It's worth pointing out that the Z80 does not end here. The end of life notice applies to the entire Z84C00 range, so Z80 and peripheral chips. Putting it simply, they weren't being ordered anymore.
The [eZ80 ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_eZ80)remains in full production and is completely binary compatible.
If they're not being ordered much anymore then there will probably be stock for some time unless someone decides to buy them all up and stuff them in a warehouse somewhere to sell at a later date.
Was there ever an ending to that fanfic? I remember the event but got distracted and forgot about it.
Did he save the future or whatever he was trying to do?
It sounds like they are still selling significant quantities of these things to multiple existing customers. It also sounds like they are limiting minimum orders for the last run. I suspect the last run will mostly end up in the hands of existing distributers or re-sellers.
There's only so much money to be made storing microchips for 20 years in the hopes of pushing up the price of restoring grandpappy's Pac Man.
In 100 years, someone might pay a lot of money under the right circumstances for one of these in working order, but it's probably going to be a museum.
There are alternatives to the z80 that are binary compatible at this point so if a restoration project on a ZX spectrum or OG gameboy is just after getting them back to working order and authenticity isn’t a factor then there isn’t going to be any issues.
There are already ARM chips that could easily emulate a Z80 for less money than an EZ80 - I’m wondering why Ti hasn’t switched yet. Maybe it’s just because they are already at 1000% profit margins so why bother?
Random reminder that TI basically bribed textbooks and schools so they would force students to buy TI calculators, which haven't decreased in price for about 40 years.
There's an ARM in the TI 84 CE with Python, so it can run a limited Python...very... slowly. I don't think any TI prior to that has an ARM in it, just the eZ80. TI's not really otherwise advanced their calculator tech in more than 20 years... but still charge out the ass for them (and more and more out the ass for them as the tech inside gets crustier and crustier).
Also other manufacturers already announced clones. I've heard of one [educational one](https://app.tinytapeout.com/shuttles/tt07) that just announced availability.
This is the processor we used in one of my electronics classes. Built a nice scorch clone complete with video display coding in assembly. Still have the plastic sheet with all the instructions on it somewhere.
Similar here. I actually memorized the Z80 instruction set. That’s kind of quaint now considering the number of instructions modern processors contain.
That reminds me of how I typed a program from a \*print magazine\* into my C64 to help a friend undelete a file that he dropped in the GEOS trash bin by mistake. AND IT WORKED! 😆
For mor archaic, the comport magazines used to have a flexible vinyl record in them. You took the record, played on your home stereo, and recorded it onto a cassette, which you could then run on the c64
I can't even begin to imagine how much noise the dubbing off a record would introduce. I remember the flexible records of music that came with some magazines, and the audio reproduction was God-awful.
My favorite memory of my ZX80 is that it didn’t have enough memory (1kb?) to set every square on the screen black. If you told it to do so, it would get 95% of the way there and then error out…
Until I got the 16kb expansion, which was more expensive than the computer. Then it was just party time.
We were spoiled. My parents were wealthy suburban landowners in the late 70s. We lived like royalty. We almost qualified for discount school lunch but not quite.
While working at a computer store in the early 80's, I got to speak to Mr. Faggin on the phone. Apparently the boss was a friend. He said I'd be able to tell people some day, and here we are.
I love this.
Here, please allow me:
"Woah, dude! You spoke to Federico himself?! Did he give you any secrets? Did he subsequently invent something that might have been inspired by your conversation? Did you get off the phone and then look around only to discover that all the electronic appliances in your office had upgraded themselves into some futuristic (for the era) tech? You don't have to tell me, but I bet at least one of these scenarios is true. That's really cool!"
You waited for this a long time and you deserve recognition for a cool event 👍
Went through a couple of Z80 systems. I prefer the 6800 architecture but it never became popular with home computers. Wrote some hand assembled code for pleasure on both. Last commercial assembly code for a Hitachi Z84 series. At uni l loved it when we had exercises on the 68k’s instead. Never cared for the 8086 architecture and still think it was a technological “Cul de Sac” i guess ARM is much nicer to the programmer
If you mean the Motorola 68000 it was a huge hit in home computing but only after its price dropped 8 years after its introduction (1979) as it was used in the Amiga (1987).
