Z80 lives!

Post #245,699 by tonytib 2/22/06 1:24:18 AM Reply	Z80 lives! Federico Fagin, one of the Zilog co-founders, was at Intel and was a major part of the Intel CPU team. Zilog tried all kind of things (including Z800, Z8000, Z80000) before getting back to their old line: Z8 microcontrollers and Z80 microcontrollers. It looks like they're getting turned around; annual sales are around $100 million (compare to Intel, at over $30 billion). They are adding ARM9 microcontrollers for 32-bits. The eZ80 (e.g. ez80F91) is based on the classic Z80 architecture, but with support for 16M memory, comes with 16K SRAM, 256K flash, Ethernet, and more. Zilog has a $100 development kit (including C compiler and RTOS), and it has a very active Yahoo! group. By volume (and probably value), most microprocessors can trace their roots back to the 1970's - not just x86 and 68xxx (including the modern Coldfire RISC versions), but also the high volume 8-bit chips such as the Microchip PICs, Moto 68xx, and Intel 8051 (made by scores of companies). Note that neither the 6502 nor the TI 9900 survived. --Tony
Post #245,712 by static 2/22/06 6:38:47 AM Reply	The 6502 and the 9900 were really historical oddities. That's not to say they weren't individually brilliant, but the way they were designed and worked was intrinsically tied to 64K of the memory of the time. TI never supported the 9900 properly. That's the main reason it's not around any more. I don't know about the 6502 - it probably died because it was really too simple. Wade. "Insert crowbar. Apply force."
Post #245,816 by Andrew Grygus 2/22/06 6:10:54 PM 2/22/06 6:11:22 PM Reply	Apple chose 6502 because it was the cheapest . . . Nothing like chosing an end of life chip to power a new product, but admittedly better Intel chips cost more and that might have compromised their 50% or greater profit margin rule (dealer profit was on top of that). [link\|http://www.aaxnet.com\|AAx] Edited by Andrew Grygus Feb. 22, 2006, 06:11:22 PM EST Expand All History
Post #245,857 by static 2/22/06 10:22:22 PM Reply	So did Commodore. And probably Atari. The 6502 was a quarter of the size of the competing 6809 and therefore much cheaper. Wade. "Insert crowbar. Apply force."
Post #245,867 by pwhysall 2/23/06 1:22:52 AM Reply	It was also much easier to program. Peter [link\|http://www.no2id.net/\|Don't Let The Terrorists Win] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Home] Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
Post #245,922 by tonytib 2/23/06 11:42:40 AM Reply	That's what all the 6502 fan boys say but I wasn't so impressed when I did 6502 assembly. However, although it doesn't have the volume of the competition, it still lives, including the 16-bit 65816 version: [link\|http://westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/index.cfm\|http://westerndesign...com/wdc/index.cfm] --Tony
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