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This just demonstrates the Z80 love will never die ;) Chips4Makers.io has just launched their own crowd funding campaign (seeking $22K) for the Retro-μC. A ful
by ArtWomb 8y ago
This just demonstrates the Z80 love will never die ;)
Chips4Makers.io has just launched their own crowd funding campaign (seeking $22K) for the Retro-μC. A fully open-source micro-controller that runs three venerable retro CPU cores: the Zilog Z80, MOS 6502 and Motorola M68K. Yes, you read that correctly. It's like a TRS-80, Commodore-64 and Amiga on a single chip!
https://www.crowdsupply.com/chips4makers/retro-uc https://www.crowdsupply.com/chips4makers/retro-uc
- thinkmassive 8y agoI was excited when I first ran across that project on Crowd Supply, but for $42 you can buy multiples of all 3 processors. The advantage of using physical chips is they have the pinouts that have been used for decades and are well documented in hundreds of designs. If you’re going to use an FPGA why only include the cores, what about peripherals? And if you’re synthesizing all that, how much better is it than just emulating the entire legacy system on ARM or x86? You say it’s those entire microcomputers on a chip, but isn’t it just the CPUs? I’m not opposed to it, just looking to understand the motivation behind Retro-uC better. Recently I ordered a set of 68k chips to build my own homebrew system, so I totally get building something that isn’t practical, where the journey is the destination.
- linker3000 8y agoYeah, but it's already been done: http://searle.hostei.com/grant/Multicomp/index.html http://searle.hostei.com/grant/Multicomp/index.html
- thinkmassive 8y agoRight! It seems like anyone who wants a retrocomputer on an FPGA would want to program it themselves. Considering you can get an EP2C5T144 dev kit for $20, and a USB-blaster for $10, I’m not sure I see any market for a $42 pre-programmed FPGA that may not be supported after it ships.