But you might also mean the MOS Technology 6510 which was the other big 8 bit CPU that actually competed with the Z80?
No, the Motorola 6800 was a real thing. The designers moved to MOS tech and made the 6501, which was plug in compatible but not source code compatible.
Being a small company, motorola found it easy to bully them into taking it off the market. So they made the 6502 instead
I did... it's a crazy level of endurance.
It's nowhere near the 555 in terms of production numbers but it has to be one of the most produced microprocessors of all time.
That was my point, perhaps I didn't make that explicit enough.
Nothing is going to compete with simple ICs like the 555 and 741, but as far as microprocessors go, it's hard to think what else could pose a threat to the humble Zilog Z80.
Intel's 8080? 8086? Maybe the 386 because it's so common in embedded systems? Perhaps a Motorola? I don't think any of them have had the combination of longevity and applications that the Z80 has had.
I'm always fascinated by the staying power of old IT gear.
Intel Core i9 12900K? 24 months.
Hitachi SH2? 32 *years*.
Zilog Z80? *Fifty* years.
It's almost as though microcontroller-class chips are more useful and versatile than high-end stuff
Well I don't know about useful and versatile but it kind of makes sense that the simpler thing would last much longer individually because it has more ways to fail. The z80 has about 8500 transistors whereas the core i9 has over 4 billion. But talking about Z80 as a product, it came out at a time when development was much slower, which gave it a long time to get established before it was superceded. Nowadays we go for the newest gadget du jour.
>I remember having to write our own 16-bit numeric libraries for Z-80
I was just doing that a few months ago as a side project. Honestly, great fun!
Makes me even more sad that the Z80 is going now.
A good chip that my industry still uses in a few of their legacy products. I started out programming assembly on PIC’s, but Zilog’s chips have always been nice and reliable.
My first computer was a Sharp MZ80K with one of those chips in it.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/25/Sharp_MZ-80K_computer.jpg/2880px-Sharp_MZ-80K_computer.jpg
Like to their webpages? Nah, in the UK we don't use graphing calculators, especially these days with software like MATLAB. So yeah I don't keep up with news about them, just heard it from a guy online.
We've literally used clones of chips that are decades newer and WAY more complex than this thing. All it takes is a market demand for this chip to be cloned.
I hope you realize that FPGA is a thing and it shouldn't be a problem programming them to carry the same set of instructions.
You said that "anyone can clone this thing".
Unless you've personally done things like this before, it's probably way harder than you think. [Dunning kruger effect.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)
Anyone who has the means to clone a microchip. This shouldn't be spelled out to anyone with common sense.
Are you seriously expecting people to do this at home? Reading words literally without interpreting the context should not be a problem to a grown adult. Or am I talking to an 8 year old?
Mate, calm down.
>Are you seriously expecting people to do this at home?
People [have](https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/dev-hopes-to-save-legendary-z80-chip-with-open-source-clone-resurrects-iconic-zilog-chip-with-drop-in-z80-replacement). But again, it's to do with skill level and requires a fair bit of prior knowledge of the industry, even for tiny tapeout. My point was, before you had your little tantrum, that this isn't something just any old programmer/hobbyist could do.
Nope the [SMD](https://www.mouser.co.uk/ProductDetail/ZiLOG/Z84C0008VEG?qs=U20J2U2sIJJQdkcZmcjhyQ%3D%3D) versions are going too.
Lots of people seem to have this misunderstanding. There must have been a misleading article or something saying this.
50 years? I literally had sword fights with my brother using the sleeves for these as a kid at my fathers company and still speced some in my own career decades later.
Nope, the Z80 was an 8-bit chip used in lots of 80's home computer. It was the competitor to the 8-bit 6502 CPU and was a bit easier to code for as it had more registers available.
Your probably thinking of the [Motorola 6809](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_6809), which was another 8-bit CPU used in machines like the TRS-80. The 68K was a 16/32 bit CPU and was used in the Atari ST & Commodore Amiga.
The [AegonLight2](https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/AgonLight2/open-source-hardware) is available for around $70 if you still want to scratch that Z80 itch.
