3 ms·

Ironically (and sadly) the Z80 was discontinued not very long after this piece was published.

by julienmartlet 1mo ago

grishka 1mo ago
I'm sure clones are still being made.
- nubinetwork 1mo ago
  The cpu possibly, but I had a hard time trying to find the support chips (ctc, sio/pio, etc)...
  - avadodin 1mo ago
    Many applications didn't even use those peripherals so I suppose production ended earlier. The Z80 could even refresh the RAM by itself. It was not like the 8080 which required two support chips only to function.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 1mo ago
    Do you have an actual use for them? I might have a few tubes of Z80-CTC & SIO in the basement if I haven't given them all away yet.
- JoeAltmaier 1mo ago
  It's still active as a mask for a more complex system on a single die. Even the support chips are available. The Juno project, orbiting Jupiter, had a Z80 compatible core for the radar signal processing.
dragontamer 1mo ago
We still have the venerable 8051 for anyone who likes old architectures!!
- spicyjpeg 1mo ago
  The 6502 and its variants are still ubiquitous as well, powering millions of toys based on Sunplus/GeneralPlus microcontrollers [1] [2] [3] as well as the vast majority of bootleg game consoles that use variants of "Famiclone" hardware (or occasionally general-purpose 6502 MCUs [4]) to this day. It's fascinating how the toy industry went for the 6502 over the 8051 and PIC12 clones more common in other cheap electronics; I suspect it had to do both with the architecture's better performance (important for tasks such as audio decoding) and with the historical availability of experienced 6502 assembly developers as the game industry moved away from 8-bit platforms. [1] https://spritesmods.com/?art=tamasingularity&page=2 https://spritesmods.com/?art=tamasingularity&page=2 [2] https://archive.org/details/furby-source https://archive.org/details/furby-source [3] https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=37.%20Pixter#_TOC_a6fe7ec5ea9ca777e1f9c7aeca04d85a https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=37.%20Pixter#_TOC_a6fe... [4] https://github.com/davidgiven/tony-sdk https://github.com/davidgiven/tony-sdk
Gormo 1mo ago
IIRC, only the classic 40-pin DIP Z80 was discontinued. The eZ80, which is fully compatible, is still in production.
mithro 1mo ago
There are a number of efforts to make low volume production of compatible parts - see https://github.com/rejunity/z80-open-silicon https://github.com/rejunity/z80-open-silicon There are also FPGA emulated versions.

Ironically (and sadly) the Z80 was discontinued not very long after this piece was published.

grishka 1mo ago

I'm sure clones are still being made.

nubinetwork 1mo ago
The cpu possibly, but I had a hard time trying to find the support chips (ctc, sio/pio, etc)...
- avadodin 1mo ago
  Many applications didn't even use those peripherals so I suppose production ended earlier. The Z80 could even refresh the RAM by itself. It was not like the 8080 which required two support chips only to function.
- HeyLaughingBoy 1mo ago
  Do you have an actual use for them? I might have a few tubes of Z80-CTC & SIO in the basement if I haven't given them all away yet.
JoeAltmaier 1mo ago
It's still active as a mask for a more complex system on a single die. Even the support chips are available. The Juno project, orbiting Jupiter, had a Z80 compatible core for the radar signal processing.

dragontamer 1mo ago

We still have the venerable 8051 for anyone who likes old architectures!!

spicyjpeg 1mo ago
The 6502 and its variants are still ubiquitous as well, powering millions of toys based on Sunplus/GeneralPlus microcontrollers [1] [2] [3] as well as the vast majority of bootleg game consoles that use variants of "Famiclone" hardware (or occasionally general-purpose 6502 MCUs [4]) to this day. It's fascinating how the toy industry went for the 6502 over the 8051 and PIC12 clones more common in other cheap electronics; I suspect it had to do both with the architecture's better performance (important for tasks such as audio decoding) and with the historical availability of experienced 6502 assembly developers as the game industry moved away from 8-bit platforms. [1] https://spritesmods.com/?art=tamasingularity&page=2 https://spritesmods.com/?art=tamasingularity&page=2 [2] https://archive.org/details/furby-source https://archive.org/details/furby-source [3] https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=37.%20Pixter#_TOC_a6fe7ec5ea9ca777e1f9c7aeca04d85a https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=37.%20Pixter#_TOC_a6fe... [4] https://github.com/davidgiven/tony-sdk https://github.com/davidgiven/tony-sdk

Gormo 1mo ago

IIRC, only the classic 40-pin DIP Z80 was discontinued. The eZ80, which is fully compatible, is still in production.

mithro 1mo ago

There are a number of efforts to make low volume production of compatible parts - see https://github.com/rejunity/z80-open-silicon https://github.com/rejunity/z80-open-silicon There are also FPGA emulated versions.