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Zilog (re-)introduces the Z80
The Finn writes "Zilog has introduced an update to their now infamous Z80 line of processors. The new eZ80 ``[...]is one of the fastest 8-bit CPUs available today, executing code 4 times faster than a standard Z80 operating at the same clock speed.'' The last Z80-based computer I actually used for any length of time was a Xerox 820-II CP/M box, but the Z80 continues to live on in all kinds of embedded applications. "
Yes, there are several programs that accomplish this. There's Telnet 83 for the TI-83 for one... then there's FTerm for the TI-92. There's others that I can't locate at the moment. But to sum up, yes it is possible already, but in theory this new eZ80 could make it more possible :)
Adam Berlinsky-Schine
Actually the MC68000 is more of a 32 bit chip. The data bus is only 16 bits wide, and it uses 24 bit addressing (IIRC), but all the registers are 32 bits wide.
Of course, it all balanced out, since the 6502 needed 2-4 times as many instructions to do anything...
I miss Meept.
Hehehe. Actually, I'm still waiting for the tape to load. ;>
well, Scott is not the Dilbert guy.... his homepage is here :)
http://www.pcii.net/~msadams/
If you check out that page it includes links to playable versions for most platforms... including for a Palm Pilot *grin*
..... Now if I can just get out of this FunHouse
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
I learned on a 'Cosmac ELF II' with an 1802 processor. Yes, weird, limiting in many ways (multiply opcode? What multiply?!).
But it was small and easily understood. That helped with other processors, from 6502 to 8086 to 68hc11, and PIC and 8051... the only real trouble was getting used to being 'starved' for registers on some by comparison. But everything seemed to be a step up, otherwise.
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
Agreed: I love the PIC series.
The conditional skips definitely lead to subtle code. For one thing, you can do interesting complex expressions with consecutive multiple conditional skip instructions.
Better, A lot of times you end up skipping over non-branch instructions and that idiom ends up being great for code that has to count clocks (wire protocols and the like), since the skipped instruction still takes a cycle to be skipped.
Sigh... :-)
--j
I'm a nature photographer.
It just means you have a better memory than me! Those backward jumps (now does that include the jump instruction itself..) always were a pain. I never had a case - just had the mobo, naked keyboard, PSU, etc all spread out on a table top, along with an old 19" B/W TV for that wobbly modulated 40 character display :-)
Usually what happens (with intel at least) is that they modify their old designs and make ``embedded'' versions of the chips in their older fabs. The company I work for (who shall remain nameless) uses the 80186 (no joke) and the i386EX (32-bit mode only 80386) in two of its products.
NetBSD: the cathedral vs the bizzare.
I didn't think I would ever meet another human being who also owned a Xerox 820-II. Actually, mine was the 820 with a new 820-II motherboard. I remember buying old paperbound BASIC books where I pounded versions of ELIZA into my trusty Xerox. I also remember using punched-out templates and paper-hole punchers to convert my single-sided disks into double-sided disks. Those disks could be formatted to hold about 480k a side, and had to be flipped to read the other side. My friends with TRS-80's and their 360k diskettes were jealous!
But if I had bothered, I would have learned it on the 6502 in the Commodore 64.
:-(
;-|
I even got the Programmer's Guide from Toys R Us.
Only thing is, I never got C64Mon or any other assembly language monitor
And then last summer, I looked through the Programmer's Guide and realized they didn't tell you how to use floating-point arithmetic. So fractal programs with reasonable speed are out the window
I have used SPIM but not for anthing worthwile.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
Wow, you guys are all bringing back some major memories for me here.. many, many years ago, I used to write software for the Spectrum, and even knocked out 4 different versions of a Spectrum BASIC compiler. (more as an educational thing at a time, but they sold ok.. well, they financed my way through university at least) That really got me started on software as a career. Martin The Z80 has a lot to answer for :o)
Intel release the 4004.com
:-)
Naturally it'll come in a choice of iMac inspired dayglo plastic packaging.
IIRC, both the 6502 and the 6510 were limited to 64K address space, but both could use "bank switching" to access different 64K memory areas if needed.
I recall on the apple II at least, that "large" (ha-ha) memory cards were fairly popular. I had 80K (48K Main, 32K card w/switch) of RAM and the ROM was 16K. The were some very large memory cards available for the apple II, with some advertising 16MB on one card.
All things considererd, bank switching is better than the seg-me-nta-ti-on of some processors. Also, the apple crammed a mini-assembler, FP basic, disassembler, 16-bit math functions, and all kinds of fun stuff into that 16K ROM.
OTOH, the assembly lang had its quirks. TAX ? Did the IRS get ahold of my apple ? Do we need a unique op-code for each possible register transfer (x to a, a to x, a to y, et. al.), good thing there were only three GP registers, or we'd have run out of op-codes.
Dean G.
The hidden instructions would work only if Zilog kept the *exact* same microarchitecture and hardwired the instruction decode logic and state machine implementations the same way. I would guess they would clean up the design and do more things in parallel . After all, double pumping a 4 bit ALU to implement byte wide instructions is hardly required in a Z80 core implemented in 0.35 um CMOS or whatever.
Well I finally got on to /. after floyd wrecked my service on the East Coast for 3 days... BUT I digress... The First story to catch my eye is about the grand ol' Z80 processor???? This brings back SUCH a nostalgic twinge... I remember raising $1830 to buy a TRS-80 Mod III with DUAL *wow:)* drives and a whopping 48K RAM.. It was such a powerhouse back then.. I guess the point I'm coming to is this. I remember being a 10 year old sitting in front of that "blue screen" (I had the el cheapo mesh screen over the CRT) for almost Days on end... first playing games as the old Scott Adams Adventures... Then Zork, the wonderful old games of Labyrinth, Bedlam... These games drove me to try to create some of my own (I STILL have my 1st edition D&D Greyhawk and Blackmoor books) Well... The different DOS's had their own uses.. I hated NewDOS, but TRS-DOS was OK for minor programming in basic. After a year or two I worked my way up to working in Debug and hacking around in assembler.. Then one day it happened.. My mother's Master Thesis(Written in Scripsit) CRASHED hard, but I was able to recover it by sitting a typewriter in front of the MODIII and reading most of the text from debug and interpolating the rest from the hex codes. :) As I always say, if you want to learn, you MUST read. Be it Books or threads... you MUST read to learn... ok enough. Thanks for your patience
I never thought then that I would be able to use those skills today (i.e. working algorithims in COMOS and perl etc...), but now I actually wish I had the time I had back then to really devote to learning what made that machine tick, and use that to learn what my servers today can do. I know I'm not the only one out there that feels that way, and for those of you who scoff at us "old farts" waxing nostalgic, trust me.... You can have your imaginations handed to you via GUI and imagery, some of us had to use our own visual imagery INSIDE, and between you and me, I kinda like mine more
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
No, they used Z80's. I know because I had one and I hacked ASM on one. BTW, that's what the "80" in TRS-80 stood for. The Models 16 and 6000 had a 68000 (yes, 68000!) second CPU in them, which was the main CPU when running operating systems such as XENIX.
Nah, that was the 6809 you're thinking of. It actually had addressing modes that were worth something ... not like the PDP-11 (only applied to one operand) but it was easy to work with those.
- Jojo
i have had a ti-85 that i have had for almost 5 years now that has survived more drops, spills and being stepped on then i care to think about, plus its been turboed, i think it now runs something like 6 times faster than a standard on. i also have a 86 and 89 that i've had no problem with, i'd like a hp but none of my classes have ever taughr to them and i understand the learning curve is a little steep, so i never found it worth the extra expense of a 4th graphing calc
haha...many things are far better than sex.... but have you ever tried making love? If not, I pity you. It's much harder than hooking up a 5 mb hard drive to your Z80 based system, but it is very rewarding. I have forgotten the url to the manual on that, unfortunately. Sorry.
