The Research Machines' 380Z - A unique tool for research and education

From at least 1978 through to mid 1982, Research Machines Limited, often abbreviated to RML, seemed to be selling the same one machine - a Z80-based system called the 380Z, or rather 380Ƶ as RM liked to print it on the micro itself. 

It had been advertised under the "Sintel" banner since early 1977, with the first prototypes being released in August of the same year and production models appearing from December, making it one of the first British micros to go in to production[source: "Linking up with the Z-Net", Personal Computer World, April 1982].

It came in a base-unit-and-keyboard configuration, ready to plug into a handy black-and-white television or monitor, as the advert shows. 

With a single floppy system retailing for £1,930 including VAT (about [[1930|1979]] in [[now]] terms) - or the dual FDS-2 system in the advert at £3,266 ([[3266|1979]]) - it was very much priced for the education and research market. 

However, for the budget-conscious, there was also a little-advertised £400 ([[400|1978]]) version, consisting of just the CPU and VDU boards, called the 280Z.

The machine reviewed very well in April 1978's PCW, with Mike Dennis concluding that 

~"the product was excellent - the boards really are a work of art - and there were many innovative and ingeneous design features.  Much thought has gone in to the design to make it as flexible and easy to interface to as possible.  Any business, firms, institutions, schools, etc, considering buying a good all-rounder could do a lot worse than take a long hard look at any of the RML [machines]"[source: "Research Machines 380Z review", PCW, Vol. 1 No. 2 April 1978, p. 47-53].

[picture: rm_380z_labs_praccomp_aug80.jpg|An RM 380Z in use by Nicky Bonanos and Dan Waters at the Royal School of Mines in London. From PRAC, August 1980]

By the end of the 1970s, computers were already being seen as a de-facto solution to educational problems, even though this ignored the fact that improving education is far more a social/political issue than it is a technical one. 

Technical problems are easy, given enough resources, but the question was often asked "How can we go to the moon when we can't design a better curriculum or provide a better healthcare system?"[source: TCA, p. 461].

Furthermore, there were also worries that much of the early focus, where there was any, seemed to be a teacher-centric one which 

~"takes as its model the activities of the classroom teacher - presenting information, testing, supervising drilling-and-practice and keeping marks", rather than trying to develop a more child-centred approach which would allow pupils to use a computer as "a powerful tool with which to explore and manipulate the world".

The risk that was the "current orthodoxy" of the Government's ongoing £9 million programme - first announced in June 1980 and which by early 1982 had become known as the Microelectronics Education Programme - would ossify and be unable to respond to rapidly-changing educational needs, as it by neccessity had laid down a rigid framework for evaluating potential projects[source: "School chip overkill?", Malcolm Peltu, PCW, May 1982, p. 89].

When micros first started appearing in schools, there was a significant lack of coordinated policy, with central government and local education authorities clearly ignorant of the impending revolution and teachers "sensing the value of computers as a teaching aid" but lacking clear guidance on how to make use of them, and for what[source: "Young computer world", PCW, June 1980, p. 115]. 

This also meant that instead of central purchasing, each school was buying whichever random machine the one teacher in school who knew about computers had recommended, or one from whichever manufacturer made the most persuasive sales pitch.

The BBC's Computer Literacy project of 1982 could be seen as an attempt to sort this out, as it ended up putting the BBC Micro in many schools and eventually spurred the mandating of the BBC, Research Machine's 480Z and Sinclair's Spectrum as the only choices if schools wanted to make use of generous 50% grants available throughout the early 1980s[source: "More micros for schools", Personal Computer World, September 1982, p. 89-91].

Education also seemed to be capable of enabling humanity to become "one" with the machine.  Writing in PCW in the Spring of 1978, product developer for a large computer manufacturer William "Bill" Ringer suggested that 

~"as a consequence of microprocessor technology, we are now about to witness another revolutionary step forward.  Our future generations will not only have the ability to read, write and perform arithmetic but also to express relationships and solve problems through languages of logic.  Most commonly, everyone will be familiar with at least one programming language. Only through the widespread popular understanding of the languages of logic can we protect our personal values and rights from the encroachments on those freedoms resulting from programmed implementations of laws and procedures by narrow-minded technologists.  An individual's freedom is determined, to some extent, by his ability to access information"[source: "Power to the people", PCW, Volume 1 No. 2, April 1978, p. 8-9]