Notifications
Clear all
Topic starter
2019-06-24 3:20 pm
I love the Z-80 and always have. My first real computer was a Pet 4000. Then a (step down, but color!) Vic 20 and last a C64. All of these had a 6505 or similar CPU. I liked the 6502 and happily coded away on them, but I always tinkered with the Z80 with electronics. This all started when I got the William Barden book "Z-80 Microcomputer Design Projects" I built the EPROM programmer and a subset of the computer. It was so fun!
In high school, I did a fair amount of Z80 & CP/M programming for a local company that needed a cheap programmer. That pushed me to like the Z80 even more!
After a few years, I started to collect Z80 based computers. I was given several Timex Sinclairs, and I purchased an Aquarius (broken), Micro Professor (broken, but still have mostly) and a Sinclair 2068 (which I still have)
The others are either in parts, missing or given away.
Anyway, Z-80's are a great way to learn about computer electronic basics.
Scott
2019-06-24 4:04 pm
I agree. I also fell in love with the Z80. What I liked about it was the two banks of registers that could be swapped out. I would use one bank to store the main program parameters, and swap to using the other bank in subroutines (what they now call "methods").
Of course these are only features that can be appreciated when programming in machine language (or assembly language) although I used to program just using Hex instructions and I even wrote my own OS.
People who ran things like BASIC on a Z80 would have no clue what's actually going on inside the CPU. Not that this is bad. I've done my share of BASIC programming too. But that's pretty well removed from what actually going on at the machine level.
Buy yeah, the Z80 was a "super CPU" in its day. ? It is the CPU that really drew me into working with machine language.
DroneBot Workshop Robotics Engineer
James
jscottbee reacted