https://hackaday.com/2024/04/19/end-of-life-for-z80-cpu-and-peripherals-announced/
Zilog To End Standalone Sales Of The Legendary Z80 CPU
Zilog's parent company Littelfuse has notified customers and distributors that it's end of life for the good ol' Z80. In a End of Life / Last Time Buy notification (https://www.mouser.com/PCN/Littelfuse_PCN_Z84C00.pdf ) they state:
"Please be advised that our Wafer Foundry Manufacturer will be discontinuing support for the Z80 product and other product lines."
You can place a final order up until 6/14, if you need to stock up on Z80s.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
End of an Era: End-Of-Life for the Venerable Zilog Z80
Production of some models of Z80 processor – the chip that helped spark the PC boom of the 1980s – will cease in June 2024 after an all-too-brief 48 years.
The Z80 debuted in 1976, using a 4-micron process. Readers will doubtless be aware that some modern silicon is made on a 4-nanometer process – meaning elements are 1,000 times smaller than those etched into a Z80.
Zilog will accept orders for the device until June 14, 2024. After that, it's the end for the eight-bit CPU – or at least the ZC8400 range. Zilog appears to still make the Z180 and eZ80 – successors that added lots of whistles and bells and are often packaged into SoCs.
The original Z80 packed just 8,500 transistors and chugged along at 2.5Mhz, but that was enough to power lots of fun stuff – helped by the fact that it was compatible with Intel's 8080 processor and sold at a cheaper price.
The Sinclair ZX range was perhaps the most famous application of the Z80, using it to power affordable and accessible machines that introduced many Register readers (and writers) to tech. The chip also found its way into arcade games such as Pac Man, and early Roland synthesizers.
But Zilog was overtaken by Intel in the PC market, and by the 1990s decided to focus on microcontrollers instead. The Z80 was one of its key offerings, and over the years was adapted and enhanced: we even spotted a new variant of the chip in 2016!
That sort of upgrade helped the processor and its heirs to hold on in some consumer-facing applications such as graphing calculators like the TI-84 Plus CE. But it mostly disappeared into industrial kit, where it hummed along reliably and offered developers a tried-and-true target for their code.
Perhaps someone will place a giant order for ZC8400s to hoard them, so that those committed to the platform can continue to get kit – a plausible scenario given the likelihood the processor retains a hidden-but-critical role in defense or some legacy tech that will persist for decades.
Or perhaps there's one last batch of ZX Spectrums to be made!
See also:
- https://www.techspot.com/news/102684-zilog-discontinuing-z80-microprocessor-after-almost-50-years.html
- https://www.mouser.com/PCN/Littelfuse_PCN_Z84C00.pdf
Related Stories
The Eerie Linux blog (also in Gemini) has a longer post about how to actually get started using CP/M, the Control Program for Microcomputers.
This article is just what the headline promises: an introduction to the CP/M operating system. No previous knowledge of 1970s and early ’80s operating systems is required. However, some familiarity with Linux or a BSD-style operating system is assumed, as the setup process suggested here involves using a package manager and command-line tools. But why explore CP/M in the 2020s? There are (at least) two good reasons: 1) historical education 2) gaining a better understanding of how computers actually work.
Last year I wrote two articles about CP/M after having taken a first look at it:
A journey into the 8-Bit microcomputing past: Exploring the CP/M operating system – part 1
A journey into the 8-Bit microcomputing past: Exploring the CP/M operating system – part 2These were written with a focus on the first reason; I had (partially) read the manuals and tried out a few commands in an emulator (as well as done a little bit of research). I wrote an outsider’s look at CP/M and covered the various versions that were released and some of their notable features.
This article is different. It’s for readers who want to get started with CP/M themselves. Expect a practical introduction to get familiar enough with the platform to be able to explore a wealth of historic software, often enough ground-breaking and influential.
