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Obviously, with the rise of retro in computing, today there are lots of Z80-based machines in the retro market. Thus, I would exclude anything later than maybe 2005 or obviously targeted at the "retro-market".

What I'm looking for is what was the last Z80 general purpose desktop that was in the market later than the late '90s and neither a "niche retro product" nor an "appliance", but rather something that you could expect to do "serious work" with? For now, my take is the Amstrad PcW16 of 1996 that used a 16MHz Z80 that Amstrad was trying (with not much success) to sell.

Even if "Anne" (its code name) was a very interesting computer - Looked like a Macintosh, had a 16MHz Z80 and Flash ROM for permanent storage and IBM-AT-compatible 3.5" floppy and all external ports (serial, parallel, mouse and keyboard) compatible to AT standards.

EDIT: Some people seem to think the question is unclear or attracts opinionated answers . Maybe I thought this was obvious, so let me try and clarify this a bit:

The gist of the question basically is "How long did the Z80 provide enough uumph to be able to at least somewhat compete on the standard low-cost desktop market with the growing PC competition". The Z80 (or alikes, or its legacy) survived quite a bit in the Handheld Gaming market, that we all know, that is why I have limited myself to the desktop. It also survived for a long time in "appliances", that is why I wanted to exclude them for the same reason. While I do acknowledge that my above example is borderline "appliance", you could still run standard CP/M on it. I'm perfectly willing to accept such niche products as long as they help answering the gist above.

I excluded "retro" for the same reason that such products wouldn't answer my core question. You can decide yourself: If the designer thought there'd be a market for his new product because there was a Z80 in it, it's likely retro and excluded, but if he thought there would be a market for it even though there is a Z80 in it (or his customers wouldn't even care), then it's likely not.

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    Until very very recently they were selling Sinclair clones. They're used in third-world countries for EPOS. so the probable answer is "yesterday", if you count niche use-cases Commented Jul 14 at 4:47
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    Old processors don't die; they just get demoted to embedded systems. So the answer depends on where you draw the line between "computer" and not. Commented Jul 15 at 0:11
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    The question is still unclear to me: it is said "commercial" but then "retro" is explicitly excluded -- wtf, many (but not all) retro projects are also commercial! (look at zх sресtrum nехt). So I believe there should be some other classification. Commented Jul 15 at 11:20
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    Also what's "serious work"? Running CP/M? Or what? Commented Jul 15 at 11:21
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    The question, and the category of computer the OP's asking about, seem crystal clear to me. But I'm certain that the more specific the definition put into the question, the more energetic the arguments over that definition would go on. It sometimes comes across as if a tiny clump of people must find entertainment in disputing the question when they just don't know the answer to it. It's harmless and all that but it is a rather dull slowing of the simple route to getting the best answer available from the very high collective brainpower of the site's many visitors. Commented Jul 15 at 13:00

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The Cidco Mailstation was an email terminal sold in the early 2000s (I found out about them from JCS’s articles about making them into a Z80 development platform.)

It had a keyboard, black and white LCD screen, parallel port, and built-in telephone modem. It can run self-contained applications from Yahoo, downloaded over the modem. I’d call it a “desktop computer,” if quite limited.

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    Hah! I have one of those, but haven't done anything serious with it yet. I'll have to check out that link. Commented Jul 14 at 15:50
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    Nice find. Although it only borderline fits (or, rather not) into my definition of "desktop computer" (Although, you could, admittedly, say the same for the Amstrad PcW16 I mentioned in my question) Commented Jul 15 at 5:40
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For some definitions of computer and Z80-based, the Gameboy series would be a viable option: the original Gameboy used a Sharp SM83 which wikipedia describes as a hybrid of the Intel 8080 and Zilog Z80 processors. The Gameboy was released until 2003 Worldwide and apparently Brazil in 2015; the gameboy advance included an SM83 for backwards compatability; that ran worldwide until 2012. Going even further on what counts as a computer: TI84 (and other TI models) is still available and uses Z80 / Z80-derived processors.

