The Micro-Professor

1981 · Z80 Learning Computer · Work 915 of 1,871

An evening class in a training room in Taiwan, long tables with a dozen small learning computers opened flat, each a book-shaped case of cream-white plastic, its left inner cover plain pale beige, on the right a green circuit board with black chips, a round silver loudspeaker, a row of six small red display windows glowing, below them a black keypad with grey keys, small plain white keys and one orange key, hands in white short-sleeved shirts tapping the white keys, the students seen from directly behind with faces turned fully away, at the front a shelf where closed cases stand upright between bound manuals, spines turned away, fluorescent tubes, ceiling fans.

What it was used for
The MPF-I was a teaching device in book format: the case stood on a shelf like a textbook, and opened it showed the Z80 itself on a board, with 36 keys, a six-digit seven-segment display, a loudspeaker and a cassette interface. An advertising text gives its purpose as a learning tool for students and hobbyists, a teaching aid for instructors of electrical engineering and computer science, a breadboarding platform and a low-cost board for OEMs. Max D. Soffe, managing director of the distributor Flite Electronics International, says in an Elektor interview that Flite's customers were "mainly tertiary education, universities and colleges", because the device was still expensive for private users; a double-page advertisement in Wireless World sold 100 units in 3 weeks. The distance-learning institute Christiani in Konstanz added its own I/O card to its MPF course.
What was new
What was characteristic was the form, not the electronics. Elektor places it itself: in 1981 there were many books about the Zilog Z80, introduced in 1976, but this book was different - it contained the microprocessor. Multitech, founded in Taipei in 1976 by Stan Shih, Carolyn Yeh and 5 other business partners and known as Acer since 1987, had already manufactured microprocessor learning systems, so the MPF-I was not the first of its kind. The barb is in the success: Soffe says Acer turned to the booming personal computer market and that the small Z80 trainers were "effectively loss-making" - the device that cleared the company's path did not carry it. About six months before the 2021 interview Flite still built a batch of 25 units for a Middle Eastern university.

What the sources leave open: The launch price is not solid: US$ 149 appears only on collection pages without a source, 500 DM on a hobby page that also gives a wrong production period. Total unit numbers are not documented. Soffe's interview is a recollection 40 years later and contradicts itself on location (Hsinchu versus Taipei) and on the order of the MPF-1 and MPF-1B. The museum example in Cambridge is an MPF-1B of 1984.

Further reading