Acually the neo geo had a simliar setup as the genesis (68K main Z80 sound), but it's graphics processer was awesome compared to the Genesis and SNES.
Gameboys use Z80s.
Actually, you're not quite correct. The TI-8x series of calculators DO use the Z80. It's the TI-9x series that use the Motorola 68k. Now, if I only had a spare $150 lying around, I could get me a nice TI-93 and all would be good.
err..hex *is* assembler...its jost not translated automatically with a compiler..you do it by looking in a code book and translating manually..I have a ZX Spectrum 128K that i did some on...as well as an 8085.
Actually, the Genesis had a z80 as well. It was used as a music processor in many games. The entire memory space of the z80 was available to the 68000 which was the main CPU, and the z80 could access the ROM and main memory through a really strange setup. It was possible to pause and reset the z80 in software from the 68000 The z80 had its own little block of RAM and direct access to both sound chips. It was a really great design, and even though they probably aren't legally available, I have seen several pieces of documentation for this and tons of other old game systems on the net. It's a little scary, but the main CPU in the Super Nintendo was only marginally more powerful than the z80 in the Sega Master System. (The SNES had a 65c816)
Zilog's greatest product line.
From the little Z8's to the z180's, et. al.
Those things are great. I have both a TI-85 and a TI-86. I was really happy to be able to recommend those great ZWorld contollers at a job a while back. An absolute dream to work with. I recommend them all over the place now.
Man, they were pretty successful in milking them. I have their 1997 Master Selection Guide here and it's full of really neat app-specific chips for PDA's, set-top boxes, data communications, DSP (including voice), and so on.
Zilog were really smart with the Z80. Good for them. And they did it without all that shameless marketing certain-other-processor-companies are known for.
No, only the TI-89, TI-92, and TI-92+ Calculators use 68K processors. All the others (for our sake let's say TI-82 through TI-86) use a Z80 processor. And whoever said they wanted a TI-93 - save up all you want but the calculator doesn't exist :) (TI-92+ maybe?)
Adam Berlinsky-Schine
I'll never forget writing the CP/M bios that let me add a 5 megabyte hard drive to my Z80-based S100 system. When it came up and I could format the drive, it was, for the moment, better than sex! And now, twenty years later... Z80 rules!
The CPU I cut my teeth on was the venerable ol' 6502 in my Commodore VIC-20 (and later C-64 and 128). Those were the good ol' days, when 64K was enormous, and it was inconceivable to ever fill 128K of RAM! Aw yeah...
so can i replace the MC68000 with the '040 from my Quadra? that would be one hwlluva graphing calculator.
Sure do remember it, my first consulting job was Z80 assembly, an ultrasound probe to measure depth of human eyes. The "Klingon" instructions, as I remember calling them back then, were quite useful indeed. I'd take Z80 over 8085 any day.
For my money though, nothing beats an 8032 for a *simple* 8-bit embedded microcontroller. Named bits, quasi-bidirectional ports and a multiply and divide are just too useful, not to mention cycle counting is far easier.
Once you've seen ONE assembly, they are all the same, but you need to start humble, and the Z80 was just a great start for me.
:-)* However, it is really easy to program and I've seen absolute beginners to any type of programming eat into it *really* quickly.
Ever seen PIC assembly? Some things are the same, but some of it is way off the beaten track.
There's an unconditional jump called GOTO.
There's no real conditional jump...
BTFSC/BTFSS - Bit Test F, Skip if Clear/Skip if Set. It basically skips the next line if a specific bit is clear or set. Make the next line a GOTO and you essentially have a conditional jump.
SWAPF - Swap nybbles in F. Interesting.... especially for a RISC chip...
If you're used to other architectures, the PIC looks, well, wierd. The first thing most people notice is the lack of instructions that begin with 'J'
Of course, the Z80 is great for getting into more "traditional" architechtures. Now with TI explicitly enabling asm programming on their calculators (without having to use memory dumps) a lot of young ones are delving right into it.
C compiler : Yes! I had a Spectrum 128 (like a + with extra RAM and the AY3-8192 3-channel sound chip) and ran the HiSoft C compiler. That's how I learned to code C when I was 13.
There was also an assembler/debugger/compiler suite from Ocean calld Laser Genius. I had Laser BASIC and the Laser BASIC compiler too, and the dreaded Artic FORTH.
Before that I had a ZX81 with an add-on keyboard, 16K RAM pack and a multi-tasking FORTH ROM by Skywave software. It was on a daughterboard with the BASIC ROM so you could power down and switch either ROM in and out.
I still have it in a cupboard in my parent's house. I would love to transfer that ROM code across onto a PC so I could run it in a ZX81 emulator.
The Z80 was way cool as a processor, so much easier to code for than the 6502 with its 256-byte stack, although it did have a "page 0" of quickly adressable RAM (ie the first 256 bytes) which almost made up for its poor register set.
Ah, those were the days. I wish I'd then bought a 68000 machine, but my dad wouldn't let me since they weren't "proper machines" becasue they didn't "run 1-2-3" (without an emulator).
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
Hell, I worked on a full-featured (at the time) word processor written entirely in Z80 assembly. I especially remember the conditional call and return instructions. We'd pass parms. exclusively in the registers, and use the carry to indicate an error condition; so it was really efficient to write stuff like: call x cnc y cnc z rnc jmp (Okay, it's been 15 years, and I can't even remember the opcodes anymore!)
OK, kids, now get away from appliances, we're gonna reboot the house
Anyone used Sinclair Spectrum around here? I still remember awesome programs like:
16k Pascal compiler (Hi-Soft) with integrated editor
21k C compiler
6K Lisp interpreter
5K Forth interpreter
People were careful with every bit those days.
I remember there was a group at the Cluj Computing Center in Romania, who had found something like 26 hidden, not documented but working instructions in the Z80. I wonder if eZ80 still has them.
Lotzi Boloni
No. The Commodore 64 was a 6800, as was most of the Atari machines (the 400 may have been 6502, but I'm not sure...)
My journal has hot
And next year, intel will be releasing the 8088, renamed "Merced". . .
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Roll your own!
Free VHDL code for a 6502 clone:
http://www.free-ip.com/6502/index.htm
What YOU don't realize is:
Z80 - $2
RAM - $2
Glue logic - $2
ROM - $2
Board space - priceless, if your project must be small (hand-held), light (space), or both.
Furthur, if I already HAVE to have the FPGA for other reasons, incremental cost of the additional gates for the core is only a few dollars.
www.eFax.com are spammers
The Z80 was my first CPU and is still my favourite. May it live forever!
You might be use a Z80 (indirectly, but not very much so) when you eat at a restaurant, shop at the local mall, etc., and pay with your credit card. Pay attention to the credit card reader -- is it the (very common) TRANZ 330 from HP/Verifone? If so, a Z80 is handling your credit card data... (See here for more TRANZ 330 specs, including the blazing 300/1200bps modem...)
No Laughing Allowed!
Coolness, does this mean that I can finally put my Timex Sinclair 1000 on the internet? I had the ram pack AND the printer. Hopefully someone will port Mosiac to its wierd BASIC lang and I can have another machine that will time out trying to load up Slashdot.
Better yet, will the embryos behind the counter at Radio Shack be able to tell me what a TRS-80 even is?
Inquiring minds want to know!
You could get an expansion card for the Apple ][ which has a Z-80 chip on it. We used this to run CP/M back in about 1982-3, ISTR.
I still think that the BBC Micro was the best 6502 based machine available: tons of built in i/o, good graphics, a structured basic *with the assembler built in*.
