This does not mean that it’s the end of the road for Z80, however, as the eZ80 will be produced for the foreseeable future.
From wiki:
The Zilog eZ80 is an 8-bit microprocessor from Zilog, introduced in 2001. eZ80 is an updated version of the company's first product, the Z80 microprocessor. The eZ80 (like the Z380) is binary compatible with the Z80 and Z180, but almost three times as fast as the original Z80 chip at the same clock frequency.
What an unbelievable run it's had! The first time I learned what a Z80 was, it was in a Texas Instruments TI-83+ graphing calculator. I adored that thing and spent who knows how many hours in my...
What an unbelievable run it's had! The first time I learned what a Z80 was, it was in a Texas Instruments TI-83+ graphing calculator. I adored that thing and spent who knows how many hours in my teenage years writing programs in TI-BASIC to make games, cheat on assignments, and what have you. It was the first device that really made it click in my head that technology could do just about whatever you instructed it to, and I was hooked. It got me looking into what other devices had Z80s, and what a fascinating world that is. Maybe I'll pull it back out today and play around in assembly a bit.
TI-83+ was a really big deal to me as a teenager. I was born too late for the home computing boom in the 80s, so I completely missed the heyday of BASIC and kids writing code on their family...
TI-83+ was a really big deal to me as a teenager. I was born too late for the home computing boom in the 80s, so I completely missed the heyday of BASIC and kids writing code on their family computer*. But the TI-83+ was a chance to experience something similar. Other kids would get caught gaming on their calculators during math, but not me. I'd get caught programming! TI-BASIC was my first non-markup language and taught me the basic principles of programming. Totally set me on the career path I took out of highschool. Which is amazing because writing TI-BASIC on a TI-83+ directly was not a fun process at all. I can't imagine tolerating that nonsense now :D
*- I realize programming has never been more accessible than it is today, but I mean you boot up a computer from that era and you're immediately prompted to start giving commands, writing code, etc. That stuff was all abstracted away with GUIs by the time I was old enough to use a computer.
It’s funny, I just saw a video about the Commander X16 where IGN interviewed the creator, who said that one of the reasons why he wanted to make the system was because he wanted to have a system...
It’s funny, I just saw a video about the Commander X16 where IGN interviewed the creator, who said that one of the reasons why he wanted to make the system was because he wanted to have a system that doesn’t have the same barriers as modern systems for programming.
But he is wrong.
Almost no computer gets sold without some sort of programming tool installed. I’ll pass on weather shell scripts are “programming”, but every operating system ever comes with some sort of programming language built in. Windows has Visual Basic Script. Practically every linux distribution includes Perl or Python. MacOS has had a few options through the years, to my memory. Every computer comes with a browser which you can program with the tools that come with the tools in the OS.
Sure, those aren’t high performance languages, but neither was BASIC. Many of these early computers had BASIC manuals but not anything about programming in machine language.
He's not, though: there's a difference between having a tool installed and having it exposed. Not to mention, Windows does not make it easy to draw a line on the screen. For security, obviously,...
because he wanted to have a system that doesn’t have the same barriers as modern systems for programming.
But he is wrong.
Almost no computer gets sold without some sort of programming tool installed.
He's not, though: there's a difference between having a tool installed and having it exposed. Not to mention, Windows does not make it easy to draw a line on the screen. For security, obviously, but a barrier is a barrier.
How is a web browser not exposed? The only benefit I can think of for a computer designed this way is that it brings you directly to a REPL when you turn it on.
How is a web browser not exposed? The only benefit I can think of for a computer designed this way is that it brings you directly to a REPL when you turn it on.
A web browser is exposed as an end user application. That developers also use it in the process of developing things that run in it doesn't make it a development tool on the same level as a REPL...
A web browser is exposed as an end user application. That developers also use it in the process of developing things that run in it doesn't make it a development tool on the same level as a REPL or IDE.
I spent hours and hours in Mirage OS making levels for Mario instead of paying attention to whatever the teacher was yammering on about. A life well wasted. I wonder if I can find a backup from...
I spent hours and hours in Mirage OS making levels for Mario instead of paying attention to whatever the teacher was yammering on about. A life well wasted. I wonder if I can find a backup from one of my old computers to play in an emulator. I’d need to edit them to replace my birth certificate name with one of my other names before sharing them to ticalc.org
Our first family desktop computer was this. It had a CP/M OS. I think I was around 10 years old, and I learned typing in WordStar, database entry in DBase, spreadsheets in SuperCalc, fooled around...
Our first family desktop computer was this. It had a CP/M OS. I think I was around 10 years old, and I learned typing in WordStar, database entry in DBase, spreadsheets in SuperCalc, fooled around with BASIC and Pascal, and played Rogue. I remember typing in the odd program from Dr. Dobb's Journal. I've still got daisywheel-printed copies of my mother's recipes from that time.
I didn't really learn to love computers until the Apples showed up at school, but the Z80 chip and the architecture surrounding it still deserve places in history as foundational to mass market desktop computing.
Speaking of the ez80, the new Agon 8-bit has been out for a year and uses that same chip, but it also piggybacks off of a more powerful microcontroller which provides graphics and sound
Speaking of the ez80, the new Agon 8-bit has been out for a year and uses that same chip, but it also piggybacks off of a more powerful microcontroller which provides graphics and sound
Funny, I was thinking about grabbing one of those chips to make a handheld CP/M machine. That’s way beyond my skill and patience level though. I’m a bit surprised they didn’t just use one of the...
