Z80 – The 1970s Microprocessor Still Alive (2021)

asdefghyk

A paragrap from the linked articale Z80 was the choice of a microprocessor for then home computers such as Radio Shack TRS-80, SORD M23P, M5, Sinclair ZX81, ZX Spectrum, KayPro II, and many other manufacturers.3 It was capable of running the CP/M operating system in most Z80-based PCs. Z80 had a reasonable share in the PC market until Intel revealed its 16-bit microprocessor in the mid-1980s. Z80 was very popular as a microprocessor not only in PC applications, but also in industrial embedded applications, and some of the big manufacturers have Z80 core inside their ASIC chips still today or use enhanced versions of Z80 in consumer electronic devices.4–7 Zilog still manufactures ez80, an enhanced version of the original Z80, which is still being used by Texas Instruments in its TI-84 and TI-84 Plus calculators.7 It is among the few silicon chips that made a remarkable impact on the electronic device industry.8 To this day, Zilog produces a range of Z80-based microprocessors and intelligent peripheral controllers, and they are available from reputed electronics component suppliers.2,9,10 This microprocessor is one of the longest living microprocessors of all time.

meekins

Due to its simplicity it's a fun little processor to program. Hacking on some assembly on a ZX spectrum emulator is a nice way to stay sane in this high abstraction LLM age.

julienmartlet

Ironically (and sadly) the Z80 was discontinued not very long after this piece was published.

getfacl

Tom Jennings, the creator of fidenet, is producing a nice modern Z80 computer[0] 0. https://www.ebay.ie/itm/206496219323

librasteve

interesting to be reminded that an 8080 (8 bit datapath) took 4,800 transistors an Apple M5 Max is 100,000,000,000 transistors (ok it’s 18 CPU + 40 GPU cores) by comparison so 17 million 8080 equivalents

Lio

> Then, as a young engineer, I worked in a large mainframe computer system based on Z80. This sentence threw me a little bit. Which mainframes were based on the Z80? I'd love to know more about that.

AIorNot

The inventor of the Z80 Fredrico Faggin is promoting a consciousness first universe now https://youtu.be/-vz5LU2ECm0?is=g1T-QM8Lq9qNyiNK

JoeAltmaier

My first ambitious project was a Z80 assembler. The Z8000 (much later) was distinguished by being the last random-logic (not microcoded) microprocessor of it's day.

evalystai

Reminded me good old days.. games loaded from cassette recorder and my first program for Spectrum which was a simple drawing tool I proudly called "graphic editor" :)

christkv

Interesting interview with Frederico Faggin on of the two designers of the z80 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=28JtL1WVjMw

RomanPushkin

Rare find https://www.zosya.net/file/TTT_in_detail.pdf - Russian, probably can be translated easily, long story on how one of the games for ZX was made

t1234s

I just sold my Z80 motherboard on ebay.

analog31

The Z80 was my "first" microprocessor, in an odd way. I've never touched one. It was the early 80s, and my mom was getting Byte Magazine, which I devoured. I had taken a high school programming class in BASIC, and was interested in electronics. Radio Shack had a shelf of books, and I was going through them one by one as I could afford them. They had William Barden's book on the Z80, published by Howard Sams, because the TRS-80 used it. That book was so clearly and methodically written, that a high school kid could understand it. Later on I added some scraps of inline assembler here and there in programs, but eventually got into microcontrollers, which I continue to play with. I admit that my mental model of microcontrollers is still based on those 8 bit machines, and I owe a debt to the Z80.

Sulfide6416

The Z80 living on as the eZ80 in embedded gear says a lot - a well-designed 8-bit core can outlast entire architectures built to replace it.