Great games too: remember the original Elite?
dave "vdu 19,4,0,0,&ff"
I have overclocked my TI-82, but I knew that some assembly programs (especially those written for the heavily-optimised shell CrASH) wouldn't run correctly, so I put in a DPDT switch to select either the new or original speed (capacitor). (I also put in a connector for a wall-wart or velcro-attatched AAx4-battery pack. AAAs are a ripoff.) The reason that the programs don't run correctly at higher speeds is that the display controller (connected to a port on the Z-80) can't keep up with the processor, especially if you use the CrASH graph memory copy routine, which has less delay in it to speed things up. Removing the capacitor in the TI-8x REALLY speeds things up, but the display is made totally useless. Unless you can find some way to speed up the display, forget upgrading to 4X speed. My 82 runs around 10MHz (~ 60% overclock) because it didn't work right if I went much higher. The display is a bottleneck on the 82 and 83. On the 85 and 86, however, the display is written to not through a port, but by direct writes to display RAM. It may be possible to overclock those more, but I'm sure you'll reach a point where your screen updates could exceed the actual refresh rate, which is unnecessary for [current] games (more complex games would be possible, however) but would really boost math processing. Another limitation is storage space. Just because you would theoretically have enough CPU for 16-level grayscale doesn't mean it would be practical. Uses too much space. (I've gotten 4-shade grayscale on my 82. An image viewer with up/down scroll of a compiled-in (nudie) picture. (Converting it to a usable format from JPG was a pain in the ass.) Only worked right on my calc due to compiled in delay lengths and such. I even used to play with the VAT (Variable Allocation Table, essentially FAT) and rename files.)
I don't play with my calc a lot anymore. My new toy is a 486 40MHz with 20MB RAM, 1.2GB root drive, and 250MB swap/boot/other drive, Cirrus Logic 1MB VGA primary display, Hercules (using mdacon module, will compile into next kernel) secondary/messages disp, running Slack 4.0. For some damned reason some of the smaller fonts don't work properly in XFree, using SVGA server. Show up as static unless I partially cover the line of text with another window, and then it's still not perfect but at least it's readable.
-- Matthew945@aol.blech.com
(Remove that blech to mail me hateful 'off-topic' comments [or better yet help on my font problem] because I'm bored.)
Better still, the TCP/IP availability makes possible a whole range of networked peripherals. Who needs USB?
--- Bill
I want one of these in my ti-86. Then i'd be able to watch it find roots of a 30 degree polynomial. And it would be great for games.
Seriously though, it does say it's code compatible with the original Z80. Would it be too hard for some calculator hackers to "upgrade" a graphing calculator?
Also, is the tcp/ip stack built into the chip? If so, could I browse the internet on my calc? You would just need a ppp implementation and a 9600 baud modem....
Hey, lets not forget you can Overclock the Z80 hella fast (see TI-8X overclocking)... as compaired to other CPU's this one goes almost 2X or even 4X as fast depending on the Calc
More Resources @ http://www.ticalc.org
http://www.calc.org
http://www.ti-files.com(org?)
My first computer was also a Kaypro II. You forgot to mention the other **GREAT** apps that came with it: Perfect Calc and Perfect Filer.
ACtually, there's a lot you can do with a Z80. It had a use in the past and it still has. We use moore's law to continue beeing more and more demanding on the hardware, but let's not forget those cute little beasties.
I was fairly certain the Commodore 64 used the 6510 as its CPU (6502 derivative).
Hope you didn't cause a slashdot effect at that site. The two links I tried were dead. Will book mark and come back to that site after they reset the security software and put out the fires. If the Z80's are only $1.50 like someone said that might be the ticket to some homebrew projects instead of using PICS.
--- Join my team at www.dcypher.net $10,000 to the winning computer #147 "Homebuilt Computer Users"
Isn't the Z80 the same processor used in lego mindstorms? If so... I'm thinking there's going to be a few adventerous(sp?) souls that are going to opt for a brain transplant.
--
However, didn't Neo Geo have much better sound quality than the Genesis? I recall Neo Geo games having comparable sound to the SNES, or even better, if you consider how much ROM Neo Geo games got for sound samples.
The all-knowing, all-seeing DonkPunch looks into his crystal ball and sees the responses to this story:
"Let's port Linux to it"
"Let's make a Beowulf cluster"
"I remember using a Z80...."
"My company is developing embedded software for Z80s...."
"Why? It's an 8-bit processor! Who uses that anymore?"
"First Post"
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Didn't the Commodore PET use a Z80?
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Here's a bunch of Z80/CPM emulators for all major platforms, kindly grouped together in one elegantly uncluttered site.
Eat 'em up!
**>>BELCH
I wonder if the hidden instructions still work on this baby. I'm looking at the codes tables and I don't see them. AFAIK, Zilog never acknowledged them, but they used to work on every single Z80 I tested them on. Some of these, especially the hidden rotation instructions, were pretty useful, too.
There were a lot of other great CPU's from the good olde days - who still remembers 6502 and 6809? =)
While Z80 were more popular industry-wise, the 6502 is the MPC (most-programmed-CPU) of the 80's.
I wonder where its family is now?
Though I may not be an expert on the subject I have always thought of the Zilrog z80's as the small underated 8 bit chip that was running everything behind the scenes. Quite a few of the posts have stated that the z80 is embedded in many things, but there is one thing I don't think that I could live without: Tetris!! After hacking around with my knowledge of Assembly and the z80 architecture I found that my Gameboy uses modified instruction set. Hehe....neat....now to get the GBSDK....
Wanted: A Bauhaus reformation of society.
Assembly programming is easy on the z80 and there are still a lot of programmers who know how to do it. Combine this with a total cost of about a dollar for a chip and you have a winner.
Why use a RISC thing or 68k processor when this one gets the job done more efficiently and at a lower cost? Just because more powerful processors are out there doesn't mean we need to use them. This is the same reason why my coffeemaker doesn't have a pIII-500 in it.
With the rumors of the internet connected coffemakers, Zilog introducing a tcp/ip stack is a good move toward future embedded applications. This thing can probably easily be used in so called "internet appliances" at a very low cost and programmers don't have to learn a new instruction set.
Andrew, waiting patiently for the era of the TI calculator with a web browser
Bring back the 6502, so the years i spent mastering every aspect of it may not all have been completely wasted after all.
If you took out every Z80 at Disneyland (and i assume D-World), the entire place would come to a grinding halt.
My dad has been making homebrew computers to do the oddest of things there (gate coutners, ride controls, parade timing synchs, anamatronic computers, audio control systems, fireworks launchers, the list is practically endless) for 25 years.
They work, they are cheap, they do the job, they don't run Windows. The new rides that crash (software... not hardware) a lot that were done by contractors (ie, Indiana Jones, etc) come down all the time because of the contractors insistance on using "I just got out of ITT Technical Insitute where i learned Visual Basic and now write software for Disneyland" Windows because all these goofballs think that the solution to everything is a PC with a x86, a Windows front end, and a serial port.
My dad's Fireworks launcher - Mickey's Match - ran for well over 15 years and it just worked. No GPFs, no BSOD's... it just launched fireworks.
___
"I know kung-fu."