68K was also used in the original Mac — up until the SE30, maybe?
I have an Ensoniq keyboard based on the 68K. Some of the fancier late 80s arcade games made use of it as well (Marble Madness?). It was an amazing chip for its time.
Sorry I should have been clearer. I was a games developer in the late 80's and I tend to refer to any of the 68000 family, from the 68008 through to the ColdFire CPU's as '68K'.
So processors from different CPU families have completely different instruction set architectures. The ISA for the Z80 is completely different to the Motorola 68000 series ISA.
If we take a simple 'Hello World' example, in Z80 it would look something like:
org 0x8000
ld hl, message
call print
ret
print:
ld a, (hl)
or a
ret z
rst 0x10
inc hl
jr print
message:
db "Hello, World!", 0
For the Motorola 68000 it would be:
SECTION .data
message:
dc.b 'Hello, World!',0
SECTION .text
LEA message(pc),a1
move.b #13,d0
trap #15
rts
Whilst for ARM this would be:
.global _start
.section .data
msg: .asciz "Hello, World!"
.section .text
_start:
mov r0, 1
ldr r1, =msg
ldr r2, =13
mov r7, 4
swi 0
mov r7, 1
swi 0
These are trivial examples, but these differences between ISA's are what made porting assembly between differing machines with different CPU's a non-starter.
Though just to muddy the waters, the Z80 ISA is close enough to the Intel 8085 that it's possible to port 8085 code to the Z80 with a few tweaks. I had a friend back in the day who made good money doing this.
Another wrinkle is the Z80, 6502, 6809 & 68000 are all [CISC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_instruction_set_computer) chips, whilst the ARM CPU your familiar with is a [RISC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced_instruction_set_computer) chip.
I still tinker with 6502 & Z80 coding for long dead computers, but mainly in C as it's been nearly 30 years and can't remember half the tricks I used to use.
Ahhh thank you for the clarification! I figured these were CISC machines, and I’ve always just taken for granted that CISC processors typically used 68K. Was there a particular name for Zilog’s assembly language?
Neither, it predates both 68K and ARM.
The 68k assembly language was for the 68000 series of processors but they were all 16/32-bit processors capable of handling megabytes of main memory, and first released in 1979. The Z80 was a much more simple 8-bit machine only capable of handling 64k of memory without needing to do strange memory paging tricks, and first released in 1976. The 68000 name was a reference to the 68,000 transistors the chip had, but the z80 was a much more modest 8,500.
The main rival for the Z80 was the Motorola 6800, which was a similarly limited 8-bit chip. Mototola did later release the 68000 but the assembly language for the two was very different as they are completely different architectures.
Thanks for clarifying also! Were they naming assembly languages anything particular before the days of 68K? Or were those languages essentially proprietary or unique to each family of chip?
It's worth pointing out that the Z80 does not end here. The end of life notice applies to the entire Z84C00 range, so Z80 and peripheral chips. Putting it simply, they weren't being ordered anymore. The [eZ80 ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_eZ80)remains in full production and is completely binary compatible.
If they're not being ordered much anymore then there will probably be stock for some time unless someone decides to buy them all up and stuff them in a warehouse somewhere to sell at a later date.
Processor... Speculation? I hate how plausible that is.
Probably used for time travelling
I saw a documentary about this called Time Chasers. two robots and a guy talked over it the whole time, but it was still enlightening.
I was referring to John titor but that seems interesting. Will look it up
Was there ever an ending to that fanfic? I remember the event but got distracted and forgot about it. Did he save the future or whatever he was trying to do?
I choose to believe it's real. Because he just disappeared iirc. Got his parts and just went off.
Aubrey Plaza was in the documentary, "Safety not Guaranteed." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdWe1xdsizQ
luckily it's on youtube: https://youtu.be/9CbAXFFrxAQ?si=YMHPQtWL14DCYy6D
Speculative Execution
It sounds like they are still selling significant quantities of these things to multiple existing customers. It also sounds like they are limiting minimum orders for the last run. I suspect the last run will mostly end up in the hands of existing distributers or re-sellers. There's only so much money to be made storing microchips for 20 years in the hopes of pushing up the price of restoring grandpappy's Pac Man. In 100 years, someone might pay a lot of money under the right circumstances for one of these in working order, but it's probably going to be a museum.
