Building your own Z80 / performance

From: Allison J Parent <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Thu Oct 22 17:39:11 1998

< I have never tho't of the Z80 as a slow processor. I interfaced a Z180
< running at 18 mhz to a VGA board recently and using a C compiler was abl
< build a machine that acted essentially like a 80286 running at 10 mhz.

Inthe early to most of the 80s I've spent a fair amount of time using 6
or 8mhz z80s to blow the doors off of x86 hardware. The z80 is a better
IO machine!

< Z80 is a pretty cool platform for building an extremely cheap and modern
< network computer since it acts a lot like a 16 bit processor. There's
< you can do with it with a relatively minimal effort.

The z280 is even better, the enhancements it has are pretty decent and
it's faster still.

Doing your own design in a FPGA is harder than would first appear. Unless
your using a known core things like gate delays (race conditions) can
bite you. Also some routing paths can be slower than others so you may
get far less than the rated Tpd.

Allison
Received on Thu Oct 22 1998 - 17:39:11 BST