5 ms·
This kit seems very similar to the famous Altair computer which spawned MS-BASIC and CP/M. Anything like Unix and C is not desirable on such a system. Even a 't
by flomo 10y ago
This kit seems very similar to the famous Altair computer which spawned MS-BASIC and CP/M. Anything like Unix and C is not desirable on such a system. Even a 'text editor', as we understand them today, is a reach on such machines.
You could build your own world, but you'd probably have to do it writing ASM out by hand and then entering through a cumbersome line editor. For most purposes, that's too hard, so you would probably invent a very 'basic' line-level interpreter. But, given what we know now, you'd probably come up with a better disk operating system.
- smcl 10y agoIt's actually pretty surprising how much you can achieve with these 8 bit processors. My favourite example of pushing the 8 bit Arduino processor to the limit is this - 3D rendering at 320x240 x 16 bit: http://hackaday.com/2016/01/02/better-3d-graphics-on-the-arduino/ http://hackaday.com/2016/01/02/better-3d-graphics-on-the-ard...
- mikepavone 10y agoThat demo is rather impressive, but the AVR in an Arduino is much faster than a Z80. This machine is running at ~7.37MHz (which is fast compared to old Z80 based personal computers) whereas the Arduino typically runs at 16Mhz. Further, an instruction takes a minimum of 4 cycles on the Z80 and many take longer whereas most AVR instructions take only a single cycle.
- gravypod 10y agoI just went looking at different Z80s and it seems as if there was at least one Z80 made to support a fairly high clock frequency. The highest I've found that I can order is clocked at 20MHz [0] [0] - http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en?mpart=Z84C0020VEG&vendor=269 http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en?mpart=Z84C0020VEG&v...
- gravypod 10y agoI'm not interested in 3D graphics. I'm interested in running a keyboard, a terminal of some sort, and some task switching OS. No sound or anything else needed. I do remember some of my (much older) friends talking about their Sinclair ZX Spectrum. From what I remember they said they had a Z80 in that. That old computer was able to do basic text editing from what I remember.