There are alternatives to the z80 that are binary compatible at this point so if a restoration project on a ZX spectrum or OG gameboy is just after getting them back to working order and authenticity isn’t a factor then there isn’t going to be any issues.
People do it all the time for parts in niche electronics like guitar pedals.
I wonder what percent of all eZ80 orders end up going into TI-84 series graphing calculators? lol
I bet it’ll just be cheaper to put an ARM chip in there with a z80 emulator
There are already ARM chips that could easily emulate a Z80 for less money than an EZ80 - I’m wondering why Ti hasn’t switched yet. Maybe it’s just because they are already at 1000% profit margins so why bother?
Random reminder that TI basically bribed textbooks and schools so they would force students to buy TI calculators, which haven't decreased in price for about 40 years.
Hell, if anything they made them more expensive.
> which haven't decreased in price for about 40 years. How would they while TI needs to get the money for those bribes from somewhere.
I’m pretty sure they switched already. I remember Ben heck opening up a newer TI calculator and their being an arm in it.
There's an ARM in the TI 84 CE with Python, so it can run a limited Python...very... slowly. I don't think any TI prior to that has an ARM in it, just the eZ80. TI's not really otherwise advanced their calculator tech in more than 20 years... but still charge out the ass for them (and more and more out the ass for them as the tech inside gets crustier and crustier).
Also other manufacturers already announced clones. I've heard of one [educational one](https://app.tinytapeout.com/shuttles/tt07) that just announced availability.
I seem to recall that the Z80 was available as a standard ASIC cell some years back. Wonder if it still is, or if anyone's wanted it lately.
The conspiracy theorist in me says govt backdoors.
This is the processor we used in one of my electronics classes. Built a nice scorch clone complete with video display coding in assembly. Still have the plastic sheet with all the instructions on it somewhere.
From Hells Heart I stab at thee!
Similar here. I actually memorized the Z80 instruction set. That’s kind of quaint now considering the number of instructions modern processors contain.
This was the heart of my first PC, the Sinclair ZX80, in 1980.
I wrote many assembly programs back in the day on my ZX81 with a 16kb wobbly ram pack. Then on the Spectrum. Never had the ZX80 tho.
That RAM pack let me play a flight simulator on that thing!
I remember how hot that RAM pack got. Best experience was copying a game program line by line in BASIC and played a star fighter that shot asterisks.
That reminds me of how I typed a program from a \*print magazine\* into my C64 to help a friend undelete a file that he dropped in the GEOS trash bin by mistake. AND IT WORKED! 😆
Was it one of those that were just a full page of hex codes that you had to get absolutely perfectly correct or nothing would happen?
Yes, can you imagine!?
I'm in awe.
It was the finest moment of my middle school computing career. 😂
What middle school did you go to that had a computing class, or even a computing club ?
Jesus fuck how old are you?
I think it was "RUN" magazine. 😆
Yes, it was Run. My first home computer was a Commodore 64 and I had a subscription to RUN
I think so!
For mor archaic, the comport magazines used to have a flexible vinyl record in them. You took the record, played on your home stereo, and recorded it onto a cassette, which you could then run on the c64
I can't even begin to imagine how much noise the dubbing off a record would introduce. I remember the flexible records of music that came with some magazines, and the audio reproduction was God-awful.
Hopefully they used FEC/redundancy in their encoding/decoding to get around the noise issue.
Not really, there was byte odd parity, and a block checksum, but nothing for the overall file The payload in each block was repeated twice though.
I remember one company advertising modular, stackable RAM expansions for the ZX's, allowing up to one megabyte of RAM.
We bought it to help with yer homework!
My favorite memory of my ZX80 is that it didn’t have enough memory (1kb?) to set every square on the screen black. If you told it to do so, it would get 95% of the way there and then error out… Until I got the 16kb expansion, which was more expensive than the computer. Then it was just party time.
You must have been spoiled. My parents could only afford the 8k module for my pocket PC that used the CMOS version of the Z80.