CP/M was of great importance back during the 8-bit microcomputer era. It was ubiquitous in small businesses and government offices for a while. It ran on the Zilog Z80 and Intel 8080 hardware architectures. MicroPro International's WordStar and Ashton Tate's dBase II were among the killer apps of the era. Networking was by sneakernet or, maybe, if your cable smithing skills were up to it, by null modem.
Previously:
(2024) Complete WordStar 7.0 Archive
(2024) End of an Era: End-Of-Life for the Venerable Zilog Z80
(2024) Intel 8080 Emulator. 19th IOCCC. Best of Show.
(2022) Z80—The 1970s Microprocessor Still Alive
(2016) Portion of Gary Kildall's Memoir Made Public
(Score: 5, Touché) by kazzie on Tuesday April 23 2024, @05:24PM (19 children)
FINALLY, the 6502 has beaten its opponents into the dust!
Now, let's go buy a WDC65C02 and start designing a homebrew computer system or something...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RamiK on Tuesday April 23 2024, @05:57PM (18 children)
8051... PIC... AVR... STM...
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 23 2024, @06:05PM (15 children)
65HC11
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday April 23 2024, @09:46PM (14 children)
I've only listed 8-bit micros that are still developed and used in new designs. Are there any recent releases of 6800 / 68HC11 8-bit derivatives?
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 24 2024, @01:10AM (9 children)
I don't know about new designs, I bet there are plenty of old designs still using 65hc11 variants in maintenance/repair support if not production.
They were used as engine ECUs in the 90s and still going into all kinds of new products in the 2000s.
But those pink/purple manuals are probably out of print for awhile now.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday April 24 2024, @10:13AM (8 children)
Considering the successor to the z80 is binary compatible to the z80 and is being recommended used in commercial products [wikipedia.org] and how the hc11 was replaced by the incompatible hc12 that was then made obsolete by the 2010s, I'd equate the 68hc11 state to the proverbial stiff, nailed to the perch, parrot.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 24 2024, @11:33AM (7 children)
Possibly, I "left the scene" before hc12 became a mandatory replacement.
I was quite happy with the hc11 family... We would prototype with "the big one" (with all the ports onboard) and if the application could squeeze into a smaller cheaper variant like the D3 then the production run would go there, and the code ported just about seamlessly.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday April 24 2024, @01:29PM (6 children)
I'm just too spoiled by simple addressing modes. Though it might be to do with 99.999% of my interactions with assembly being read-only through gdb and ilk. I mean, it's not rare for me to need to adjust my C following whatever the debugger says but scoping asm and actually writing instructions... Can't remember the last time I needed to do that really.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 24 2024, @02:20PM (5 children)
I remember when they explained the 80286 paged addressing mode in Uni, I couldn't stop thinking: "You must be shitting me. Who would do something so screwed up on purpose?" I had been doing 6502 assembly for a few years before that, and had even worked with some shoehorn schemes to expand 6502 based machines beyond 64K RAM, but the idea of designing the processor from the ground up with something so messy built in... Job security, I'm sure, was high on their minds.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday April 24 2024, @11:58PM (4 children)
Stephen Morse explicitly stated (what we all knew all along) that the 8086 and successors were just temporary substitutes due to the iAPX 432 getting delayed and failing to meet expectations:
( https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=7912251 [ieee.org] The Intel 8086 Chip and the Future of Microprocessor Design 2017 p.1-2 )
The story kept repeating itself with the i860 and the Itanium until they found themselves "the x86 guys".
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 25 2024, @12:58AM (3 children)
Beta Max was better but market forces can be overwhelming.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday April 25 2024, @11:50AM (2 children)
Betamax was better looking but more expensive.
Intel's non-x86 archs were worse performing and more expensive.
Big difference.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 25 2024, @12:41PM (1 child)
>more expensive.
I think that would have come down with scale... assuming someone successfully opened the IP from Sony's profit seeking stranglehold (which would have been a basic pre-requisite for Betamax market domination...)
