pl@tut.UUCP (04/29/87)
Recently I read a american electronics journal ( Electronic Design I think, but it's not sure ). There was article about Zilogs new processor Z280, which is (according text) Z80:s superset with 16-bit arithmetic, memory management, user/supervisor states, on chip timers, dma and cache. Clockspeed is 10 MHz (future 25 MHz) When I was reading article, I start to wonder, would there be any use for this kind of product, or is this or last strike of Z80-empire. Any opinions? -- ...mcvax!tut!pl ! All opinions expressed above Pertti Lehtinen ! are preliminary and in subject N 61 26' E 23 50' ! to change without any further notice.
MSRS003@ECNCDC.BITNET (Scott McBurney) (02/03/88)
Can someone tell me how much a Z280 costs and where I can get one?
Thanks,
Scott McBurney
Western Illinois University
Bitnet: MSRS003@ECNCDC.BITNET
Internet: MSRS003%ECNCDC.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu
GEnie: S.MCBURNEYgreg.trice@canremote.uucp (GREG TRICE) (04/07/89)
For your information, the Z280 is perfectly real and has been available for a year or so. I have two myself, purchased from the localZilog distributor. What isn't yet available is much support, or even an assembler (though you can use any Z80 macro assembler and macros for the extra instructions). This chip is a delight to program and makes the 80286 look very sorry indeed. I must point out that it has a full 16-bit data bus and ALU and most of the Z80-inherited instructions need considerably fewer clock cycles to execute than on the Z80. --- * Via ProDoor 2.9a --- MaS Relayer v1.00.00 Message gatewayed by MaS Network Software and Consulting/HST Internet: greg.trice@canremote.uucp UUCP: ...!tmsoft!masnet!canremote!greg.trice
MSRS003@ECNCDC.BITNET (Scott McBurney) (04/09/89)
Question: How do you tell what revision Z280 you have?
If I have an older revision, that could explain the trouble
that I have had.
Another question: How do you design a good clock source for a Z280?
(I was never real good at that in class)
Scott McBurney
MSRS003 @ ECNCDC.BITNETtilmann@cosmo.UUCP (Tilmann Reh) (10/22/89)
Hello to all the "old cp/m users"! As far as I can see in the last entries here, there is a big discussion about Z80/180/280. I'm very glad to see that because I am just designing a very nice Computer Board with the Z280. Here is just a technical shortform: Z280 in Z-bus-mode (16 bit) driven with maximum clock speed (at this time, 10 MHz), ECB-bus-support for 8-bit-I/O with a bus clock of half the cpu clock, on-board RAM (1 meg) and EPROM (128 k), real-time-clock with alarm and 50 byte nvram, 2 rs-232 with handshake, FDC for up to four drives. The circuit design seems to be ready (and steady) now, so I'll start with the layout (single-board europe card) in the next days or weeks. I'll implement CP/M-3 with some features concerning floppy-i/o etc. (auto- matic disk exchange recognition, automatic format adjust) just as it works in my 64180 system (self-designed, too) since nearly 3 years. I found some interested people here (germany) in our cp/m user's group, and I'd like to know if there are more. Please contact me if you are interested or if you have special ideas for the circuit design or layout. Just another theme: I am programming an ARC utility for CP/M in Turbo-Pascal. I got the sources from Reimer Mellin and optimized them to take 4k less code and to work about 3 times faster. I am now planning to add the compression methods "squeezing" and "squashing", but I don't have any kind of algorithm or description of these methods. Please, keep your eyes open and contact me if there are any papers about these compression methods. The result of my work will be public domain. Maybe I'll program an assembler version of ARC (Z280-Code?) as soon as I get the time. This is especially for YOU, DOUG and JAY: I heard something about you were engaged in the lovely Z280, too. I would like to post my design to one of yours, and to get all information you've yet worked out. So we could each take advantage of the other's ideas. What do you think about it? Please let me know (or post your knowledge): Tilmann Reh In der Grossenbach 46 D-5900 Siegen WEST GERMANY Tilmann Reh (tilmann@cosmo.uucp)