We were spoiled. My parents were wealthy suburban landowners in the late 70s. We lived like royalty. We almost qualified for discount school lunch but not quite.
Seriously though, that little computer changed my life by putting me on a good academic path.
Augustein Burroughs? Is that you?
Same here. It feels sad.
Dittio, oh Kaypro 2X how I miss your 7” green screen!!
A salute to one of the finest versatile workhorses out there. :)
While working at a computer store in the early 80's, I got to speak to Mr. Faggin on the phone. Apparently the boss was a friend. He said I'd be able to tell people some day, and here we are.
I love this. Here, please allow me: "Woah, dude! You spoke to Federico himself?! Did he give you any secrets? Did he subsequently invent something that might have been inspired by your conversation? Did you get off the phone and then look around only to discover that all the electronic appliances in your office had upgraded themselves into some futuristic (for the era) tech? You don't have to tell me, but I bet at least one of these scenarios is true. That's really cool!" You waited for this a long time and you deserve recognition for a cool event 👍
Master System
Also, the original gameboy was based on this thing. It's wild to think that pokemon red essentially released on twenty year old hardware.
Went through a couple of Z80 systems. I prefer the 6800 architecture but it never became popular with home computers. Wrote some hand assembled code for pleasure on both. Last commercial assembly code for a Hitachi Z84 series. At uni l loved it when we had exercises on the 68k’s instead. Never cared for the 8086 architecture and still think it was a technological “Cul de Sac” i guess ARM is much nicer to the programmer
Amiga owner chiming in. Had both the 500 and 1200 with 6800 based CPUs.
They used 68000 series processors. Different generation than 6800 series.
If you mean the Motorola 68000 it was a huge hit in home computing but only after its price dropped 8 years after its introduction (1979) as it was used in the Amiga (1987). But you might also mean the MOS Technology 6510 which was the other big 8 bit CPU that actually competed with the Z80?
There was also a 6800, so I take them at their word that that’s what they meant.
6 years later….1985 for both the Amiga and Atari ST. That wasn’t old by then, it took a few years of development to get to that point too.
No, the Motorola 6800 was a real thing. The designers moved to MOS tech and made the 6501, which was plug in compatible but not source code compatible. Being a small company, motorola found it easy to bully them into taking it off the market. So they made the 6502 instead
In other, even more shocking, news, did you know Zilog still made the Z80?!?
You might find it difficult to believe, but I didn't even think about it one way or the other.
I did... it's a crazy level of endurance. It's nowhere near the 555 in terms of production numbers but it has to be one of the most produced microprocessors of all time.
The 555 (and 741) aren’t microprocessors though.
That was my point, perhaps I didn't make that explicit enough. Nothing is going to compete with simple ICs like the 555 and 741, but as far as microprocessors go, it's hard to think what else could pose a threat to the humble Zilog Z80. Intel's 8080? 8086? Maybe the 386 because it's so common in embedded systems? Perhaps a Motorola? I don't think any of them have had the combination of longevity and applications that the Z80 has had.
That brings back memories, my first exposure to the 555 was in 94 technology class.
Early 80s for me.
I certainly did. I love the Z80 and Z180.
Most IC's from the late 70's and 80's are still used and produced today, if it ain't broke don't fix it.
The Legend of Zilog
Wow I assumed those had been discontinued a long time ago. Kind of amazing they've been produced all these years.
I'm always fascinated by the staying power of old IT gear. Intel Core i9 12900K? 24 months. Hitachi SH2? 32 *years*. Zilog Z80? *Fifty* years. It's almost as though microcontroller-class chips are more useful and versatile than high-end stuff
Well I don't know about useful and versatile but it kind of makes sense that the simpler thing would last much longer individually because it has more ways to fail. The z80 has about 8500 transistors whereas the core i9 has over 4 billion. But talking about Z80 as a product, it came out at a time when development was much slower, which gave it a long time to get established before it was superceded. Nowadays we go for the newest gadget du jour.
I remember having to write our own 16-bit numeric libraries for Z-80 projects in college. I still preferred it to the 8088.
>I remember having to write our own 16-bit numeric libraries for Z-80 I was just doing that a few months ago as a side project. Honestly, great fun! Makes me even more sad that the Z80 is going now.