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday April 25 2024, @04:09PM
Nah the Betamax recorders required more physical components and Sony wasn't the only one pushing the Betamax:
( https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/CorporateInfo/History/SonyHistory/2-02.html [sony.com] )
Also I'm pretty skeptical about the potential the quality advantage could have had in an era when color TVs were only starting to outsell b&w and the recorders were twice as expensive as the high-end sets. Like, this comparison which represents over a decade of improvements (well, b1->b2 is a loss but film cassettes were almost exclusively being sold as b2 so...) from the mid-70s models shows more details but certainly nothing worth the cost margin and I'm seeing this on a 1080p: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oJs8-I9WtA [youtube.com]
I think it's all just victories of good-enough and open(er) licensing practices.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Rich on Wednesday April 24 2024, @12:19PM (3 children)
If you count FPGA remakes, yes. I do customer work on a device initially designed around 1992 that does its robotics with a set of 68HC11A1 based controller boards. As the chip was end-of-lifed (and RoHS became mandated), that customer did a hardware revision of the board that includes an HC11 core on an FPGA. The software, written in hard to tackle assembly code, was left as-is. Just last week, I've also dug out a cycle accurate software emulation (like what MAME does, but unrelated) I wrote for those controllers many years ago, because now there's some new software work to be done. Lacking the original lab and equipment, that seems the easiest way to go ahead.
So it might not be "recommended for new designs" silicon, but the spirit lives on at least in newly created overhauled designs that run some sort of replication.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday April 24 2024, @01:50PM (2 children)
Won't soft cores defeat the premise of "Last 8-bit Standing"? I mean, there's retro computing z80 product using FPGAs so the whole thread turns on its head.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Rich on Wednesday April 24 2024, @03:49PM (1 child)
What they did is exactly like that "computing z80 product using FPGAs", but not for retro fun, but for economic purposes. It was a proper reply to "Are there any recent releases of 6800 / 68HC11 8-bit derivatives?". Recent, yes, derivative, also yes. The "trve kult" retro stuff wouldn't be a recent release, and neither a derivative, it'd be the original part from around 1980, in its through-hole PDIP 40.
As for true-70s, or at least pin compatible (because CMOS), it seems the WD65C02 is the last unit left. And no one is going to dig out that old stuff and create new silicon, as with the quantities, it'd be much more economic to create a multi-chip-module with an FPGA and level shifters than to do masks to integrate for processes that are no longer offered. From how I read the Littelfuse announcement, it looks like the fab that made the Z8400 somehow broke down, it's not economical to fix it, and they'll supply from what wafers they have left. And then Rochester might pick it up. Just checked their site, and they still have stuff like that on offer, like an Intel 8748 (true 70s), or a Hitachi 63C09E (finest original 8-bit). Maybe, with some wafer sharing scheme, some students might have a go at one of the classics.
From the economic side, the retro stuff comes pretty much down to "We want this product to have a lifecycle of 50 years or more", B-52 style. Until the Littelfuse announcement, I'd have expected that the Z80 is the IC of choice for such designs and would last for a century in its niche like the 741 opamp. Now, I'm not sure, but I guess the ATmega328P is the next best choice, because it was used in a bazillion of tinker toys that turned into products.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday April 24 2024, @11:06PM
Per usual, Olimex to the rescue: https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/Neo6502/ [olimex.com]
An RV32 for sure. There's everything from western automotive to eastern industrial and consumer options and plenty of soft cores in-between. Also the compilers and libraries will stay updated and backwards compatible due to so many vendors using the same ISA.
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(Score: 3, Touché) by kazzie on Tuesday April 23 2024, @07:17PM (1 child)
Yes, they're still available (and I use some regularly), but they weren't part of the 8-bit PC boom of the 1980s referred to in TFA.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday April 23 2024, @10:10PM
That's a fair point.
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(Score: 4, Informative) by DannyB on Tuesday April 23 2024, @05:48PM (14 children)
I REMEMBER THE Z80 IN A TRS-80 THAT I USED IN HIGH SCHOOL. THERE WERE SOME EXTREMELY CRUDE TOOLS TO POKE Z80 PROGRAMS INTO MEMORY AND RUN THEM.
