Original post: http://8times8.eeems.me:81/blog/index-beta.php?thread=16
This afternoon I started building this z80 computer. It will run at 20MHz, have 128K of ram and 8K of rom. The operating system will be stored on an external medium such as floppy disks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uHxDewYHNQ
Awesome *.* shouldve called the M80 though :P
I want to try to make my own 8-bit computer one day too, seeing your awesome projects >.>
It's more of a project name. The computer will get a proper name once I come up with a catchy one.
Lol it has less ROM than the TI-81 :P (the 81 had 32K). Nice by the way, and good to see you managed to get a Z80 clocked at 20 MHz. :)
aeTIos gave me this z80 a while ago.
Ah that's cool of him ^.^
Just bought a bunch of parts. I got a 20MHz crystal, a bunch of capacitors and a connector for the floppy drive. I don't know which floppy drive controller I will use yet.
Cool to see that you can finally get that thing to do something ^.^ It's a bunch more useful for you than for me in any case :P
OMG where did you get those? O.O
Free sample from Zilog :P
Seriously? Could i have one?
Just ask and they ship em to ya.
Hell yeah, could you tell me where I could ask and what I could ask, please? :D
Free samples? I should get this breadboard to use one of those times.
Wait are you serious? O.O
If I get into electronics I hope I remember :P
i was actually thinking of building something myself, so im interested too o.o
The z80 I have comes in a plcc package which means you need a plcc to dip converter to fit it on a breadboard. I have not checked if zilog still makes the dip-style z80's (they probably do)
On the site i was looking at they sold DIP 28 and DIP 40 actually, though they were only 6 Mhz ones
I am curious if Zilog will continue making 6 MHz CPUs in the near future with the TI-83+ slowly being phased out? I don't know if it will disappear from North America but I think it's only a matter of time.
i don't think they're going to stop anytime soon, but meybe they'll just make less
I am curious about what else than TI calcs use a Z80, though.
A Gameboy :P
also i heard it's the best sold cpu ever so yeah
Zilog sells all kinds of cpus and microcontrollers, but everyone just wants a z80 :P
Seriously though, imagine if CodeWalrus decided to make its own gaming device or computer :P
I found the free samples (https://www.samplecomponents.com/scripts/samplecenter.dll?ZILOG)~ Along with a Captain Zilog comic book (http://www.zilog.com/captain_zilog/)? o.o
Anyway, you should post a guide on how to order those free samples and pick the right ones.
Lol those comics were kinda unexpected :P. I wonder if they are any good?
Quote from: Juju on March 02, 2015, 05:05:26 AM
I found the free samples (https://www.samplecomponents.com/scripts/samplecenter.dll?ZILOG)~ Along with a Captain Zilog comic book (http://www.zilog.com/captain_zilog/)? o.o
Anyway, you should post a guide on how to order those free samples and pick the right ones.
They lost a so-good visual pun there! See, Captain Zilog and his Chip-munk sidekick! :trollface:
Oh wow, those puns XD. I wonder if one of those comics involves a battle against ARM and 68K nations or something? :P
AVR does have a super hero of their own...
AVR Man vs Captain Zilog :P
Each one must gather INTELligence from the other side to win the Dual(core) sided war.
Quote from: Juju on March 02, 2015, 05:05:26 AM
I found the free samples (https://www.samplecomponents.com/scripts/samplecenter.dll?ZILOG)~ Along with a Captain Zilog comic book (http://www.zilog.com/captain_zilog/)? o.o
Anyway, you should post a guide on how to order those free samples and pick the right ones.
It's ages ago since I ordered that sample, I don't even exactly know how to order them anymore, will look into that (and order another one, I guess?). And yeah that Cpt. Zilog book is pretty cool :P
This is intel's super hero:
(http://i.ytimg.com/vi/lGn6XImwVD4/maxresdefault.jpg)
I wonder what ST, TI and Microchip are going to come up with.
This better be a mage, because I don't think he'll stand a chance against Captain Zilog :P
If TI gets a Superhero it will probably behave erratically at times, because of bugs, and probably be cheap in production because TI will have done everything to keep production costs to a minimum. :P
I got the serial output to work with the PC16552D UART chip. There were some dodgy solder joints that caused problems with it, but I tracked them down and resolved the problem.
It prints characters at 960 Bytes/second right now, but it can go up to 125kByte/second.
I ported the bootloader I made for the cbs6000 to z80 asm. It works great :D
Source can be found here: https://github.com/keoni29/z820
Quote from: Keoni29 on March 04, 2015, 08:02:57 AM
I ported the bootloader I made for the cbs6000 to z80 asm. It works great :D
Source can be found here: https://github.com/keoni29/z820
"Error: does not execute properly" ? :P
Anyway nice progress :D
Yeah I should get rid of that :P That should have been taken down after I fixed the bug.
I am busy writing a monitor program which allows me to poke around in memory and debug stuff. I based the monitor off the one I have on the cbs6000 computer.
I finished porting the monitor and it works great! It's just like the one on the CBS6000. I learned a lot about the z80 in the process.
Source can be found here: https://github.com/keoni29/z820/blob/master/mon.asm
(off-topic: Your avatar is scary and reminds me of AVGN :P)
Also good job. :D By the way, as you work on this computer and learn about the processor, did you gain some interest in learning TI-8x ASM as well? :)
I have done a bit of asm programming for the cse in the past, but not much else yet.
Oh wait you did CSE stuff? I totally forgot. By the way do you like the language or do you prefer higher level ones?
Depends on the task at hand. When I need to do stuff close to the hardware I prefer using asm. When stuff gets more complex I usually move on to C, but sometimes I just work with asm to keep things consistent.
What about games? (Eg something like Herocore or Zelda)
Also I wonder how fast would such game be on your computer :P
That depends on the screen I guess.
Quickly! use a HD 4x4 pixel screen!
An rpg with a 3x3 screen would be possible. :P (Illusiat 1 style)
That would be quite a fun challenge actually :o
Indeed. That said, it doesn't necessarily have to be on Keoni's computer. It could just be a maze game that mimics a 3x3 screen on any platform. Maybe a mini-contest :P
A screen shader that turns everything into 3x3 pixels *.*
also "mini" contest, i see what u did there (http://www.myfacewhen.net/uploads/3749-i-see-what-you-did-there-no-text.png), but that's indeed something we could maybe do
By turning wverything into 3*3 pixels do you mean that makes the screen look more pixelated or do you mean that it zooms in?
And lol no pun was intended but I just saw it now O.O
Pixelated, yes, it wouldn't een be that hard :P
It depends. It might be slow on some calcs if the routine has to pixelate the screen every frame. I once made such routine in Axe and it slowed things down quite a lot.
On the HP Prime, on the other hand, it's a piece of cake:
(http://img.ourl.ca//ssballfadein.gif)
We should probably get back on-topic, though. :P
I actually meant a pc shader, but axe would probably be quite fast too