MCMANIS@usc-eclc@sri-unix.UUCP (08/22/83)
From: Chuck McManis <MCMANIS@usc-eclc> For those of you who are discouraged by the recent wave of manufactures that have been pushing "office" and "management" systems. You may not need to worry. As recently as last month I finally got my Z-800 technical manual from Zilog and am happy to report that this chip seems to have finally made it into the "We will go ahead and sell this chip" queue. For those of you who are not aware of it the Z-800 is a Z-80 compatible microprocessor with improved 16 bit math capability (even MUL, and DIV) as well as on board memory management that will allow the Z80 to address 512K of RAM in the 40 pin version and 16M of ram in the 64 pin version. I believe this will proabably become the "standard" CPU of the S-100 system if the proposed hardware standard of Z80/TI9918 Graphics/AY-10xx sound goes through. This chip also has System and User mode for those of you who are considering a "real" operating system that is "secure" in a CP/M environment. The 64 pin version of the chip has an onboard UAR/T, 4 timers, and 4 DMA Channels. There are also two package considerations. One the "Z80" packacage uses all of the standard Z80 control signals like IORQ, MREQ, M1, and an 8 bit data bus, whereas the "ZBUS" package uses the Z8000 type signals like AL,D/W,R/W and has a 16 bit bus for faster throughput. Finally, the Z800 in the ZBUS package supports Extended Processing Archetecture that allows coprocessors like the 8070 Floating Point Processor that does a floating 80 bit multiply in 2.8 micro seconds. Thus giving real number crunching ability to your S-100 system. Also Zilog offers a software package that intercepts the EPA traps and allows the Chip to think the FPP is there even when it isn't and the only change needed to implement the FPP is to plug it in. So all of the software can run as though it exists and only the user will notice the difference if it doesn't. --Chuck Of course this may be a 16 Bit processor but it runs Z80 machine code. -------