Funny, I was thinking about grabbing one of those chips to make a handheld CP/M machine. That’s way beyond my skill and patience level though. I’m a bit surprised they didn’t just use one of the faster ones and try to make it handle video and audio. I was looking and they seem to have one that runs at 50MHz.
These sorts of 8-bit computers are designed to work off of limitations, I think to emulate what it was like programming in the 1980s with such limited constraints so that newer programmers can...
These sorts of 8-bit computers are designed to work off of limitations, I think to emulate what it was like programming in the 1980s with such limited constraints so that newer programmers can write optimized code. There is a similar computer called the Commander X-16 with a 65C02, but that is much more expensive and is a full through-hole computer (minus the video chip). The thing about video chips is that it's impossible to find original 1980s-era video chips which are still being made today, I think the compromise the agon has isn't so bad either-ways.
It's a very niche hobby, I suspect a bigger niche would be engineering students besides 'retrocomputing enthusiasts'
From https://hackaday.com/2024/04/19/end-of-life-for-z80-cpu-and-peripherals-announced/
From wiki:
What an unbelievable run it's had! The first time I learned what a Z80 was, it was in a Texas Instruments TI-83+ graphing calculator. I adored that thing and spent who knows how many hours in my teenage years writing programs in TI-BASIC to make games, cheat on assignments, and what have you. It was the first device that really made it click in my head that technology could do just about whatever you instructed it to, and I was hooked. It got me looking into what other devices had Z80s, and what a fascinating world that is. Maybe I'll pull it back out today and play around in assembly a bit.
TI-83+ was a really big deal to me as a teenager. I was born too late for the home computing boom in the 80s, so I completely missed the heyday of BASIC and kids writing code on their family computer*. But the TI-83+ was a chance to experience something similar. Other kids would get caught gaming on their calculators during math, but not me. I'd get caught programming! TI-BASIC was my first non-markup language and taught me the basic principles of programming. Totally set me on the career path I took out of highschool. Which is amazing because writing TI-BASIC on a TI-83+ directly was not a fun process at all. I can't imagine tolerating that nonsense now :D
*- I realize programming has never been more accessible than it is today, but I mean you boot up a computer from that era and you're immediately prompted to start giving commands, writing code, etc. That stuff was all abstracted away with GUIs by the time I was old enough to use a computer.
It’s funny, I just saw a video about the Commander X16 where IGN interviewed the creator, who said that one of the reasons why he wanted to make the system was because he wanted to have a system that doesn’t have the same barriers as modern systems for programming.
But he is wrong.
Almost no computer gets sold without some sort of programming tool installed. I’ll pass on weather shell scripts are “programming”, but every operating system ever comes with some sort of programming language built in. Windows has Visual Basic Script. Practically every linux distribution includes Perl or Python. MacOS has had a few options through the years, to my memory. Every computer comes with a browser which you can program with the tools that come with the tools in the OS.
Sure, those aren’t high performance languages, but neither was BASIC. Many of these early computers had BASIC manuals but not anything about programming in machine language.
He's not, though: there's a difference between having a tool installed and having it exposed. Not to mention, Windows does not make it easy to draw a line on the screen. For security, obviously, but a barrier is a barrier.
How is a web browser not exposed? The only benefit I can think of for a computer designed this way is that it brings you directly to a REPL when you turn it on.
A web browser is exposed as an end user application. That developers also use it in the process of developing things that run in it doesn't make it a development tool on the same level as a REPL or IDE.
Literally all you have to do is to press f12 and you get access to a javascript console.
A BASIC prompt is hardly an IDE either.
I spent hours and hours in Mirage OS making levels for Mario instead of paying attention to whatever the teacher was yammering on about. A life well wasted. I wonder if I can find a backup from one of my old computers to play in an emulator. I’d need to edit them to replace my birth certificate name with one of my other names before sharing them to ticalc.org
Came across it in this dutch news article (google translate)
Our first family desktop computer was this. It had a CP/M OS. I think I was around 10 years old, and I learned typing in WordStar, database entry in DBase, spreadsheets in SuperCalc, fooled around with BASIC and Pascal, and played Rogue. I remember typing in the odd program from Dr. Dobb's Journal. I've still got daisywheel-printed copies of my mother's recipes from that time.
I didn't really learn to love computers until the Apples showed up at school, but the Z80 chip and the architecture surrounding it still deserve places in history as foundational to mass market desktop computing.
Speaking of the ez80, the new Agon 8-bit has been out for a year and uses that same chip, but it also piggybacks off of a more powerful microcontroller which provides graphics and sound
Funny, I was thinking about grabbing one of those chips to make a handheld CP/M machine. That’s way beyond my skill and patience level though. I’m a bit surprised they didn’t just use one of the faster ones and try to make it handle video and audio. I was looking and they seem to have one that runs at 50MHz.
These sorts of 8-bit computers are designed to work off of limitations, I think to emulate what it was like programming in the 1980s with such limited constraints so that newer programmers can write optimized code. There is a similar computer called the Commander X-16 with a 65C02, but that is much more expensive and is a full through-hole computer (minus the video chip). The thing about video chips is that it's impossible to find original 1980s-era video chips which are still being made today, I think the compromise the agon has isn't so bad either-ways.
It's a very niche hobby, I suspect a bigger niche would be engineering students besides 'retrocomputing enthusiasts'