Hi guys, Being new to the Z80 world, is there any good recommendations of a nice assembler for this processor. I have a 6502 S-C Macro asm for my Apple2 and can run the Z80 card on it as well but I only ever used it for CP/M and did not have any asm capability for the zed80 on it. Not really interested in an assembler for the Apple but I am currently running Windows XP in my lab and I do have the Raspberry Pi4 tho as well for quicker use and such. I do have an old working Mac plus and a power Macintosh 6100 in my computer room as well as a few Commodore 64's and a 128 if some older cross compilers are available. Thanks in advance. -Tony

The following files and folders have been deleted from the Files area of the Z80MC@groups.io group. /Z80MC-BIGBOOT.zip By: joshbensadon <joshbensadon@...> The following files and folders have been uploaded to the Files area of the Z80MC@groups.io group. /Z80MC-BIGBOOT.zip By: joshbensadon <joshbensadon@...> Description: Small corrections

years (many) I built a xz80 machine around the Z80/dart/CTC/eprom and ram and as a change up for early 80s 1982 end of year to be precise... BM? bubble memory actually magnetic bubble memory. I was lucky enough to get two BPK7720 bubble memory boards each doing 128Kbyes. Cost was about the same as a 5.25" floppy drive. The Intel part with supporting ICs was 1980s tech not in existance in the 70s. TI had the magnetics part earlier but the supporting ICs so it took a lot to make their part work and it first appear as local memory in the Silent 700 series as replacement for ASR33 TTY. The later 745 had a bubble memory for local storage for later transmission. What brought that to mind is Scott Bakers revisit... https://www.hackster.io/news/dr-scott-m-baker-s-bubble-basic-is-a-zilog-z80-based-single-board-computer-with-bubble-memory-5709d9932909 I still have the system I built up, and its operational. All three boards two BMC (256KB storage) and Z80SBC. The downside for BM system was high power drain when active and it wasn't very fast compared to an average floppy. It did run CP/M-V2.2. IT highlighted the problem of CP/M, floppy sized disks are too small. To save as much of the BM for storage the whole monitor, OS, and Bios was loaded into the first 16K (27128) part available then rather than loaded from disk. Building physically small systems that are high performing at the single board level has been a long time thing. The things that made Z80MC and similar possible was larger rams (32k bytes and larger), large Eproms, and enough integration of IO (Z80 dart/SIO) to cut the parts count to very few mostly glue parts. The addition of uSD makes for smaller but lots of storage, CMOS parts like Z80, SIO, and other parts in the early 80s made battery power a practical enterprise. Allsion

Planning a new Eprom for the Z80MC.. The basic plan is a tag and bag file system. Anyone that has used NSdos that was such a file system. The plan s to rewrite NSDOS to use anything but floppy (and their hard sector controller). SD is the logical device. So to do this I need to access the card at the sector level likely LBA. My first pass is a handful of routines needed: There is no on device file system assumed such as FAT16 or other partition, or file table, or allocation table... So the first usable block to max block (end of media!) need to be known. The assumption is 1 block is 512 bytes. SD _RESET SD_initial initialize where the SD parameters are pulled from the device. SD_Read_block SD_write_block The code needs to be compact so most FAT code contains unneeded functions. I assume the SD will have wasted space as 1 or 2gb is far larger than needed. Storage is cheap these days. Most z80 systems loaded with programs and applications are relatively small. My largest system uses 128mb CF and I fill about 45mb of it. Also PC readable is not required. Most examples found are not Z80 asm or are full FAT and most examples are in C. C on Z80 tends to produce large code. A pointer or example code would be helpful. The ZMCV15 code has it but ts full FAT. Allison

Good morning all, This is proving to be another hard to find component, so I got a 2MHz one instead. If I understood correctly there's a direct correlation with the terminal baud rate provided by the UART. Would 200KHz make much diference? Cheers

Hi there, I am sourcing the components for the Z80MC, which have brought me to a halt trying to find the pre-biased transistors Q1-Q5 used on the front panel (FJN3303R, FJN4303R) and even their equivalents (NTE2358, NTE2357). The TO92 versions all seem to be out of production... Are there any other equivalents that could be used instead? Glad if anybody could point me in the right direction. Cheers

Hello everyone, hope you're having a fine day! I just picked up this kit a few weeks ago and I haven't been able to get the SIO card working. The front panel and CPU card work fine together but if I have the SIO card installed nothing seems to work. I have tried it with and without the front panel card. When I plug the SIO card in the only thing that happens is the LEDs flash a few times then stay on or turn off. Nothing comes out over the terminal connection (assuming the setting are the same as the front panel settings, which work fine). As for troubleshooting, I have checked to make sure there is no solder bridges that are obvious, and I tried to reflow the joints to be sure I didn't mess any up. I reseated the socketed chips and made sure that there was continuity between the pins and the solder joints on the underside of the board. I did replace R6 in a really stupid way because I somehow missed that it was supposed to look like it did. I honestly don't know how I missed that considering all the times I read through trying to figure out where I went wrong. Hopefully I didn't screw it up worse with that. I've swapped the files on the SD card multiple times to make sure I didn't mess that up but I've had no luck with that. And at this point I have exhausted my ability to troubleshoot and I'm hoping someone here can give me a hand in getting this running. I'm sure its going to be something stupidly simple because I always miss the easy stuff. I have some closeups of my boards if anyone wants to see them to make sure its not a stupid mistake: https://imgur.com/a/F8lnKHT Thanks for any help you can give! Morgan