I ALSO REMEMBER FROM BYTE MAGAZINE THAT THE SUBSEQUENT Z80A HAD A CLOCK SPEED OF AN AMAZIFYING 4 MHZ! I STARED AT THE ADVERTISEMENTS IN BYTE. IF ONLY I COULD HAVE A 4 MHZ Z80 WITH CP/M THERE WOULD NEVER BE A MORE POWERFUL SYSTEM EVAR!
--
SENT FROM MY TRS-80
If your boy is chewing on electrical cords, then ground him until he conducts himself properly.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 23 2024, @08:00PM (7 children)
Is the shift key on your TRS-80 stuck?
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Tuesday April 23 2024, @08:18PM (5 children)
Both TRS-80 and its Video Genie EG 3003 clone had only 7-bit character generator for screen. In that epoch, that was also normal with many cheap terminals too.
A nontrivial hardware hack was necessary to upgrade chargen ROM to include lower case.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 3, Touché) by drussell on Tuesday April 23 2024, @08:42PM (4 children)
How would 7-bit encoding disallow lowercase characters?!
I think you need to check your math. 🙄
Now, if you go back to the 1800s and things like Baudot code, then you run out of room in your encoding for easily supporting lower case letters...
(Score: 4, Informative) by Mojibake Tengu on Tuesday April 23 2024, @10:46PM
On TRS/EG in that chargen space, there were rectangle graphics symbols for games. Software (like NewDOS 2000 operating system or TRS DOS) used the lowercase but some machines simply presented it on screen as upper only.
Also, some people have rather put national diacritics characters in their ROMs instead of lower case, especially for VisiCalc spredsheet. Usually coresponding to their hacked chargen in an Epson dot matrix printers. EPROMs on market were small these days...
I still remember the ASCII letters R,E,A,D,Y encoding were corresponding to ď,í,č,é,š in some very fancy chargen replacement. A funny collateral was the machine asked "ďíčéš?" instead of "READY?" after reset. A flip-flop bit on hacked hardware contraption was not resettable. After Basic initialized itself, it was normal again.
Those are beginnings of true mojibake. Simply, ďíčéš.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Tuesday April 23 2024, @11:52PM (1 child)
As I recall, TRS80 (CoCo 2) ROM only had bitmaps for the upper case characters, and lowercase were represented inverted. (black background, green foreground) as opposed the usual green background, black foreground). There was software that had lower case - TeleWriter64 for example, but it was using graphics mode, and provided its own character bitmaps for it.
wikipedia says the coco 3 had true lowercase; i never had one.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Wednesday April 24 2024, @04:19PM
First of all, the CoCo machines used a Motorola 6809E, not a Z80 like the "real" TRS-80 machines used, so technically somewhat off-topic for this discussion, I guess. :)
The very simple MC6847 [wikipedia.org] video controller in the original CoCo and early CoCo 2 models had a text mode designed for basic 6-bit ASCII and stored the 5x7 pixel characters stored internally (when used without an external character ROM) in a 64x35-bit matrix (2240 total bits of ROM,) but was set up to render those same characters with light-green on dark-green when addressed as the lowest 64-bytes (0-63) of the 8-bit space, while rendering them as dark-green on light-green when addressed as characters 64-128 of the 8-bit space.
The later model revisions of the CoCo 2 (26-3134B, 26-3136B, and 26-3127B) used the updated MC6847T1 whose default internal ROM was expanded to include an additional 32x35 bits of character set which included the 26 lower case letters, plus six additional characters ( ^ { | } ~ _ ) which the earlier model did not know how to display, and had these characters in the 0-31 positions, rendered as dark-green on light-green, leaving positions 32-63 as dark-green on light-green numbers, punctuation and symbols. Characters 64-128 remained the same uppercase set, rendered as dark green on light green, the same as the original MC6847.