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
heat for one thing and power for another. Believe it or not processors running at 16-100 Mhz generate heat! I ran the distributed.net DOS client on my 486 DX2/50 overnight once and then popped open the case, while it was still running, and touched the little magical chip containing the little Chinese guy who had been, for the whole night long, doing floating point calculations with his good friend Mr. Co-processor, and discovered that the chip gets hot. This was inside an old Gateway 2000 Behemoth-Tower with lots of interior volume and a good fan. Imagine a similar processor say a 486 SX/20, inside a little plastic TI calculator, sure it would be fast. But after you ran it for a while the plastic on the back would melt and get stuck to your flesh, inturupting your session of Super Mario Brothers 3D featuring Dolby Surround sound, and law suits would ensue. This is of course assuming that you would ever be able to shoe-horn a x86 processor in a tiny case, provide it with power, a bus, memory, and whatever else it wants. Power of course being the greatest obstacle...you can run a Z80 on 4 AA's for months of Tetris, graphing, and, oh yes... MARIO, but a x86 would require a battery pack the size of your TI-8x to give it enough juice for a day or two. In conclusion the eZ80 will be totally awesome if Texas instriments incorporates it in a Graphing calculator...Including a fast enough serial bus to connect a Cellular modem so you can go to slashdot.org and post lenghthy comments which will most likely never be read, such as this one.... Live long and enjoy your IPO!!
Well, a bit over-priced and under-spec'd. The Amiga and ST were out with their Motorolla 68000's so any Z80 machine then had a limited life-time ie 16/32-bit with 16 MB addressable memory vs. 8/16-bit wih 64K addressable memory + whatever you wired up to I/O ports.
The Z80 was cool because it had separate I/O and RAM addressing on separate busses.
;->
Groove-tastic, pop-pickers!
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
On a large scale? I don't see how it could possibly be practical. On a smaller, local, personal scale, sure -- just get together with some local hardware hacks and do it!
No Laughing Allowed!
It was MOS Technology, not Mostek. Mostek made the Z80.
steemheet@hotmail.com - Slashdot will not or can not send me my password
It's not an actual Z80 in the Gameboy and Gameboy Color. It's a
work-alike. I/O and some of the registers are missing in both.
- Ixbalam =^.^=
What makes this chip four times as fast? SIMD? On another note, what is the most powerful processor available that doesn't use a cooling fan?
What I don't understand is why Motorola dumped the 6809 instruction set for all its newer CPUs like the 6811. The 6809 was the best designed instruction set of any 8 bit CPU (its about 8 bit as the 8088). Even the 68000 was worse. Was the 6809 the last clean sucessful design the cpu world? (the NS32032 was clean but way too buggy).
As a matter of historical (hysterical) record.
The last time I checked (about 1983) the Z80 was available in 2.5, 4 and 6 MHz versions with some 6MHz support chips. There was also a 8MHz Z80H as well but no support chips at that speed.
I wrote a lot of code (c and assembler) for that chip.
steemheet@hotmail.com - still waiting for my password!
the new z-80 is a 'good thing'. here's why:
1) This paves the way for new texas instruments graphing calculators. (many run on z80s. it would be rather simple, according to zilog, to replace them with eZ80's.)
2) i think that there's money to be made in a z80 based business computer. you could make the hardware for real cheap, and then custom tailor an incredibly efficient operating system, and business apps. the Z80 is how many decades old? Z80 programmers know that chip incredibly well by now, so they can get their code as efficient as possible. if all of the hardware was uniform, (like playstations) you wouldn't need to bloat the o/s with support for obscure parts that almost nobody has. also, being that the o/s code is completely new, you wouldn't need legacy support! I'm telling you, Z80 computers, while not perfect for gaming, could be made to outrun a PIII running win98 any day in business apps. for much less!
Actually the 1802 did have a stack, just not by default. In fact it could have several, implemented using one of the 16 fully general purpose regs. You could even choose your PC, or use several (that got hairy real quick!). That dam D register was a major bottleneck, tho!
sigh. I kinda miss my old Elf. Well...praps not that much. Miss my CoCos more!
--
If your map and the terrain differ,
trust the terrain.
Sometimes beauty and elegance count for nothing. OS/9 was sort of nice too ... I mean the real one, not Apple's attempt to violate that trademark ("Mac" OS/9 indeed!).
Even when it was in active use, the 6809 never had much real marketing. Motorola's strength wasn't appropriate to the task of World Domination, I guess.
- Jojo
Actually the Sega Game Gear uses a variant of it.
>The computer I had was a CPC 6128 Well no need of eZ80 for CPC as there is a TCP/IP stack in developpement which features : - An Amstrad serial interface driver - A loopback driver - A SLIP layer - IP and ICMP layers (so can be pinged) - UDP and rudimentary TCP layers - A DNS server - A TFTP server, write-only - A ping client - A finger client - A telnet client Go comp.sys.amstrad.8bit for more informations, and why not using CPC emulators ? It's great fun.
...is the first "flash 3" presentation that ran really well on my Linux machine. I enjoyed it.
I kinda chuckled when they kept calling the eZ80 "next step in the evolution of the Z80".
At this rate, maybe someone will be using a 250 MHz, 16 bit "4th generation Z80" running the Hurd and playing a MP3 dirge at my funeral in 2050 or so...ya think?
"Lets install one in ...."
As the other poster said, the Genesis used a z80 for sound processing. I'm not sure exactly what that powerbase convertor did that allowed you to play SMS games on the Genesis. I know a couple of the 'backup units' used the z80 side of the Genesis for their menus and thereby allowed you to run SMS and GameGear games on it (GameGear also used the z80). The Gameboy uses the z80 and the new color Gameboy uses some custom z80 that can run 2x as fast as the original one.
You got to be kidding. The Z80 is the only architecture that I would rank worse than the x86. Irregular registers, instructions that don't work well together (it's a pain to add an 8bit counter to a 16bit total), it's hard to put stuff into the index registers and using the index registers are incredibly slow, etc.
I'm really surprised that the Z80 is used as much in the embedded world as it is. While the transistor count of a Z80 might be small, now a days, that cost savings is going to be swamped by the cost of testing/packaging anyway.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
I sold a whole passel of syncronous modems to a fellow back in 1986 or so. They had Z-80 chips in them as the controller. He intended to reprogram them for some use he had in mind. And he could read and write the Z-80 code as hex.
I got a lot of profit out of those modems. I'd paid $1 apiece for sixty of them, and he paid me $7 apiece for ten of them. Most of the rest I eventually scrapped. Since all the important chips (CPU, UART, RAM, EPROM) were socketed, I yanked a lot of good silicon out of those modems. Still have dozens of those chips in tubes. Nice power supplies too. Clean linear regulated 5/12/-12 outputs.
Real hackers know the pinout of a 7404 TTL chip.
Zilog got started by kicking sand in the face of the Intel 8080/8085, then Intel all but wiped them out during the late 80s and 90s with the ludicrously successful 8051 core. This is second-sourced by dozens of semiconductor manufacturers, and supported by many modern optimizing C compilers.
Zilog is a sad shell of its former self, having tried to diversify into DSPs and suchlike, but its a tough market and they don't have the volume.
This announcement is just another tired attempt to pimp their legacy product portfolio by sticking the work Internet in a press release and 'e' before the product name. Boy, It's not like their based-on-a-20-year-old-core Big Idea is even shipping yet, not until 2000.
... and the guy who said its cool because it is available in VHDL, unless you already have spare configurable logic in your design, the necessary gates are probably >10x the price of the silicon CPU.
Also, 2 pass hand assembling becomes like a second nature
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"Hasta la victoria siempre!" El Comandante
Hex is machine code.
You code in hex with toggle switches, or a diode array, or a binary editor and EPROM programmer.
You code Assembly language using an Assembler. With mnemonics, and labels, and all the offsets and gory details done by the Assembler.
Somewhere in between are monitor programs. Like the monitor program in EPROM on my BigBoard and my SYM-1's.
