Hand-Wired Z80 Basic Computer -- Episode 341

Where are the instructions?

What do you exactly mean?

USB-C has so many more bells and whistles than the original 2 wire USB doesn't have.

Passing through limited power (up to 1A) is easy - the other functionality requires a whole bunch of smarts which a USB controller IC can provide.

Thanks!

The virtual CP/M network drives I use are fantastically fast; but they don't go click whirr whirr buzz like floppy drives.

Nice project.

John

Hey I have an question ? Is there a way to change USB out to usbc in an hub 4 port charger ?

Here's a picture of one of my ancient hand assembled Z80's.

Two serials ports on the left, two parallel user ports in the centre and the 10BaseT port on the right.

It boasts Ethernet Internet connectivity and runs CP/m from network storage.

The terminal can operate using a serial port or Telnet.

Most of the wiring is within the its Z84C15 Z80 System on Chip that can run @ 16MHz.

It you look closely it's built on a Radio Shack protoboard.

RIP - Radio Shack

I've built many 6502 family based systems. Do you need any help?

To make things easier I suggest building a system using the R6511Q derivative.

All you need to do is connect an EPROM, oscillator, some caps and resistors and you have an instant system.

Optionally you can connect extra RAM.

The R6511Q has inbuilt RAM - all 192 bytes!, Timers, parallel and serial I/O ports and 10 (TEN) Interrupts!

If you really want to look at an 8 bit computer with banked memory - have a look at the later Z80 based microbees.  They have up to 1Mbytes of RAM (but usually 128-256).

This was cool, particularly to see how Ben built the bus nodes.  I saw his similar Atari build a few years ago which inspired me to dig around and bump into Grant Searle's build. 

It evolved into a project that was featured on EEVLog last Christmas. 

The video was design to poke on Dave in jest, but in reality, our bus truly formed into what you see here - a true rat nest:

https://youtu.be/vr8ROiYs8AQ?t=3m20s

-Sean

I would REALLY like to build a 6502 based computer but with a cool, old school front panel / console.

You see, I am blind, and I would love to have a way to program my computer with switches and maybe use vibrators instead of Blinkenlights. But wouldn't it be cool to be able to actually toggle in machine code directly into a system, like on the old IMSAI or Altair (or, even, PDP-11, although that was 16 bit...)

I realise that the 6502 can't adress more than 64K of memory (since it is 8-bit), but I would also dream of putting more memory in it, but being able to toggle between banks, so that one potentially could write a modular OS for it, such as UNIX. On an 8-bit computer.

Yeah... One can dream, right?

Nice episode.

Brought back memories of the days when we wire wrapped CPU and memory chips before committing to a PCB.

No, I do not miss soldering all those connections or even doing the wire wrap.

DAB