Despite the fact that these later CoCo 2s had the hardware variant that could theoretically be able to display these lower case characters, apparently they didn't. The Wikipedia page on the CoCo says that "BASIC was not updated to allow lower case" but that doesn't seem to make any sense. Standard-issue T1 variant parts with Motorola's default ROM should just display lower case properly instead of the uppercase "reverse-video." Perhaps Tandy ordered custom versions of the chip with a different internal ROM which replicated the behavior of the original part, or perhaps there was some sort of other inverse-video bit or attribute at play instead somehow, I have no idea personally as I never programmed one of those chips directly. I guess one would have to go pull the appropriate datasheets to figure out exactly what was going on. I leave that as an exercise for the reader. :)
The CoCo 3 used the MC6847T1, obviously with the standard-issue Motorola ROM which did have working lower-case support when calling for characters 0-31, and was supported in BASIC, etc.
I never had one either, and only ever used a friend's original grey CoCo with the chicklet-type keyboard. Our family had a TI-99/4a.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ncc74656 on Wednesday April 24 2024, @05:14AM
Indeed.
The 2513 [thealmightyguru.com] was a pretty common mask-programmed ROM used as a character generator. It had 9 address inputs and 5 data outputs. Six bits of the address selected the character, which is why you didn't get lowercase. The other three bits selected which of 8 rows of pixels to put on the 5 output pins. In the Apple II, the 5 pixels per row from the 2513 were (I think) preceded and followed by a blank pixel, so the 5x8 character was drawn within a 7x8 block of pixels sent to the display. Other computers might've used more or less spacing between characters.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 24 2024, @02:22PM
The original early TRS-80 models (1977) could only display upper case in order to save a few cents per unit. Very sad. Third parties offered fixes. Eventually newer models had lowercase.
Another way that having only upper case saves money is that there is no need for a CAPS LOCK key.
Also everyone pays attention to what you say because they think you are shouting.
If your boy is chewing on electrical cords, then ground him until he conducts himself properly.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 23 2024, @08:34PM (2 children)
I forget the exact model, but one of the kids in our high school had overclocked his system from 1MHz up to 2MHz...
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by drussell on Tuesday April 23 2024, @08:51PM (1 child)
I've got an old Dahlgren Wizzard XL CNC engraving machine from the 1980s that uses two Z80s, which I've always wanted to try to "upgrade" or overclock the main CPU that calculates the job... Obviously the other Z80 that actually runs the engraving table probably should stay at the stock speed, but speeding up the calculation of fancy jobs like anything using the "EZ-ARC" curved-text software would benefit from having faster clock cycles for the calculations.
It can take a minute or more to calculate a complex multi-line or EZ-ARCed job... not that it's usually a huge deal, but it would still be nice to be faster.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 23 2024, @09:09PM
If you've got decent specs on the machine, you might be able to slip an emulator board in for the calculating processor - available speedup should be 100x or more...
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday April 25 2024, @07:29PM (2 children)
Is your capslock key stuck? And the clock speed was 1.something. The IBM PC was 4 mHz. I have fond memories of my TS-1000 and its Z-80 processor.
I not only learned programming on it, I learned Z-80 assembly, just to make my Battle Tanks game workable. It's amazing how fast a 1 mHz chip can run when programmed in machine code. IIRC the game was under 200 bytes.
SENT FROM MY TRS-80
Oh. Okay. Permanent capslock...
In 1942, all of America and most of the world was antifa.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday April 25 2024, @09:36PM
There were models of the Z80 which had 4MHz speed.