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    Except that wiki claim is quite debatable. It's rather an 8080 with some (non Z80 like) extensions using a Z80 inspired assembler syntax). So the game boy is rather a hard no. TI on the other hand may count in some way - except it's AFAIK always part of a custom chip, so not really a classic Z80 CPU. Commented Jul 13 at 23:11
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    I have deliberately asked for a "Z80 desktop" for fear of exactly this answer.... Commented Jul 14 at 4:26
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    Basically, gameboy's CPU has nothing to do with Z80. Except probably for some mnemonics. It looks clearly like enhanced 8080, but not in the way Z80 was. Commented Jul 14 at 8:49
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    Furthermore, if we're going in this direction then the Master System had a regular honest-to-God Z80 and is still on sale in Brazil. Likely it's an emulation box nowadays — certainly the cartridge slot vanished at some point — but I can't currently find out if/when that transition happened. Since it isn't a desktop computer anyway, I don't intend to try much further to find out. I just think it's a better candidate than the Game Boy. Commented Jul 14 at 15:55
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    @DaveTweed Well, I wouldn't call a pocket calculator an "embedded device" - But I wouldn't call it a "desktop computer", either, so agree. Commented Jul 15 at 5:35
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AFAICT, the last Z80 desktop computer sold was the TRS-80 Model 4, in production until late 1991.

If you include notebook computers, the Amstrad NC200 was released in 1993. (I don't know when it was discontinued.)

Of course, Texas Instruments continued to use the Z80 or derivatives in personal organizers and calculators after that, but you explicitly asked for desktops.

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    Isn't that already earlier than the Amstrad PcW16 that tofro includes in the question? Commented Jul 14 at 20:34
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    Also what's just popped in my mind. You can't ever have a completely definite answer to the "what is the last something". At least unless you know all the information in the world. There's always a possibility of the "laster" thing that is currently unknown to everybody's answering. Commented Jul 15 at 13:15
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    @lvd Whilst that's of course true, it's a facile truth which adds nothing to any conversation. It's also an explicit rejection of the purpose of SE, which is to canvas a broad spectrum of knowledge across the world, in order to get the best reasonable answers for questions. (Not the perfect answer.) Commented Jul 15 at 18:18
  • @Graham yet sometimes questions are closed because being 'too opinionated', while they still could contribute to getting best reasonable answers, to canvas a broad spectrum of knowledge and the stuff. Commented Jul 16 at 10:10
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    @lvd Canvassing for people's knowledge of facts is different from polling for people's personal opinions. Commented Jul 16 at 10:54
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The last one I'm aware of is the Peters Plus Sprinter 2000.

It has a Z84C15, which is a Z80 plus a few I/O ports and things all in the same package. And then it has 4 megabytes of RAM and a PLD which can be reconfigured to give the computer ZX Spectrum compatibility.

When in "native mode", (that is, the PLD is not running any kind of emulation core), then it is a general purpose computer running an operating system called Estex, which is reminiscent of MS-DOS. It had a reasonable bitmap graphics in this mode; if I recall correctly it was 800x600 with 256 colours and there were a few interesting games and demos and things for this mode, including interpreters for high-level languages.

And it absolutely fits the "desktop computer" category; it was made to fit commodity PC cases. Expandable with two ISA-8 slots.

Apparently it was discontinued in 2003, which would have been very shortly after I bought mine that same year.

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    At that time, sprinter already was definitely "retro". Commented Jul 15 at 11:17
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    And yes, sprinter is having currently some kind of resurrection, being produced by retro-enthusiasts. So it's suddenly no more for "serious work" because still "retro". Just to mention once again the vagueness and under-defineness of "desktop", "retro vs commercial" and "serious work" expressions. Commented Jul 15 at 13:07
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    @lvd Out of interest, what makes the Sprinter a "retro" machine? It looks, from the resources I can find, more like Peters Plus trying to stay relevant after the MD-256S3 became too long in the tooth to stay on sale, and not a system built to appeal to the retro marketplace. Commented Jul 16 at 15:30
  • Let's have a look what's could be done on sprinter those days: you could run ZX spectrum software. Retro? Definitely. you could run few sprinter-based games. Serious work? Probably not. Also there were some native tools like file commander, assembler. As far as I know, not even C compiler. Still serious? Don't think so. In 2003 there was already an internet everywhere, and sprinter didn't have a browser (at that moment my Amiga while it was definitely not desktop, but a home computer in a keyboard case, had some browsers already and internet access). Still serious?... Commented Jul 17 at 8:52
  • upd: Again as I could see, there were even not CP/M compatibility, thus no CP/M software. Still in doubt whether CP/M and its software could be considered "serious" and not "retro" in 2003. Commented Jul 17 at 8:54

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