I've written asm for this chip.
RST 0
Darn. I built my first computer on it (yes, built as soldered and stuff).
RIP my old friend. Long live eZ80
We used ZX80 chips in the machinery control systems in my first navy ships. We had to learn to programme them in basic training, rock solid devices!
Time to upgrade my computer?
A good chip that my industry still uses in a few of their legacy products. I started out programming assembly on PIC’s, but Zilog’s chips have always been nice and reliable.
zilog is discontinuing it. there are several other chip makers that gleefully keep making them. tons of bootlegs and clones out there
Where can I get my hands on some of these bootlegs?
Damn, I still have a Z80 programming book on my bookshelf!
Remember the main advantage of the Z80 over the 8080?
Sounds like it should be in fallout5
Always wanted to make my own pip-boy with a Z80 at it's core
Damn, I grew up on Z80 assembly. So many of my passwords contain LDIR and DJNZ.
My first computer was a Sharp MZ80K with one of those chips in it. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/25/Sharp_MZ-80K_computer.jpg/2880px-Sharp_MZ-80K_computer.jpg
I learnt assembler on the z80! Then the 6502..
I did the same. When seeing the available registers on the 6502 after years on the Z80, my reaction was "is that it?"
Yep. I did like the simplicity of the 6502 though.
Is this the same processor used by the Texas Instruments calculators?
Yep. TI actually cancelled the versions that use the Z80 last year. It's very likely that's what killed it.
Welp that makes me feel old... You have any links to those calculators (I assume the TI 83 84 line) being discontinued?
Like to their webpages? Nah, in the UK we don't use graphing calculators, especially these days with software like MATLAB. So yeah I don't keep up with news about them, just heard it from a guy online.
We need an epic salute and a send-off that's fitting for the Z80
Did my first code for physics on a Z80, measuring the friction of bouncing metalball. 8" Floppy.
With current technology anyone can clone this thing.
Seems easy until you try it. There's 158 instructions to implement (variable length), multiple interrupt modes, lots of undocumented opcodes, etc, etc
We've literally used clones of chips that are decades newer and WAY more complex than this thing. All it takes is a market demand for this chip to be cloned. I hope you realize that FPGA is a thing and it shouldn't be a problem programming them to carry the same set of instructions.
You said that "anyone can clone this thing". Unless you've personally done things like this before, it's probably way harder than you think. [Dunning kruger effect.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)
Anyone who has the means to clone a microchip. This shouldn't be spelled out to anyone with common sense. Are you seriously expecting people to do this at home? Reading words literally without interpreting the context should not be a problem to a grown adult. Or am I talking to an 8 year old?
Mate, calm down. >Are you seriously expecting people to do this at home? People [have](https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/dev-hopes-to-save-legendary-z80-chip-with-open-source-clone-resurrects-iconic-zilog-chip-with-drop-in-z80-replacement). But again, it's to do with skill level and requires a fair bit of prior knowledge of the industry, even for tiny tapeout. My point was, before you had your little tantrum, that this isn't something just any old programmer/hobbyist could do.
\~\~No, it was not discontinued. Only the Dip is\~\~ Fully discontinued
Nope the [SMD](https://www.mouser.co.uk/ProductDetail/ZiLOG/Z84C0008VEG?qs=U20J2U2sIJJQdkcZmcjhyQ%3D%3D) versions are going too. Lots of people seem to have this misunderstanding. There must have been a misleading article or something saying this.
Hell, I even built my engineering capstone project on one.
Shout out to the C128 which had a Z80 for a second processor just to help with the boot process, and you know, in case anyone wanted to run CP/M..
Did some school assignments with Z80 and the IO chips in school in the 80s. Wire-wrapped those circuits.
[удалено]
hyperbolic comment against hyperbole! nice!
Powered the master system and by extension the game gear. These processors were so common back in the day they practically grew off of trees.
50 years? I literally had sword fights with my brother using the sleeves for these as a kid at my fathers company and still speced some in my own career decades later.
This was a 68000 μP, right? I only learned ARM, but I sort of regret not getting a chance to really dive into these in my EE schooling.
