Intruction
OZvm is a Z88 virtual machine or emulator, using the Java virtual machine (JVM) to get it running. Java was chosen for its cross platform support and low code overhead. OZvm has been born out of the need to debug Z88 applications and to continue development of the Z88 operating system, "OZ". All our development work with OZvm and the new OZ operating system are freely available under the Gnu Public License, and can be downloaded from the Z88 project file area on Sourceforge.
OZvm is also an attempt to document the Z88 for historical purposes. This computer is no longer produced and the company that originally created it no longer exists. A single supplier still exists and can be contacted through their web site, http://www.rakewell.com. Using OZvm, you can have a go at playing with the computer and it's embedded software, and even develop new software for it through tools provided by the Z88 Development Project.
Z88 is a lesser known portable made in 1987 by Cambridge Computer Ltd (CC) in England. CC was established by Sir Clive Sinclair which is mostly known for the ZX home computers (ZX80, ZX-81 and ZX Spectrum). The computer was sold worldwide, and has been produced in approx. 30.000 units. Today (2012) maybe a couple of thousand users still enjoy using it for their daily tasks. Here's a public page on Wikipedia about the Z88, explaining the basic, with links to other resources, if you're not familiar with the Z88.
Requirements
OZvm just needs Java Runtime Environment (JRE) V1.6.x or newer.
If you haven't already installed it, then grab it from http://java.sun.com. Please use Sun's installation guides for properly installing and configuring Java. Java V1.6.x is bundled with Mac OS X.
OZvm needs minimum a 600Mhz processor to get an execution speed that matches the look and feel of a real Z88 (but will appear sluggish with keyboard response), and uses about 20Mb RAM when executing (remember, this amount includes the JVM engine as well). We recommend 128MB RAM computer systems or more, having a 800Mhz or faster Intel processor, so that the operating system has resources for other tasks than just OZvm. Using faster computers just executes the Z88 better...
You can run OZvm on slower CPU systems. However, the Z80 execution engine inside OZvm might not perform the speed equivalent of the original Z80 processor (3.2768 Mhz) of the real Z88, so you might experience a "slow" running Z88 and a painful keyboard responsiveness. We haven't tested OZvm on other processor architectures like PowerPC (the Mac computers), or Sun's SPARC, so we don't know how OZvm performs on those boxes.
The OZvm application behaves well in your operating system. An average of 80% - 100% of CPU power is used when processing actual Z80 machine code.
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