The Z88 had a gold expansion slot with a removable cover for additional data storage on earlier models. They were found to be unsuitable, so the gold disappeared and the cover became part of the case. The serial port then became the only way to store data externally to Devices.

Computer Links

A number of Computers were supported. These are shown in this section.

Disks

3 Disk drives using used 3-1/2" disks were made available. These were

• Ranger Disk
• Ranger Disk 2
• Tandy Disk Drive

The Ranger disks could be shared. They used the 720K DOS format on Ranger Disk and 1.44M DOS format on the Ranger Disk 2.

The Tandy Disk Drive used a propriety disk format system. This meant that data could not be shared with other disk drives..

NADSBox - SD Card Drive for Model 100 and compatible

Ken Pettit  in the USA, has developed a replacement Tandy Disk Drive. It uses SD and SDHC cards up to 16GB which can be read by a PC. Using the RS232 serial port, it is only going to be a matter of time until a Z88 programmer decides to either write a BBC BASIC program or an application to use this portable device just like the Tandy Disk Drive.

For further details see http://www.club100.org/

Tape

There was even a Tape backup system - Wordmongers Z-Tape. By using a cassette tape recorder, data could be recorded on tape and then by playing the tape back, files would be loaded back onto the Z88.