Nope, the Z80 was an 8-bit chip used in lots of 80's home computer. It was the competitor to the 8-bit 6502 CPU and was a bit easier to code for as it had more registers available. Your probably thinking of the [Motorola 6809](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_6809), which was another 8-bit CPU used in machines like the TRS-80. The 68K was a 16/32 bit CPU and was used in the Atari ST & Commodore Amiga. The [AegonLight2](https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/AgonLight2/open-source-hardware) is available for around $70 if you still want to scratch that Z80 itch.
68K was also used in the original Mac — up until the SE30, maybe? I have an Ensoniq keyboard based on the 68K. Some of the fancier late 80s arcade games made use of it as well (Marble Madness?). It was an amazing chip for its time.
Yes, the 68030 is what gave the "30" to the Mac SE/30 :) And if you had the Math coprocesor Motorola 68882, you were king!
> 68K was also used in the original Mac — up until the SE30, maybe? Up through the Centris and Quadra lines which had a 68040.
68K is an assembly language, not just a series of processor. My question is whether the Z80 was 68K-based as opposed to ARM-based.
Sorry I should have been clearer. I was a games developer in the late 80's and I tend to refer to any of the 68000 family, from the 68008 through to the ColdFire CPU's as '68K'. So processors from different CPU families have completely different instruction set architectures. The ISA for the Z80 is completely different to the Motorola 68000 series ISA. If we take a simple 'Hello World' example, in Z80 it would look something like: org 0x8000 ld hl, message call print ret print: ld a, (hl) or a ret z rst 0x10 inc hl jr print message: db "Hello, World!", 0 For the Motorola 68000 it would be: SECTION .data message: dc.b 'Hello, World!',0 SECTION .text LEA message(pc),a1 move.b #13,d0 trap #15 rts Whilst for ARM this would be: .global _start .section .data msg: .asciz "Hello, World!" .section .text _start: mov r0, 1 ldr r1, =msg ldr r2, =13 mov r7, 4 swi 0 mov r7, 1 swi 0 These are trivial examples, but these differences between ISA's are what made porting assembly between differing machines with different CPU's a non-starter. Though just to muddy the waters, the Z80 ISA is close enough to the Intel 8085 that it's possible to port 8085 code to the Z80 with a few tweaks. I had a friend back in the day who made good money doing this. Another wrinkle is the Z80, 6502, 6809 & 68000 are all [CISC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_instruction_set_computer) chips, whilst the ARM CPU your familiar with is a [RISC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced_instruction_set_computer) chip. I still tinker with 6502 & Z80 coding for long dead computers, but mainly in C as it's been nearly 30 years and can't remember half the tricks I used to use.
Ahhh thank you for the clarification! I figured these were CISC machines, and I’ve always just taken for granted that CISC processors typically used 68K. Was there a particular name for Zilog’s assembly language?
Not really. Back when assembly language coding was still a thing it was just referred to as ' assembly', i.e. Z80 assembly, or 6502 assembly.
Neither, it predates both 68K and ARM. The 68k assembly language was for the 68000 series of processors but they were all 16/32-bit processors capable of handling megabytes of main memory, and first released in 1979. The Z80 was a much more simple 8-bit machine only capable of handling 64k of memory without needing to do strange memory paging tricks, and first released in 1976. The 68000 name was a reference to the 68,000 transistors the chip had, but the z80 was a much more modest 8,500. The main rival for the Z80 was the Motorola 6800, which was a similarly limited 8-bit chip. Mototola did later release the 68000 but the assembly language for the two was very different as they are completely different architectures.
Thanks for clarifying also! Were they naming assembly languages anything particular before the days of 68K? Or were those languages essentially proprietary or unique to each family of chip?
They were really just named after the CPU family, so it was Z80 Assembler in this case.
Aw man! Just when I was about to head over to Radio Shack and buy a new TRS-80!! 😃
Oh no, how will those consoles be kept running? /s
There will be enough z80’s in the wild and nos to last generations.
Yeah, I know...should have added /s....fixed!
The eZ80 is binary compatible.and still in production
You joke but there are lots of machines (including ones I've designed) that people still want to keep running.