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Are there any readily available dev boards using these classic microprocessors (6800, 6502, 6809, Z80) that have the various peripherals (UART, serial USB, flas

Are there any readily available dev boards using these classic microprocessors (6800, 6502, 6809, Z80) that have the various peripherals (UART, serial USB, flash and static memory) already installed? A quick search on Amazon or eBay did not reveal much. That's the nice thing about the newer chips (AVR, ESP8266, ESP32, STM32, etc). All those peripherals are already included on the SoC or the dev board. It is very easy to quickly upload the firmware through serial-USB, and start having fun.

dTal 4y ago
Not a dev board, but the cheapest used Z80 machine might be a Texas Instruments graphing calculator. Ebay's full of them for pocket change. Even comes with a screen!
- bxparks 4y ago
  Yeah, I've been looking at those TI calculators for a few years, hoping to dabble in some Z80 assembly programming for nostalgia. I've also been eyeing their TI-92, 92II, 92Plus, and Voyage 200 series of calculators. They use the 68000 processor and have qwerty keyboards. It looks like there is a C compiler for it (http://tigcc.ticalc.org/ http://tigcc.ticalc.org/), so it ought to be possible to do some interesting things, like this Fuzix OS, or a FORTH, LISP or Lua interpreter, or a terminal program over a serial link to a battery-powered ESP8266/ESP32 to the internet over WiFi.
  - dTal 4y ago
    The 68k calculators are indeed delightful machines. You've found TIGCC - you should also be aware of GCC4TI, a fork of TIGCC due to the original maintainer not accepting contributions, and GTC-IDE which is an independent (non-gcc) C compiler that runs on the calculators themselves (although the frequent memory leaks render the development loop tedious - no memory protection means leaked memory is gone for good until you "reboot"). There is a mature independent OS called PedroM, and someone even made some progress porting 4.4BSD (PunixOS).
cdcarter 4y ago
Tindie has a lot of various kits and boards for sale. I recommend "Stephen Cousins"' store: https://www.tindie.com/stores/tindiescx/ https://www.tindie.com/stores/tindiescx/. But there are other options too. WDC makes a few dev boards for the 6502, also available on tindie.
- kjs3 4y ago
  I just picked up one of the WDC 6502 SBCs[1] from Mouser. It's quite interesting. [1] https://wdc65xx.com/Single-Board-Computers/w65c02sxb/ https://wdc65xx.com/Single-Board-Computers/w65c02sxb/
crb3 4y ago
A quick search on 'Ampro' turned up https://www.elite.parts/ampro/little%20board$z80 https://www.elite.parts/ampro/little%20board$z80 which might do. My first CP/M computer was an Ampro Little Board 1A, sold along with a floppy carrying CP/M-2.2 + ZCPR3. I got a lot done on that machine, including a text-mode MIDI editor-sequencer -- the Z80 DART as set up could run the second serial channel (the first was CON to the terminal) at the MIDI baudrate and slave-interrupt to derive its MIDI Clocks from a sync-track recorded/played on a 4-track cassette machine through a Kansas City tape-modem.
- kjs3 4y ago
  Yeah, but Ampro hasn't made a Little Board in decades; I've been crusing eBay for a reasonably priced Little Board for a while. There are, however, a lot of 'modern' Z-80 (and better, Z-180) SBCs running around that would be cheaper and easier to find. As another commenter pointed out, check out Tindie or google for "RC2014", for example.
lproven 4y ago
The Spectrum Next? ;-) If you can't get one, and who can -- then the N-GO is a good alternative. https://manuferhi.com/c/n-go https://manuferhi.com/c/n-go There are other clones out there, e.g. Sizif 512: https://github.com/UzixLS/zx-sizif-512 https://github.com/UzixLS/zx-sizif-512 But for modern kit, readily available, probably the Agon Light: https://www.thebyteattic.com/p/agon.html https://www.thebyteattic.com/p/agon.html E.g. https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/AgonLight2/open-source-hardware https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/AgonLight2/o...

dTal 4y ago

Not a dev board, but the cheapest used Z80 machine might be a Texas Instruments graphing calculator. Ebay's full of them for pocket change. Even comes with a screen!

bxparks 4y ago
Yeah, I've been looking at those TI calculators for a few years, hoping to dabble in some Z80 assembly programming for nostalgia. I've also been eyeing their TI-92, 92II, 92Plus, and Voyage 200 series of calculators. They use the 68000 processor and have qwerty keyboards. It looks like there is a C compiler for it (http://tigcc.ticalc.org/ http://tigcc.ticalc.org/), so it ought to be possible to do some interesting things, like this Fuzix OS, or a FORTH, LISP or Lua interpreter, or a terminal program over a serial link to a battery-powered ESP8266/ESP32 to the internet over WiFi.
- dTal 4y ago
  The 68k calculators are indeed delightful machines. You've found TIGCC - you should also be aware of GCC4TI, a fork of TIGCC due to the original maintainer not accepting contributions, and GTC-IDE which is an independent (non-gcc) C compiler that runs on the calculators themselves (although the frequent memory leaks render the development loop tedious - no memory protection means leaked memory is gone for good until you "reboot"). There is a mature independent OS called PedroM, and someone even made some progress porting 4.4BSD (PunixOS).

cdcarter 4y ago

Tindie has a lot of various kits and boards for sale. I recommend "Stephen Cousins"' store: https://www.tindie.com/stores/tindiescx/ https://www.tindie.com/stores/tindiescx/. But there are other options too. WDC makes a few dev boards for the 6502, also available on tindie.

kjs3 4y ago
I just picked up one of the WDC 6502 SBCs[1] from Mouser. It's quite interesting. [1] https://wdc65xx.com/Single-Board-Computers/w65c02sxb/ https://wdc65xx.com/Single-Board-Computers/w65c02sxb/

crb3 4y ago

A quick search on 'Ampro' turned up https://www.elite.parts/ampro/little%20board$z80 https://www.elite.parts/ampro/little%20board$z80 which might do. My first CP/M computer was an Ampro Little Board 1A, sold along with a floppy carrying CP/M-2.2 + ZCPR3. I got a lot done on that machine, including a text-mode MIDI editor-sequencer -- the Z80 DART as set up could run the second serial channel (the first was CON to the terminal) at the MIDI baudrate and slave-interrupt to derive its MIDI Clocks from a sync-track recorded/played on a 4-track cassette machine through a Kansas City tape-modem.

kjs3 4y ago
Yeah, but Ampro hasn't made a Little Board in decades; I've been crusing eBay for a reasonably priced Little Board for a while. There are, however, a lot of 'modern' Z-80 (and better, Z-180) SBCs running around that would be cheaper and easier to find. As another commenter pointed out, check out Tindie or google for "RC2014", for example.

lproven 4y ago

The Spectrum Next? ;-) If you can't get one, and who can -- then the N-GO is a good alternative. https://manuferhi.com/c/n-go https://manuferhi.com/c/n-go There are other clones out there, e.g. Sizif 512: https://github.com/UzixLS/zx-sizif-512 https://github.com/UzixLS/zx-sizif-512 But for modern kit, readily available, probably the Agon Light: https://www.thebyteattic.com/p/agon.html https://www.thebyteattic.com/p/agon.html E.g. https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/AgonLight2/open-source-hardware https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/AgonLight2/o...