If your boy is chewing on electrical cords, then ground him until he conducts himself properly.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday April 25 2024, @09:58PM
I had 4MHz Z-80A in my Nascom 2 [computinghistory.org.uk] / Gemini computer.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aafcac on Tuesday April 23 2024, @06:19PM (5 children)
I think it's interesting how this outlasted the 386 even though it's much less powerful. It makes me wonder a bit if any of the current chips will have that sort of staying power now that Even SoCs are powerful enough for basic general computing.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 23 2024, @08:03PM (4 children)
Why? Z80s are great for small, embedded systems like coffee makers, microwaves, etc. What appliance needs a a frickin' 386?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 23 2024, @08:32PM (2 children)
Agreed, 386 was a "top performance" model - quickly out of fashion. Z80, 6502, 6511, etc. have many very different niches they played to. We used the 6511 family for our prototypes in the late 1990s, and when I went looking for work in 2003 I found that Caterpillar was using the 6511s to control their heavy machinery. There's an application I would never trust to a controller that may BSOD you at any moment.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Thursday April 25 2024, @02:56AM (1 child)
The black box I worked on had a Z80 and 6800 working on the same data at the same time. The design impressed me with its complete distrust of the hardware. BSOD? It rebooted itself every 550 milliseconds. The idle loop was a RAM test.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 25 2024, @12:40PM
> its complete distrust of the hardware
Nice.
I think the key to reliable systems comes from the design phase: don't do more than you need to, define what you need to do, do what you need to do well. Doing it twice, on disparate hardware (hopefully fed by independent power systems?) is a great step forward, until both of your programmers are barely capable of meeting requirements.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday April 23 2024, @09:22PM
Not everybody is into this sort of electronics. The i386 held on for a rather long time, only being discontinued in 2007, I doubt that most people realize just how chips from the '70s and '80s actually remained integrated into various more modern devices.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday April 23 2024, @08:14PM (5 children)
Are any Z80s, or any other CPU designs from that era made at 14nm or 7nm nodes? Probably be the size of a grain of rice, and so I guess that sort of thing is the basis for SoC embedded stuff.
After the Apple IIGS, could've had an Apple II SoC, but wouldn't be much sense in it. The Apple II design is pretty primitive, with some big hacks. Before the GS, no offloading of disk drive or audio functionality to helper processors. Color hi-res graphics was a massive hack that exploited how analog color TV signals work, and it really makes no sense to perpetuate that design. If an updated Apple II is to utilize HDMI or Display Port, would have to somehow bridge that complete revamp of video signaling, and at that point, may as well just design a whole new computer. It's in a way miraculous that the IBM PC design and x86 family has bridged all that, moving from 16bit and CGA or monochrome graphics to 64bit, the GPUs we have now, and all the other huge changes over the years such as ISA bus to PCI Express, and maintained as much backward compatibility as they have.
Will RISC-V finally supplant x86? Will the whole von Neumann architecture be superseded by AI processing units?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 23 2024, @08:36PM
As I recall, the Motorola 8 bit CPUs were never updated to newer (smaller) feature sizes, they just kept churning them out of the old (easier to maintain, I'm sure) fabs.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by drussell on Tuesday April 23 2024, @09:06PM (3 children)
Apple sold the "Apple //e Card" for the Macintosh LC and Color Classic models for quite a while, even after discontinuing the IIGS and then later discontinuing the //e. That was an LSI version, SoC, or a couple of chips... whatever exact number it was. A very "integrated" version of the //e at least, for the time.
I think they were still selling them up until about 1996, IIRC. They were still available for at least a year or two after retiring the actual Apple ][ line of stand-alone machines.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Wednesday April 24 2024, @12:36PM (2 children)
One guy did a "what could have been" job and built a Mega II based Apple IIe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFCD4s_hsb4 [youtube.com]. I just feel sorry for the poor IIgs donor, but maybe he could put the leftover Ensoniq 5503 into a C128 for a "what if Bob Yannes had stayed at Commodore" exercise :)
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday April 24 2024, @01:41PM
I've just lost half and hour - but it was probably one of the best 'wastes of time' that I have had for a long time. Very enjoyable. Thanks for the link!
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 2) by drussell on Wednesday April 24 2024, @04:34PM
Yeah, the Gemini chip used on the Apple //e Card is very similar to the Mega II in the GS.
I thought the Gemini chip actually included the 6502 internally, (whereas the Mega-II in the GS used the 6502 mode of the GS' 65C816,) but after a bit more reading, apparently the Apple //e Card had a discrete 65C02 on it rather than being internal to the Gemini chip. Technically not "SoC" I suppose, but extremely close for the era.