My Coleco vision had a z80 as well. Anyway I think Sega put out a console before the Master, but you could only get it in Japan. Plus Sega made and imported pinball machines since the 1950's :)
A friend of mine programs autopilot systems for Honeywell. I believe he said when he first started working for them about 6-7 years ago, they were using z80s for the embedded cpu's for flight control systems for several different types of aircraft.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
And the other good thing about Z80s: they're dirt cheap (about 1/10 the cost of the other embeded contollers available from Newark)
Yeah, that's kinda funny. Why don't we ever see a 6502 or a Z80 that runs at 100MHz or more? I would think it'd be so much easier to design a high speed 8-bit processor than a 32 or 64 bit one.
Since we're reminiscing about old processors... I cut my teeth on assembly language programming with my trusty 6809 processor in my Tandy Color Computer. It didn't have as many features as the Commodore 64 which was twice the price, but it was still pretty good.
Programming in assembly gave me a greater appreciation for how computers work, and served me well at college. At Purdue, I took EE 362 (Microprocessors and Interfacing) which also used the 6809. I was the only guy in that semester's class who had done assembly language programming, so I aced it easily. I hadn't done interrupt-driven programming before, so I still learned a lot.
Yep, those were the good ol' days. I bought the Tech Ref manual for my CoCo. It had complete schematics, as well as a description of all major functions. Compare that to today, when I was searching around Intel's site to see how big a L1 cache the PIII has. Sheesh, found some half-useless performance figures and a lot of marketing crap, but no spec sheet. What has the world come to?
Of course, these days aren't so bad. I remember when I was struggling to get an 80-column display for my home system (finally got it with the CoCoIII but it wasn't that good). Then the struggle was to get something close to vi because I had been bitten by the Unix bug. I had started writing my own editor (not nearly as much OSS back then). Now I work and play on a pair of SGI 1600SWs in 24-bit color, with several 32-bit multi-tasking, multi-user OSs at my beck and call. With megabytes (instead of kilobytes) of RAM. I also have my choice of OO languages and compilers, instead of being faced with the decision of Basic vs. Assembly. So it's the good new days too.
Speaking of Commodore, did anyone ever do anything
with the Z80 chip in the Commodore 128? I tried
CP/M a couple of times when I was a kid, but I
couldn't make heads or tails of anything, or
understand why anyone would want to use it. Then
again, I don't think standard CP/M disks worked
with my 1541 disk drive...
The Z80 was my first introduction to Assembler as well, on an old TRS-80 Model II (*sniff*, I miss that big oaf). :)
Imagine their suprise when an 11 year old (or around that) walks into a Radio Shack asking for a book on assembler for a machine they haven't sold there in like 5 years or more.
-- www.bteg.com | bleh.n3.net | hac47.dhs.org
What assembler (and machine language :-) teaches is that a line of code is not just a line of code; I know far too many so called programmers who haven't got a clue that some lines are fast and efficient, some are slow and inept.
You learn how operations break up into smaller pieces. You learn that timing varies all over the map. You learn the details of how instructions work, and how that affects programs, for speed, size, clarity, modularity, expandibility.
You gain new respect for compilers and compiler writers. You gain an insight into what makes computers tick that has nothing to do with counting cycles and bytes. You become a much better compiler language programmer without having to worry about counting cycles and bytes, because you have learned the gestalt of computers. Only assembler and machine language teach that.
Certainly some programmers become excellent without ever knowing assembler, but I have met far too many who simply have no understanding deeper than syntax limits of the language of the day. I seriously believe that assembler should be the second language learned, preferably on 8 bit micros where the instruction set, timing and size, can be memorized just by using it. (The first language should be something like Logo, or Python, or maybe the new Rebol, where the goal is to find out if analyzing and debugging is something the student likes.)
As for PICs, I looked them up for a job interview a few years back. Same reaction as when I first saw Sparc and Alpha specs. Yay! another assembler (ahh the Alpha is sweet, especially the atomic r/w). Several cute tricks, but once you have a dozen assemblers under your belt, there are no surprises. 68K, Yay and Thank You Motorola! VLIW, Yay! Merced, Yay! They all have their tricks, and they are all fun.
There is only one exception, and that is the x86. It has no redeeming features. Disgusting registers, disgusting opcodes, and nothing interesting. Wrote a virtual emmory system for 386. What a pig dog!
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Infuriate left and right
RCA COSMAC 1802 (have I got that right?!?) had no stack; all subroutine calls were corouties really, and left their return address in a register.
CDC 6600/7600 had marvelous interacting registers. Set A1-5 with an 18 bit address and the corresponding 60 bit X register was loaded from that location; set A6-7 and the X was stored to that location; following instructions executed in parallel with the transfer. I have seen many references to them as the first RISC machines, and this was mid 60s. Wonderful wonderful machines. They also had the PPUs to handle I/O and system control. Up to a dozen or so 12 bit computers. Actually one PPU which rotated thru a "barrel" of the dozen or so registers sets and memory banks, looking like separate slow processors. A lot of fun.
Old drum machine spun at 17000 rpm; 200 bands of 25 words aiece I think, decimal, or should I say biquinary (quibinary? Univac had it one way, IBM the other) where the 4 bits were 5-4-2-1 not 8-4-2-1. One gate per circuit card, vacuum tubes power supply, took an hour to spin down. We rewired the instruction set to give us new capabilities!
1620, another decimal machine, with a CRT hooked up so you could toggle the sense switches to play space war.
Fond memories indeed.
--
Infuriate left and right
Also, the Commodore disk drives (1541 and 1571) had their own on-board 6502 processor, RAM (8K ?) and ROM (32K ?). They communicated over a serial bus, and you could even chain two drives together and install a little program to automatically copy disks (which would still work after unplugging the computer).
Of course, we didn't have RC5 back then...
There seems to be a consensis here that the Z80 runs @ 1 Mhz. I know the Z80 is in the TI-81 to TI-86, and in these devices it runs @ 6 MHz, which is evenidenced by some of the impressive programs which can be run on assembly progamming. God knows that little processor has saved me from the bordom of a lenghthy physics lecture and endless notes in a humorously easy computer class, by providing me with the wonders of Tetris and Super Mario. What I don't understand is how the clock speed of the eZ80 will be changed, the brochure says it is capable of up to 80 Mhz, while executing instructions four times faster than the original Z80. Will each chip have a different clock speed or will all of the chips be capable of 80 Mhz??
I am very interested in taking apart my TI-82 or -86 and putting a eZ80 in the socket. But will the new processor run on the same voltage? If it runs @ 6 Mhz it will be four times faster, something which will be a definite advantage when graphing equations or manipulating Matricies...
Howfully prices will be set soon, something cheap enough to allow one to tinker with and not worry about if it gets fried in your graphing calculator.
I bought a BigBoard (the CPU board that the Xerox 820 was based on) at a swapmeet a few years back. I had a Xerox 820 ages ago. It was the first machine with floppy diskette drives (two 8" drives) that I owned.
I have been meaning to power up the BigBoard and see if the monitor rom still works (it should be possible to plug it in via a modem cable and communicate to it using a terminal emulator on a PC). I intended to use it for Z-80 development when I bought it at the swapmeet. Now it probably would fetch the cost of a low-end emulator if I found the right collector. It's a really old one, with "Ferguson" etched onto the PC Board.
That means that I can get the VHDL description of the device, and drop it into an FPGA or ASIC (field programmable gate array and application specific integratted circuit) and make a single-chip solution to some embedded problem. Who would buy the actual silicon from Zilog?
A FPGA from Xilinx costs about $20. The Z-80 costs a few dollars. Multiply the difference by about 1 million and you see significant savings by using the Z80 from Zilog.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
Dude, you would wait ages for the "Make config" to initialize on a z-80 system.
Heaven forbid waiting for the actual build.
I remember the good 'ole days of Cromemco and the Cromix operating system. Some of the machines had a Z80 and a Motorola 6800 DPU. The Z80 ran backward comtability programs andthe 6800 ran the OS.
