31–40 of 47 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Real, the Z80 has been continually produced for decades now.
Which companies make them? I'd be interested to read the specs page for modern Z80 or 6502 CPUs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be an 8-bit processor with no virtual memory. Why not a Raspberry Pi or something more powerful?
I'd love to be able to have the experience of writing all of the code for myself. Just a C compiler and a text editor and needing to build a world around me. Would be fun.
My home-brew 68K machine just recently reached the same level of completeness except for the particular BASIC implementation (Tiny vs. Microsoft). Guess I should get it written up as a blog post or three.
My home-brew 68K machine just recently reached the same level of completeness except for the particular BASIC implementation (Tiny vs. Microsoft). Guess I should get it written up as a blog post or three.
Port EmuTOS to it. A nice GPL reimplementation of the Atari ST (68k system) operating system that will fit in a 192kb ROM. These days it's somewhat semi-portable in that it runs on the Amiga and headless on ColdFire eval boards.
People should make more 6809 kit computers.. So for example, then you can run OS-9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-9 and emulate an 8080 to run CP/M: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiwmUnLTcjY
I'm just asking, why take that approach vs just building a Z80-based system to run CP/M?
A 6502 backplane homebrew: http://quinndunki.com/blondihacks/?p=680 . Especially impressive because Quinn etched the PCBs at home. Fast-forward to the finished (and resurrected) project so you can see the backplane: http://quinndunki.com/blondihacks/?p=2644
Amazed and happy to see so much homebrew work still going on. The Veronica project on this site is fascinating.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This kit seems very similar to the famous Altair computer which spawned MS-BASIC and CP/M. Anything like Unix and C is not desirable on such a system. Even a 'text editor', as we understand them today, is a reach on such machines. You could build your own world, but you'd probably have to do it writing ASM out by hand and then entering through a cumbersome line editor. For most purposes, that's too hard, so you would…
It's actually pretty surprising how much you can achieve with these 8 bit processors. My favourite example of pushing the 8 bit Arduino processor to the limit is this - 3D rendering at 320x240 x 16 bit: http://hackaday.com/2016/01/02/better-3d-graphics-on-the-ard...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazed and happy to see so much homebrew work still going on. The Veronica project on this site is fascinating.
Let me self-promote my bitbox arm32 home-brewed console since it's somewhat on topic although less retro minded ( https://github.com/makapuf/bitbox/wiki ) edit : added link
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually pretty surprising how much you can achieve with these 8 bit processors. My favourite example of pushing the 8 bit Arduino processor to the limit is this - 3D rendering at 320x240 x 16 bit: http://hackaday.com/2016/01/02/better-3d-graphics-on-the-ard...
That demo is rather impressive, but the AVR in an Arduino is much faster than a Z80. This machine is running at ~7.37MHz (which is fast compared to old Z80 based personal computers) whereas the Arduino typically runs at 16Mhz. Further, an instruction takes a minimum of 4 cycles on the Z80 and many take longer whereas most AVR instructions take only a single cycle.
I'm interested in running a keyboard, a terminal of some sort, and some task switching OS.
No sound or anything else needed.
I do remember some of my (much older) friends talking about their Sinclair ZX Spectrum. From what I remember they said they had a Z80 in that.
That old computer was able to do basic text editing from what I remember.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm just asking, why take that approach vs just building a Z80-based system to run CP/M?
OS-9 is a dramatically more capable OS than CP/M, in that it's a fully multitasking RTOS.