The Vector MZ was branded as the most powerful complete Z80 microcomputer on the market when it came out. It's formatted disk storage capacity was 630kByte over two drives. It came with 32kByte of memory which was expandable to 64kByte. The machine had no less than 18 s-100 type slots on it's motherboard. All S-100 type boards could be used, the High Resolution Graphics Display, which offered a 256x256 resolution, the Flashwriter Video Display, offering a 80x25 text mode, Precision Analog Interfaces and many other S-100 boards were available.

The Vector MZ was produced around 1979 by Vector Graphic, Inc. The computer used a Z80 processor running at 4MHz. The CPU was mounted on a ZCB CPU board, which consisted of the CPU, a monitor ROM program, and scratchpad RAM.

The machine was equipped with 64kByte of RAM, but due to the CP/M OS only 56kByte was usable. The system was modular and used S-100 cards for expansion. Unlike the Vector 1, the MZ had a built in screen and came with the Vector Graphic Flashwriter II. This card was a video generation card combined with the keyboard interface. Text resolution was 80-columns by 24 rows. Unlike serial terminals of the time, the system used memory-mapped video hardware.

The MZ came with a micropolis hard-sectored floppy disk controller. Drives had 308kByte capacity, 77 tracks, 16 sectors per track and could store 256 bytes per sector. The OS was CP/M, MZOS (A north start DOS-compatible OS), or MDOS (Micropolis Disk OS). The machine booted into a monitor program that was in a PROM located on the CPU board.

Effectively the Vector MZ is sort of the Vector-2. It replaced the Intel 8080 CPU with the Z80, it moved from a kit/bare system to an integrated system, and it introduced integrated video, rather than requiring a serially connected terminal. There is no official statement why the company chose instead for the name Vector MZ, but MZ stands for Micropolis Z80, which reflects the Z80 CPU and the Micropolis disk system. So while evolutionary the Vector MZ can be considered the Vecor 2, the company chose for the name MZ.

Vector Graphic, Inc. started out by creating expansion cards for S-100 computer systems. Their first products were an 8kByte RAM card and a High Resolution Graphics card, HRG, which offered a resolution of 256x256 pixels.

The first computer Vector Graphic produced was the Victor-1, an S-100 clone. The company was founded by Bob Harp, his wife Lore, and their neighbor Carol Ely. Bob designed the first Vector 1 system, while his wife and the neighbor ran the company. Within four years their revenue exceeded $3M per month.

The company expanded their line of Vector computers up to the Vector 5. Unfortunately Bob and Lore believed that their success was unstoppable, even in the early 1980s. They made their company public and sold stock in it. But the company was plagued by bad decisions. A huge number of Vector 3 computers had been produced while the marketing department already started advertising the Vector 4. This caused consumers to wait with the purchase until the 4 came out. Bob and Lore got a divorce which caused a shake up in the leadership of the company and Vector Graphics filed for bacnkruptcy in the late 1980s.

CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers), created by Gary Kildall in 1974 for Intel 8080-based systems, was the first widely adopted microcomputer operating system to establish a standard software platform. At its core, CP/M was divided into three layers: the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) for hardware-dependent routines, the BDOS (Basic Disk Operating System) for file and device abstractions, and the CCP (Console Command Processor) for the command-line interface. This modular design meant CP/M could be ported to a wide variety of 8-bit systems simply by rewriting the BIOS layer, while the BDOS and CCP remained binary-compatible. This allowed application developers to target a single OS API rather than custom hardware interfaces, which was a radical departure from the fragmented landscape of early microcomputers.

Memory management in CP/M was constrained by the 8080 and Z80’s 64 KB address space, so the operating system was designed to occupy only the top portion of memory. The BDOS and CCP were typically loaded into high memory, leaving a contiguous block of low memory available for transient programs (user applications). Applications were written to expect a fixed TPA (Transient Program Area), with the starting address varying slightly depending on how much memory was available after BIOS/BDOS were loaded. This simple scheme avoided the need for virtual memory or sophisticated protection mechanisms, but it limited multitasking: CP/M was strictly a single-tasking environment. Program overlays and clever memory swapping techniques were sometimes used by developers to fit larger applications into the available TPA, especially for compilers and database software.

Application support was the main driver of CP/M’s dominance. Its standardization around the BDOS interface meant that word processors, assemblers, compilers (notably for C, Pascal, and BASIC), and business applications could run on hundreds of different hardware platforms with minimal modification. Programs were distributed as .COM files—binary images loaded directly into the TPA without relocation—which simplified the loader at the cost of flexibility. Libraries like Digital Research’s PL/I subset and third-party toolchains extended CP/M into a development platform, while the vast ecosystem of utilities (from editors like ED to debuggers and communications software) established it as the de facto operating system of the late 1970s and early 1980s microcomputing world. For retrocomputing enthusiasts, CP/M represents the moment when software compatibility, not just hardware, became the central value in the microcomputer marketplace.

The Z80 quickly became popular in the personal computer market, with many early personal computers, such as the TRS-80 and Sinclair ZX80, using the Z80 as their central processing unit (CPU). It was also widely used in home computers, such as the MSX range, SORD, and the Amstrad CPC, as well as in many arcade games. Additionally, it was also used in other applications such as industrial control systems, and embedded systems. The Z80 was widely used until the mid-1980s, when it was gradually replaced by newer microprocessors such as the Intel 80286 and the Motorola 68000.

The Z80 microprocessor was developed by Zilog, a company founded by Federico Faggin in 1974. The Z80 was released in July 1976, as a successor to the Intel 8080. It was designed to be fully compatible with the 8080, but also included new features such as an improved instruction set, more powerful interrupts, and a more sophisticated memory management system.

Originally the Z80 was intended for use in embedded systems, just as the 8080 CPU. But the combination of compatibility, superior performance to other CPUs of the era, and the affordability led to a widespread use in arcade video game systems, and later in home computers such as the Osborne 1, TRS-80, ColecoVision, ZX Spectrum, MSX, Sega's Master System and many more. The Z-80 ran the original Pac-Man arcade cabinet. The Z-80 was used even in the Game Gear (1990s), and the TI-81 and succeeding graphic calculators.

The Z-80 remained in production until June of 2024, 48 years after its original release. Zilog replaced the processor with its successor the eZ80, an 8-bit microprocessor that features expanded memory addressing up to 16 megabytes, and running up to 50MHz, comparable to a Z80 clocked at 150MHz.