My dad and I hooked up an A-to-D board and controlled an RC car in the garage. Talk about your open standards. It schematics, replacement component #'s (not part #'s, component), journals about the hardware/software similar to the linux community or LJ ("TechTips" it was called).
It had the original Star Trek and Adventure, I blasted banner pages at all of my dads employees, and sat dumb-founded by the high-speed dot matrix printer with the gree-bar. It rattle back and forth until it walked accross the room. I can remember having to build a sound absorbing box because nobody could hear the phone over the top of it.
I guess my favorite thing about the system was being able to fry a serial port controller in the morning and have it repaired in an hour with off the shelf components.
From memory the processors were:
PET - 6502
VIC20 - 6502
C64 - 6510
C16/+4 - 7501
C128 - 8502 with a Z80 copro for CP/M
Amiga - 68000 - 68040
OTOH, one of the fastest 8 bit processors up until now was the 16MHz 6502 core in the Atari Lynx. The Z80 finally takes its place again.
Sod all this nostalgia, I'm off to code on a 6809.
Don't know about the PET, but the C-128 had a Z80 in addition to the 8502 (6502-derivative) main CPU. However, you could only use one CPU at a time (Z80 for CP/M compatibility, 8502 for everything else).
Although the PIC branching logic seems a bit confusing, it makes sense at a low level. The PIC is pipelined so that the next instruction is being fetched while the current one executes. In the case that a conditional instruction wants to "skip", the CPU just replaces the fetched instruction with a NOP.
The aspect of the PIC which I found the most confusing was trying to do a table lookup from ROM. I was used to a 6502/68000 style where you would use an indirect addressing mode, like "move.b (a0),d0". On the PIC you have to call a subroutine which adds the desired table offset to the program counter register, thus jumping somewhere into a block of RETLW xx instructions (which return from a subroutine with a constant 'xx' in the W register). It gets harder if your table crosses a page boundary.
Still, apart from a few oddities, I like PICs. There is a series with Flash memory (e.g. 16F84) rather than EPROM, which greatly speeds up the development cycle time (no more UV-erasing). There's also a series (e.g. 12CE518) which comes in an 8-pin package with up to 6 I/O lines, and a serial EEPROM on board.
Oh yeah, glad I wasn't the only one to do that! My HS bought a TRS-80 MIII back in '81 and once I reached the limit of what I could do with basic, I then moved on to Z80 assembler because that's all else there was.
Then I got to Purdue where I learned 'the true nature of the Force' with OS/360 BAL. Thank god they got a vax 11-780 the next year or I might have given up on programming as a career (I eventually did anyway, but not because of IBM mainframe assembly.
By the time I graduated in '86 they had IBM XT's but I never had much of a chance to program assembler on those.
Ever play a gameboy???? The last Z80-based computer I actually used for any length of time was a Xerox 820-II CP/M bo
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"Insert witty quote here."
Of course, the headroom required for this speedup was already provided in the original design... the Z-80 required 2-4 times more clocks for a given instruction to execute than the 6502!
Heh! I remember prgramming in Z80 machine code on my Dick Smith VZ200. Occasionally (for *very small* bits of code) I'd type graphic chars onto the screen and execute them from there, usually the first few bytes would be "copy me somewhere safe" instructions.
I still remember some of those hexcodes
CD -> CALL
C9 -> RET
Loading code from tape at 600 bits/second was a bit slow and error-prone. Still, I miss the little thing.
--
Tim Little
-- Tim Little
Just look at the pinout of the chip. No I/O lines to be found! How can they expect us to take them seriously if there are no IO lines, ADC's, EPROM/FLASH etc? 8051 or death!
The C64 used the 6510 CPU, which is a slightly modified 6502. As far as I remember, Commodore modified it a bit in order to work with the CIA chips (generation of timer-dependant IRQs).
The 6510 also had a lot of undocumented opcodes, some with rather strange effects (e.g. what happens depends on where in the memory the opcode is located). I found an excellent review of all the opcodes on the Web a year ago or so. The author had taken the time and trouble to measure exactly what was going on inside the CPU. For example he was able to determine the opcode XYZ is really a corrupted LDY (or LDA or whatever) which do not store the result etc. However, I've lost the link. Does anybody know the whereabouts of this document?
-Raz (Old C64 game- and democoder).
Actually, there were 4 Z8000s: Z8001 and Z8002
were the first pair, with the 8001 having extra pins to address more memory, and the 8002 addressing 64K memory.
The Z8003 and Z8004 were VM machines, same packages as 8001 and 8002.
I used the Z8002 in a robot controller; VERY nice, and I sure wish IBM had picked the Z8000 over the 8088 !!!
What a great machine, especially with 512k of memory.
I remember the cool Z80 instructions like LDIR. It also had BCD commands...
CP/M 3.0 is still better than MSDOS (sigh, no subdirectories).
Lets face it, if people actually realized how useful a $50 computer can be, they would be irritated to say the least. Its not the vendors that sell hardware, its the software developers. As more and more bloated, poorly coded apps are released into the market, the pressure to buy a computer system that is "FASTER...!" or "BETTER...!" is implied. And the programmers play ball by raising the bar and making everything more "graphical" or "intuitive". VI users, stay with me here:
My very first computer was a Z80A-based Kaypro II, handed down to me at the ripe young age of 11. Bundled with the tank-like thing was a version of CP/M-80, Perfect Writer, WordStar, and a host of other apps. It was assumed that your average CP/M user would be writing his/her own boot loader and possibly making some bios (kept in ram, not rom back then) hacks, so CP/M itself came with a very crude assembler, linker, and debugger.
Talk about DIY...but enough flashbacks.
The Z80A-processor is EXTREMELY well-designed. And it is truly the cream of the 8-bit crop when it comes to simplicity and programmability (one accumulator, 2 sets of math registers, push, pop..how straightforward can we get?). It has been superlative design that has kept the processor in constant use since its introduction almost 20 years ago, with the Z80 gracing many a toaster oven or console gaming system along the way.
If you sniff around a little, you'll find that THE BEST programmers, by far, are the ones who were able to sqeeze every bit (pardon the pun) of usefulness into 64k of ram and a processor that needed somewhat complicated subroutines just to multiply or add 2 integers. There were truly some great projects going on way back when, from ZCPR to text-based action games to you-name-it, and in a way, the introduction of this processor is a respectful nod to all the hobbyists who never really deserted "their first computers" in favor of the "better hardware/bloated software" conspiracy.
Now I'm off to go buy a $3000 computer so that I can play a better-looking computer version of Solitaire.
Cheers,
--JM
yoganaut@newmail.net
Actually, if you like the PIC, you'll love the Atmel AVR programmable microcontrollers. Much cleaner architecture than the PIC, no I/O pin weirdness with outputs not quite being outputs all the time, and a real serial-connected programmer is $49 instead of $400.
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Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
At the moment the race for the world's most popular microprocessor is (the last I heard) a neck-and-neck race between the Z80 (and its variants) and the Motorola 6800. In terms of units shipped, Intel is a small niche supplier of microprocessors. (Albeit a very high-margin, high-priced niche.) They are used, as other posters have said, in embedded applications where power consumption and/or simplicity of programming are key. The complete reference manual telling you everything you need to know about Z80 programming, timing, physical specs would look puny against just one of the multiple telephone-book (think Que or Sams sized) volumes needed to describe a more modern processor, like a Pentium or a RISC chip. The entire instruction set fits on a single page. Also, these small embedded processors often have features built in especially for small scale I/O and control. These little suckers play a far more important role in the backbone of the industrialized world than you think.
