OS has put a large amount of work into the Z8000 software project, and MS has supported this with hardware purchases and loans. We continue to feel that this is a valuable product, and that if properly marketed it can return not only its development costs, but also make a reasonable sum of money for both OS and MS. With the general slant of the industry being away from the Z8000, we have to target our marketing carefully, since we can't afford big splash advertising.
MS has contacted Central Data about putting QBASIC on their system. This would involve a Z8002 to Z8001 conversion as well, so we would have to work on their system to do this. They expect their operating system to be ready early next year so we should contact them then regarding that. Since we don't expect to buy one of their systems now, this may be a sticky matter to arrange.
I think we should send out new product announcements about the Z8000 QBASIC, emphasising that this is an OEM-tailorable product we want to put under customer's operating systems, and announce the development software the same way. Also, we should put together a catalogue, manual package, and OEM schedule for this and pass it on to Lifeboat so they can pitch it to OEM prospects.
There's nothing wrong with what we've done with the Z8000. It just doesn't look worth putting a lot more money and effort into unless we can generate some interest in it. If the Z8000 is going to bomb, we'd better be somewhere other than the target zone. If, say, Lifeboat uncovers a vast market for Z8000 software, we'd be happy to change our mind.