Also: Yes, interesting video. Hadn't seen that. Thanks.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 23 2024, @08:14PM (2 children)
First microcomputer in the family was an Apple II but we quickly realized that the business applications were on CP/M. So we bought one of these Z-80 cards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-80_SoftCard [wikipedia.org] One of the better things I've purchased from MS...
Much later, I met Niel Konzen who worked on the Softcard project. Here's a link from 40 years ago this month, that took me back, https://vintageapple.org/softalk/pdf/SOFTALK_8104_v1_n08.pdf [vintageapple.org] From magazine page 51:
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bart on Tuesday April 23 2024, @08:32PM (1 child)
I also bought one of those to run CP/M. Fun! But I couldn't afford an Apple ][, so I bought a Formosa LM-2000. Total ripoff, with the only difference 8 bytes in rom, that spelled 'LM-2000'.
I love how those computers could actually be fully understood, and even came with the schematics. I actually blew up mine but shorting all the expansion pins with a homemade expansion port (great idea, but hey, I had little money). I managed to debug the issue with an oscilloscope. I found out that the bus-transceiver had blown. Bought a new one for a few guilders, soldered it in (through hole!), and my precious worked again.
My career turned into embedded soft- and hardware as you might expect :-)
Happy days.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 23 2024, @08:39PM
I franken-modded my Atari 800 to have an internal speaker, using the PCB out of a cassette player as the amplifier - powered off of the 5V bus as I recall, and it actually sounded really good. The 800 had the AC-DC converter / power supplies on one side of the case and the other side was empty, so I shoehorned in the biggest speaker that would fit and stuck the amp PCB in there with it. 6 well placed jumper wires and a log-pot later and we're in business.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by namefags_are_jerks on Tuesday April 23 2024, @11:53PM
It's the DIP packaged Z80s getting the chop.
A better-informed/less-clickbaity website report is here: https://www.hackster.io/news/zilog-calls-time-on-the-venerable-z80-discontinues-the-standalone-z84c00-cpu-family-723594464754 [hackster.io]
> Zilog has announced it is halting production of its standalone DIP-packaged Z80 CPU models [..]
> The notification names 13 Z80 parts, all in the Z84C00 family, as being officially end-of-life [..] The discontinuation does not, however, appear to cover the eZ80 embedded core range — only the standalone CPU parts.
> UPDATE: A separate product change notification confirms that the new Z180 core line is also affected, with the same last order date of 14 June 2024.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday April 24 2024, @03:26AM
That is untrue. Feature size hasn't tracked node name for more than a decade. In 1976, a 4-micron process would have a gate length of 4 microns. Now, a 4 nm process might have a gate length of about 40 nm,
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2024, @07:06PM
Of the many microprocessors I have programmed in the previous millennium, not many have survived to this day (but remember the Z80 lives on in some SoCs and in other forms like the eZ80).
I have done machine code/assembler for an odd variety like 4004, 8008, 8080, V20, 8085, Z80, 8088/8086, CDP1802, 6502, 6800, 6809, 68000 (with variants), NS32016/NS32032, and possibly some I have forgotten.
I have also programmed oddities like the one-bit "processor" (more like ALU) MC14500B, and variations over the AM2900 bit-slice series — add to that an increasing number of microcontrollers, I can say that it was an interesting time to live in.
That said, Z80 is a venerable processor to lose. I got one of my customers to change his design of a CP/M system from 8080 to Z80, mostly so I could utilise the improved instruction set when writing the BIOS and the separate, "smart" screen controller — but I "forgot" to tell him that it was my main reason.
Requiescat In Pace Z80!
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Sunday April 28 2024, @10:26AM
This article motivated me dig out my old Timex Sinclair 1000, a ZX81 that was sold in the US. I'm still waiting for the arrival of some items I need to connect it to a modern TV, but in the meantime I discovered this top notch emulation in the App Store. It is very well done, and best of all it is FREE! Enjoy.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zx81/id1180117434 [apple.com]