There is no builtin telnetd -- The best thing that you could do would be to write an interrupt handler to read from the link and and push those bytes into keyboard handler's memory, but then you have the problem of how to get information which has no appeared on the screen back over the link port.
Or if you want to do it the easy way you can connect two calculators togather, record the keystrokes from one and send them to the other.
(takes about 10 lines of assembler)
- MbM
- MbM
Sort of, there is a V7 kernel for the Z80 called UZI (Unix Z80 Implementation). Its amazing what people will do when they have too much time on their hands. http://homepages.muenchen.org/bm347689/misc/unix8b it.htm
I'm pretty sure that I've seen a cpu called Z8000 in some catalogue. It was more then 8-bit (maybe even 32, I don't remember).
Anyone know if that one was ever used in some, at least to some extent, famous application?
I believe all Texas Instruments Graphing Calculators except the TI-89, TI-92, and TI-92 Plus still use the old Z-80.
Hmph. Go find some documentation on the Saturn CPU used in the HP-28/48/49 calculators. It makes the Z-80 look like a 68000 from that aspect.
(surround the LD B,0 with a PUSH/POP if needed)?instructions that don't work well together (it's a pain to add an 8bit counter to a 16bit total)
You mean like:
In general, the Z-80 was simple to learn and use, from both the hardware and software perspectives. I'm happy to see it still around. Some things I did with it in 1980 (say, a programmable sequence tone generator - in 4 chips and no RAM) were next to impossiblt to do as well or as cheaply for years afterward.
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Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
So this is what Transmeta's been doing all this time...
I had a hardware guru friend set it up for me. The first thing he did was to hack (LITERALLY - with an X-Acto knife) the traces on the clock chip to double the CPU speed. Really screamed after that. Only problem was that it made the PackMan game unplayable... :-(
Your Servant, B. Baggins
The Z-8000/ Z-8001 was used in the Atari Coin op video game Pole Position
The box I used was a Central Data Multibus box, running an ancient, crufty version of Microsoft XENIX. As with anything Microsoft, it crashed fairly regularly. :-) A 386 would run circles around it...
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Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
I remeber the 820, almost bought one.
It's 8 inch drive was compatable with an
IBM key to disk machine, don't remember the
number. Anyway, I wrote a program to emulate the
key to disk machine and it worked. Just didn't
have the cash to buy it at the time.
My wife wanted a setup like that to replace
her keypunch machine. We still have it.
Maybe I should ebay the keypunch machine!
The Z80 was the only processor I could ever write machine code for directly (in hex, no assembler)--I actually did a bunch more low-level programming for 8086 and friends, but the Intel reg/mem addressing mode bits were so screwy that you needed at least a book to help you.
I miss the Z80, I really do. It was kind of non-orthogonal compared to the 6502 and 6800, but it powered some of the neater computers and homebrew kits I had growing up.
(Sinclair ZX81: nuff respect.)
spawn_of_yog_sothoth
Uncle Clive provided me with my first Z80 machine, the TS1000. I got the 16K RAM pack and I was in heaven.
Oh, yeah. Anyone posting about Beowolf clusters will have their . . . oh, crap.
The party's over
Neat - wonder if it is easy to throw it in the TI calculator line that uses it (83-86 I believe). It is amazing what these older-style chips have been relegated to, Graphing calculators, imbedded stuff... fun. Heck, the TI-89 and 92 use Motorola 68k processors now. :-) -Onyx
--onyx--
On the other hand, the larger memory space and (seemingly built-in?) TCP/IP stack offers the opportunity to build a "RetroWeb Server." Note that ZSDOS, a ZCPR variant, is now available under the GPL.
The possibilities are immense, I mean, minscule. A complete web server could probably fit in a volume of 2 cubic inches...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
The original Sega console system, the Sega Master system was powered by the z80. Back in the day that was the system to own. It didn't have tons of games but the graphics ruled the NES. They even made a converter for the Genesis that had a z80 in it for backwards Master System compatability. Great old system, still wouldn't trade my Dreamcast for one though.
Pete
I can see through time - Lisa Simpson
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
The Neo Geo sound system contains a Z80 which drives a Yamaha YM-2610 chip. YM-2610 is capable of producing very high quality FM sound and it also supports (a little compressed) samples, which some newer Neo Geo games have up to 16 MB.
- Gridle
Talking about this little beaulty chips, does anyone knows how can I make my own hardware availble for others to improve it, in a way like we do with GPL software?I have some hardware(like a connectix B/W cam clone , a Power outage monitor for linux ) and I want to make it better, in cooperation with others hackers.
Is this possible?
It was recently announced that Amiga would incorporate these chips into their new machine designs.
I reckon ease of use is the most important thing when doing embedded programming -- and the divide and multiply instructions certainly do that.
But the thing I liked best about the Z80 was that it would automagically refresh your memory for you. Great stuff!
Still, can't beat the 6502.
The Z80 is an awesome processor. It's great for beginners at assembly programing - it has a nice, simple, clean architecture and instruction set. It has thousands of uses in embedded applications and is plenty fast for most of them. The Z80 is available for $1.50 a piece (at Fry's) and even takes very little power and produces very little heat.
Am I the only one to remember playing Sabre Wolfe on the Spectrum ... that was a game that really packed in the code.
One of the most impressive games of the time I thought, although Manic Miner and Chuckie egg were also pretty cool.
The Chuckie Egg Appreciation Society has information on ports to other platforms..
Steve
My automated scanners just alerted me to the use of the spell "Nascom 1". My first machine too, and mine ended up having 512K of RAM, an FPU card, a modem card, CP/M, two 5.25 floppy drives, mono and Pluto colour display cards. And a horrible wooden case. I can still read Z80 hex code, and enter it via a monitor from memory. And count backwards in hex to work out the jumps... Sad, eh?
The original Doctor Dark.
Actually, the Commodore PET also used the 6502, as did most of Acorn's range in the UK (the Atom, BBC Micro, and Electron). I used to work for Acorn, and co-authored Acornsoft ISO Pascal - the first ISO/BSI certified ISO Pascal implementation for an 8 bit micro! (compiler, interpreter, editor, runtime and CLI - all in 32K of ROM!).
The minimal 6502 also helped inspire the ARM (the Acorn RISC Machine, before it was renamed).
"How many d.net keys does it...."
-Chris
The Apple II, Atari 400/600/800/XL, and the Commodore 64 all used the 6502 as their processor.
was that Zilog at one point had a 16-bit or 32-bit CPU that was supposed to be pin-for-pin compatible with the Z-80 on the drawing board....something like the Z-8000 or something, but it got canned for whatever reason.
I know this sounds like total crap, but is it true? Does anyone have any inside info?
My journal has hot
Didn't the Sega Master System use a Z80 processor?
^K^B start block
^K^K end block
^K^v move block
^K^C copy block
^K^Y delete block
and they say pot ruins your memory...
A long time ago, we built multi-processor/multi-user systems architected on the Crey 6600. They had multiple 64K memory boards, the largest available at the time, with one dedicated processor. One dedicated memory board for the OS and one board for each user. Also a processor on the disk controller and one for each 8 serial lines. Most were Z80's with some 8085's.
We had one customer who ran a small (10 doctor) HMO with such a machine. We had an Intel executive tell us that we we hiding the 'real' machine since the speeds we were showing were 'not possible' with his own chips, according to him. It got me to understand that even famous folks sometimes do not have a clue.
My ProLite LED sign uses a Z80. Z80s kick ass.
In related news, an Internet-ready version of the 6502, code-named the 65WWW02, was announced today. This new chip will power the newly-ressurected Commodore's iPET series of computers, with accelerated tape drives and helium-cooled IEEE expansion ports.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Wow. All the people unfortunate enough to enjoy using old computers are going to love the eZ80, and write software for it that makes it feel just like the original.
