Happy birthday! The Z80 was the first CPU I rode, more luxurious than the subsequent 6502 and 6510. I still have a TI calculator with a low-energy Z80.
Cheers to Rodnay Zaks for "Programming the Z80"!
The Zilog Z80 has turned 50
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Re: The Zilog Z80 has turned 50
#12The Z80 stopped being manufactured last year unfortunately
There are clones, and updated packages these days like the EZ80, but they're not the same and they don't have the easy-to-use DIL form-factor.
Still I've always loved the z80, since my first computer the ZX Spectrum. Even now I play with z80 assembly now and again (mostly for CP/M retro-use).
Re: The Zilog Z80 has turned 50
#13This is the CPU that I first learned to code on, first in TI Basic (TI-8[1356] ftw) and then Z80 assembler. Crazy to think that the CPU was "old" when I started, and it's still doing good work in those calculators even 20+ years later.
Re: The Zilog Z80 has turned 50
#14Off topic: nice, retro website look!
Re: The Zilog Z80 has turned 50
#15My first computer was a soviet clone of a ZX Spectrum, which started it all almost 40 years ago...
Re: The Zilog Z80 has turned 50
#16My son programmed a Z80-based instruction set into a Juno probe sensor. Still kicking.
Re: The Zilog Z80 has turned 50
#17There is a drop in compatible FOSS clone of Z80 https://github.com/rejunity/z80-open-silicon
Re: The Zilog Z80 has turned 50
#18I still remember clearly sitting down to play with the TRS-80 at the local Radio Shack in the 1970s
Unlike anything I had ever experienced, it was life changing, I would bike to the store every day after school
Family couldn't afford the computer but I bought all the books and would read them at home over and over and gawk at all the accessories in the catalogs
Then family surprised me with it as a birthday present with all the relatives paying for it, pretty sure I was the only person in town with one, even the school didn't get one for years
Didn't have any way to save programs, not even the cassette recorder which was too expensive, had to memorize them and retype every time I turned it on
Re: The Zilog Z80 has turned 50
#19As the proud owner of a ZX-81 I remember staring at the Z80 instruction reference at the end of the user's manual without the faintest clue of what any of that meant. It took me some while before I managed to wrap my head around how CPUs actually run programs (vs. the high level abstractions like BASIC or other languages).
That machine was my intro to computers too, and I was fascinated by “fast mode” blanking the screen and the interesting tradeoffs between hardware and software.
Re: The Zilog Z80 has turned 50
#20Back in the day, I studied Z80 assembly to write something about Pokémon red. I didn't realize it was this old