3 ms·

Really nice to see a Z80-project :) I'm actually finishing my own Z80 microcomputer this weekend. But mine will utilize a symphony of exotic 7400 series chips a

by XtalJ 10y ago

Really nice to see a Z80-project :) I'm actually finishing my own Z80 microcomputer this weekend. But mine will utilize a symphony of exotic 7400 series chips and hard-to-get Z80 peripheral chips. All ceramic ones. So if anyone wants to build their own, it will cost several hundreds of dollars :-/. But the idea with the project was to learn how computers where built in the early 80s, not to do a modern approach, like you :-) Fun name, by the way. Mine will be named Calculon80 or Calculon64 :-D

Florin_Andrei 10y ago
Is your room gonna smell like soldering rosin while you're making the device? Cause there's no "real retro" without that smell of rosin. :)
- XtalJ 10y ago
  Yes, and it is a lot of soldering :-) The real retro feeling is given by the old UV EPROM with gold pins (DDR copy of 2732) and the shiny big 2W resistors :-D
- stan_rogers 10y ago
  Oh, come now! Surely an impenetrable tangle of fragile little wires wrapped around a forest of little square pegs is retro enough?
  - XtalJ 10y ago
    I first built my computer using low quality breadboards and a lot of wires, which I tried to keep as tidy as possible, without success ;-) I designed a PCB in KiCAD and got 5 of them delivered a week ago. Sooo much better :-) I wonder how the FAP80 was prototyped?
- jamesfmilne 10y ago
  For teenage me, during electronics projects the room always smelt of solder fumes, burnt skin, and melted wire insulation. :-)
  - Florin_Andrei 10y ago
    So, at some point I learned that you could use an aspirin tablet instead of rosin. It works, kinda, but the fumes are the kind that melts your lungs off. But yeah, there's no "real" soldering without burnt fingertips.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      Burnt fingertips, hell. My second, and so far last, iron burn happened as a result of trying to solder an SD card slot hacked from an old floppy edge connector onto the CPU pins of a WRT54G with an insufficient magnifier that had me leaning way too close to the work. Turns out my nose sticks out further than I'd thought! And the blister stuck out further still. The sort of thing about which my mother might say "that'll learn ya," and it did - I'm much more cautious now.
HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago
What peripherals are you having trouble finding? I have a few tubes of Z80s and peripherals that are a couple decades old. And about 100 crystals.
- XtalJ 10y ago
  It is especially the Z80 DART and SIO, which are very expensive on eBay. I have 3 of them now, but I accidentally broke one when I inserted it wrong in the IC socket :'-(
hvs 10y ago
Are you going to share photos/details anywhere, like http://hackaday.io http://hackaday.io?
- XtalJ 10y ago
  Yes that's the plan :-) For the moment, some text about it can be found here: http://computer.j89.se http://computer.j89.se I am going to add more text, pictures and photos soon. At the end I just wanted to focus on getting finished and skipped the writing part :-)

by XtalJ 10y ago

Florin_Andrei 10y ago

Is your room gonna smell like soldering rosin while you're making the device? Cause there's no "real retro" without that smell of rosin. :)

XtalJ 10y ago
Yes, and it is a lot of soldering :-) The real retro feeling is given by the old UV EPROM with gold pins (DDR copy of 2732) and the shiny big 2W resistors :-D
stan_rogers 10y ago
Oh, come now! Surely an impenetrable tangle of fragile little wires wrapped around a forest of little square pegs is retro enough?
- XtalJ 10y ago
  I first built my computer using low quality breadboards and a lot of wires, which I tried to keep as tidy as possible, without success ;-) I designed a PCB in KiCAD and got 5 of them delivered a week ago. Sooo much better :-) I wonder how the FAP80 was prototyped?
jamesfmilne 10y ago
For teenage me, during electronics projects the room always smelt of solder fumes, burnt skin, and melted wire insulation. :-)
- Florin_Andrei 10y ago
  So, at some point I learned that you could use an aspirin tablet instead of rosin. It works, kinda, but the fumes are the kind that melts your lungs off. But yeah, there's no "real" soldering without burnt fingertips.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Burnt fingertips, hell. My second, and so far last, iron burn happened as a result of trying to solder an SD card slot hacked from an old floppy edge connector onto the CPU pins of a WRT54G with an insufficient magnifier that had me leaning way too close to the work. Turns out my nose sticks out further than I'd thought! And the blister stuck out further still. The sort of thing about which my mother might say "that'll learn ya," and it did - I'm much more cautious now.

HeyLaughingBoy 10y ago

What peripherals are you having trouble finding? I have a few tubes of Z80s and peripherals that are a couple decades old. And about 100 crystals.

XtalJ 10y ago
It is especially the Z80 DART and SIO, which are very expensive on eBay. I have 3 of them now, but I accidentally broke one when I inserted it wrong in the IC socket :'-(

hvs 10y ago

Are you going to share photos/details anywhere, like http://hackaday.io http://hackaday.io?

XtalJ 10y ago
Yes that's the plan :-) For the moment, some text about it can be found here: http://computer.j89.se http://computer.j89.se I am going to add more text, pictures and photos soon. At the end I just wanted to focus on getting finished and skipped the writing part :-)