When is Motorola supposed to release the i6800?
An FPGA from Xilinx, holding your custom digital design and the Z80 core, costs about $20. An FPGA from Xilinx, holding your custom digital design, plus a Z80 chip from Zilog, costs about $20 + $3 = $23 and takes more room on your already cramped PCB. If you're not using any digital logic I suppose the Z80 from Zilog is the way to go, but if you're using an FPGA or ASIC of any sort it probably pays to use the synthesizable core (unless you're running out of CLBs or your ASIC design is getting too large).
Reminds me of my experience moving from 6502 assembly hacking to a VAX 11/780. Gobs of registers. Multiply in the instruction set! Floating point multiply in the instruction set! String operations in the instruction set!
Heh. I aced that class, too. Pity I flunked the majority of the rest of them, though, else I'd be making way more bucks than I do now. Ahhh... mis-spent youth.
To keep this semi-on topic, I had actually thought, early today, about what Zilog was up to. I was thinking about my Osborne Executive, and how I'd better go and back up the OS disks for the thing, now that they are 15 years old... Weird that they are still making Z80's. For that matter, it's weird that they are still making 6502's (unless the gameboys switched to some other processor without me noticing). Funny how many of the intermediate processors aren't being fabbed anymore. Anyone still making 8086s (acutally, probably) 286s? 386s? 486s?
Man, how fast would a 6502 or Z80 go if you made it with 15 micron technology and a copper base?
Some time back I wrote a patch for a public-domain Z80 assembler to let you also use the intel opcodes (with a pseudo-op to switch between them), to simplify some porting of an 8080 ROM monitor/debugger. The Z80 was "trailing edge" technology at the time, so I didn't publish them. Maybe I ought to now. (If I can find 'em. B-) )
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
After discovering this, I aced the class. Most other studetns where having problems understanding assembly programming, but I flew through it after experience programming on the Zilog Z-80 with only one register to work with.
Alas, for now I only used OO languages. Go Smalltalk!
--Ivan, weenie NT4 user, Jon Katz hater: bite me!
--weenie NT4 user: bite me!
"Computers are nothing but a perfect illusion of order" -- Iggy Pop
Knew I kept my Ampro 1A and floppies for a reason.
Looks funny with a P166 laptop for CON:, but...
is there a decent CP/M emulator for Linux? DAZLSTAR is still one of the neatest (for its time and context) full-screen debuggers.
I work in the embedded field. Now I seriously expect the "Z80" on my resume to get noticed for more than scut maintenance and port-offs. Other old CP/Mers should expect the same.
I know Ericsson used a Z80 processor in their cellphones at least up to and including GH388.
Except that they aren't going to make any new machines, but instead concentrate on their imbedded applications...
:->
Unless, of course, they're going to revive the Commodore 65 project and try to bring the 8 bit market back from oblivion...
-Markvs
..."I'm so gothic, I'm dead!" - Bumpersticker I saw in New Haven last Friday night.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Ah, the good olde days...
I remember building a NASCOM-1 back in 1978..
1MHz Z80, 2K of RAM (1K for the user, 1K for the monitor program), 300baud audio tape storage..
None of that high level mnemonic assember garbage, just poke those hex op-codes right into memory. I even wrote a line editor and hangman game for the thing.
Computing was never finer!
The computer I had was a CPC 6128 and Gee, did I just love this computer? I even made myself an 8Kb memory extension to write my own boot code that you would call like |Eg0r and stuff from the basic prompt, brilliant!
Anyway, I still do think that in order to learn assembly properly, all you need is a processor you understand everything about, from registers to conditional jumps and so on... Man, x86s are just too complicated to program :-need all those instructions? I know it's cool to have instructions that would take you several op codes to get the same result, but when you learn, all you need is the bare minimum :-)
Anyway, what I learned about the Z80 around when I was a 14 year old teenage kid thinking 'Gee, 8K? I'll NEVER need that much space' :-) helped me with the motorola 68K (both at school and on my Amiga) and then with the TMS320C30, C50, C40 DSPs...
Once you've seen ONE assembly, they are all the same, but you need to start humble, and the Z80 was just a great start for me.
Of course, this is all redundant now, because VLIW is not something you code by hand, but having some knowledge being able to code a microcontroller is never lost!
See Imaging tutorials 1 and 2 to get some ideas of what can be done both in C, assembly and MMX!
So, what do you guys have learned assembly on?
---
"Hasta la victoria siempre!" El Comandante
I've been pulling my hair out, waiting for the 2.2.x kernels to compile... :)
Segmenting has been the single biggest hassle in assembly language program, reaching a lowpoint with the 8088. Arrgggghhh !!!!
And with that one we also get the new Apple ][w. The web based machine where we can one again get "close to the machine" and dis-assemple web based "Woz" code.
Can't believe no one mentioned my beloved MSX. That was a great computer back then in '80. Simply put, the best 8 bit computer ever made.
I also tried coding my own adventure games, they just unfortunately went nowhere. I also remember drawing graphics using those 128 by 48 pixellated worksheets (i copied one in the back of the user's manual), and would fascinate myself with these picutres
even best yet was learning basic by typing in slews of programs from basic program books (plentiful back then). It was cool, even though it was written by mr. gates and crows...
I had an Apple ][+ programming in Pascal and C as well as 6502 when WordStar came along with a bundled 6mz Z80 card with 128K (WOW). I hacked the interface code (with the help of the owners) to include 6502 graphics primitives comtropled from Z80 assembler commands. Turned the Apple into a video slave while the Z80 software only had to calculate vector coordinates. This took several hundred lines of each type of code talking to eachother. How I learned assembler. Add in the CP/M version of Turbo Pascal from Borland's first BYTE add And my research simulations flew! Still havn't had quite the fun out of this semi-retired 233SMP that I'm banging away at, or even the twin 400 SMP that replaced it.
I'm not sure about Legos, but the Z80 is used in industrial controllers and has proven very reliable. I see the Z80 pop up in various products over time. The Z80 may never die.
Here are some Z80 source code for projects done back in college, including GUI with mouse, etc.
Dude... he was joking.
--synaptik
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
Hitachi did a couple of 'extended' variants on the Zilog Z-80 as well. The Hitachi HD64180 is a souped-up Zilog Z-80, and later reissued as the Zilog Z-180. Includes a simple two-segment MMU which allows for access to greater than 64K, several new instructions, and a whole lot of internal special-purpose memory-mapped registers that control things like the on-board serial ports. A great chip for embedded work; I've been brushing up on Z-80 assembly code that I used on an old friend's TRS-80 model I years ago, because we found one of these as a controller chip inside a high-end VCR.
Hitachi has done this sort of thing before; the Hitachi 6309 is essentially a souped-up Motorola 6809, as many of the old TRS-80 Coco fans know...
-- Bryan Feir
But this is 1999, not 1979.
The eZ80 might offer an upgrade path for current Z80 users, but I don't see how it fits into new product design. (But couldn't a Z80 emulator also take care of some of these users?)
Why would anyone use this over, say, some Motorola 68K family processor or some RISC thing?
Doh!
What many of you don't realize is the importants of the statement "Synthesizable core". That means that I can get the VHDL description of the device, and drop it into an FPGA or ASIC (field programmable gate array and application specific integratted circuit) and make a single-chip solution to some embedded problem. Who would buy the actual silicon from Zilog? But give me a small, simple core in my ASIC and I'll be a happy man.
BTW, I too learned my assembly on a Z80. I learned real quick what happens when an ISR takes too long by writing code to blink the screen on a TRS-80 from interrupt, a lesson that I have carried forward into my years as a professional embedded software designer.
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