I am very interested in the Z80/Z180. I've wanted to build a a machine and see how much i can get out of this chip for 2 years now but sadly i am financially limited and have yet to obtain components to begin. I do know it is a widely available chip.
I am very interested in the Z80/Z180. I've wanted to build a a machine and see how much i can get out of this chip for 2 years now but sadly i am financially limited and have yet to obtain components to begin. I do know it is a widely available chip.
It shouldn't cost you too much to get a Z80 and some support chips. I'd recommend the Z84C00 CMOS variant if because it has less limitations and some extra features.
The standard NMOS Z8400 part can't have a static clock signal whereas the CMOS version does.
You can be silly and make a flashing LED from a Z80 CPU ,a NE555 or crystal oscillator and a few 4k7 resistors. This doesn't really teach you much except that the Z80's NOP instruction is %00 (Hex) and if you've got an oscilloscope you can observe that the NOP instruction actually does something and the lower 7 bits of the address bus contain both the instruction fetch address and refresh RAM address.
You can get programming tools for the Z80 for free. Zilog offers ZDS2 for the eZ80. This can be used with the Z80 with a few tiny caveats. It even has a simulator and debugger.
Alternatively you can use one of the many emulators.
