14, it wont be possible unless you make a DIY adapter.

Thus there is a need to be able to quickly and cheaply connect an expansion card of choice to the MZ-700 especially for floppy disk use which is very desirable with the ageing of tape magnetic media.

The EXT-700 fills this gap, allowing for a single expansion card to be connected to the MZ-700, either vertically or horizontally (useful for tinkering and debugging). A separate cable connects to one of the two joystick ports to source 5V (up-to 1 Amp) which is necessary as the MZ-700 expansion port fails to provide a power supply.

MZ-1500

The MZ-1500 is a Japanese internal market machine which fits in between the MZ-700 and MZ-800, offering the expansion capabilities of the MZ-800 via its 2 slot expansion cage (only one easily accessible). It also maintains all the expansion options of the MZ-700 such as the external expansion bus.

The EXT-700 connects to the MZ-1500 expansion bus to provide an additional expansion card slot which is very useful for design and debugging of your own cards and to add extra options to the machine. A separate cable connects to one of the two joystick ports to source 5V (up-to 1 Amp) which is necessary as the MZ-1500 expansion port fails to provide a power supply.

Whats Included.

• 1 x EXT-700 Expansion Adapter comprising 50pin MZ-700/1500 expansion bus edge connector to 44pin vertical/horizontal mounted expansion card connector. Includes 4 times stand-offs to support adapter.
• 1 x Power cable, comprising joystick compatible 5pin connector to 2 pin JST plug to enable 5V to be fed to the expansion card.

Please Note

The design of the MZ-700/MZ-1500 uses memory mapping via I/O registers and if the expansion card you connect includes a ROM/RAM in the region 0xD000:0xFFFF and does not mirror the memory mapping I/O logic, then it wont work correctly if the running application pages RAM into this region. Sharp expansion cage MZ-1U06 includes logic to disable expansion card memory if the memory mapping is active. Expansion options specifically designed to use the MZ-700/MZ-1500 expansion bus include this logic but most Sharp series expansion cards (44pin edge connector cards) do not.

The designs for this adapter are freely available on github for non-commercial purposes should you wish to source the parts and build the adapter yourself.