All – Just a fun thing to do with the Z80MC and SIO card. With some great detective work from Josh and a little bit of tinkering, I was able to get the SIO connected to a Hayesmodem 300 and to get an old CP/M program called “MODM221A” running. MODM221A is a derivative of the original MODEM program from Ward Christensen. Using this combination, there are a few things to note. First, you have to boot to the monitor and make sure that console input is the bit-banger only, and then load CP/M manually. There’s probably a way to permanently do this, but it would require modifying the system ROM. Second, since DTR and RTS are used as address bits, the ACE initialization in MODM221 has to disable DTR and RTS (or, if those are needed, then the RAM needs to be reduced to 32K and 5V re-routed to put it in the right place for the 32K RAM). I don’t have a BBS setup, but I do have all the parts for it – a computer with a Digi 8-port serial board and an analog telephone switch. So, that will be my next project. Enjoy. Thanks again Josh for the help. Rich -- Rich Cini http://www.classiccmp.org/cini http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32 Get Outlook for iOS

I've got wierd problem on my Front panel board. All keys work fine and display and LEDs are ok, but the F+E soft reset doesnt do anything. F+0 does a Hard Reset with display showing F-0 01,, after a power up, but after doing something like E 8000 and a few steps up or down ,pressing F+E for a Soft reset does nothing. Pressing F+0 displays Soft 01? Ive checked the board for shorts, and component values ( wondered if one of the R1 10k had gone o/c but cant work out what has gone wrong. Any pointers appreciated. Paul G3WYW

Paul Bigwood wrote: > There is Lynx of course. This is a linux text based browser that renders > webpages into text like your vcfmw.org page. > > Maybe something like that could be ported to z80 code, if there arent > already some z80 based browsers already? I've never used Lynx. I'll look into it. Thanks for the tip! However, I have my doubts. Modern web pages insist on using javascript, CSS, images of text instead of text itself, etc. Then, they depend on a mouse to navigate and click links; no keyboard inputs. VCFMW's own web page depends on them to display what looks like a vintage terminal. I think a Z80 would have a tough time rendering them. My own website <http://www.sunrise-ev.com> doesn't use any javascript, CSS, or images to display text. But, I don't know how to have plain old HTML read or respond to keystrokes. Lee Hart -- A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. -- Antoine de Saint Exupery -- Lee Hart, 814 8th Ave N, Sartell MN 56377, www.sunrise-ev.com

Richard Cini wrote: > Lee -- I know decidedly unvintage, but you can use an ATMEGA88 as a composite > color video chip... Of course I can. *Any* modern micro can generate video. For that matter, there are many little boards I can buy that do it all for me. Nothing to design, no software to write. But what's the fun in that? :-) I guess it's like doing a jigsaw puzzle. You could just buy the finished picture; no assembly required. But the fun is in the assembly. And for me, the fun is in the design. Not the modern "beat every problem to death with a sledgehammer" approach, but rather the Dr. Dobbs "running light without overbyte" philosophy. So, I set a hard goal for myself, and then see if I can achieve it. How simple can it be and still do the job? For inspiration, I look back on things like the Heathkit H19 terminal (1979), Sinclair ZX80 (1980), and Voja Antonic's Galaksija computers (1982). They all used a Z80 with minimal vintage hardware to produce a terminal with keyboard and video. There are also Don Lancaster's "cheap video" tricks, which mostly centered on the 6502. I have several designs that *almost* fit on an Altoids size card. But none have quite given me that "aha" moment yet. Lee Hart -- "We do these things not because they are easy; but because they are hard." -- President Jack Kennedy, on the Apollo moon mission -- Lee Hart, 814 8th Ave N, Sartell MN 56377, www.sunrise-ev.com

ajparent1/kb1gmx wrote: > FYI 64180 and Z180 are to most still a z80 and programs at the > application level (CP/M) the same. Yes. Besides the P112, there have in fact been many follow-in enhancements to the Z80 family. The current TI-84 calculators still use them today. > Z180/64180 were z80s aka 8-bitters. 8088 and z8000 and 68000 were bigger > word size and minimally 16-bit. Sort of... 8- vs. 16-bit is a blurry line. It's hard to call the 8088 a 16-bit CPU, except in marketing. At the same clock speed, the Z80 easily out-performed it. The Z180 was even faster, and had a bigger address space as well. > 8088 was Totally program (binary) incompatable. But it was a thing. Yep. Marketing over engineering. Lee -- A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. -- Antoine de Saint Exupery -- Lee Hart, 814 8th Ave N, Sartell MN 56377, www.sunrise-ev.com

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I'm going to pull the trigger on changing the group email and name to Z80MC from Z8MC. I'm sending this out before the change and i'll send a confirmation later.