I worked on a Z8000 based multiuser system with dumb terminals running Pick (anyone remember that?) around 1987 thru 1989, including offering Mac based terminal emulator for it so copy could be keyed into the dumb terminals, then imported into the Mac for desktop publishing.
A friend of mine developed his own Eurocard based systems based around the Z8000 around this time, but as others have indicated, Intel was the way everything was going.
I worked on a Z8000 based multiuser system with dumb terminals running Pick (anyone remember that?) around 1987 thru 1989
Yes; the Olivetti machine. Never sold AFAIK. Had a unix OS.
I wonder where that firm gets the Z280 chips? Must be from some used stock source.
I think we would have preferred a 32016 or 32032 machine but they weren't available yet, or too expensive or something.
I worked on a Z8000 based multiuser system with dumb terminals running Pick (anyone remember that?)
Remember the Z180 was sold in two versions: a "mask 160" or some such, and the latest one which has a broken UART hardware handshake. When the UART bug was found, Zilog did not have the resources to do another mask so they continued to sell the older one under that funny name
In 1993 or 94 I remember a friend joining Zilog and the rest of us asking the same question. Why? Zilog was already pretty much dead in the water, and even our friend couldn't give a convincing answer about his move. Such a major downfall, from which they never seemed to recover.
In 1987 Zilog was still launching major things like the Z80000. In 1993 or 94 I remember a friend joining Zilog and the rest of us asking the same question. Why? Zilog was already pretty much dead in the water,
A couple of decades after that first one, Zilog was pushing a Z80-based microcontroller, and had a giveaway for a design contest. I got a kit. Then I wrote to them that it had a dead short across the power supply, and they sent a replacement. That one didn't work either. And that was my last Zilog experience.
The Z80k was a great chip, and 1987 was before the Intel domination with the x86. But sentiment is like a tidal wave...
Maybe Zilog's mistake was to not make microcontrollers. A smaller company must address a smaller and more specialised market - true for any business. And look at today's uC market, with so many players co-existing. People would have gone for a Z80 based uC very readily in say 1990.
And it was easy... they had the PIO SIO SCC (85C30) CTC DMA. Just throw them on the same chip. Product designers would have almost no work to do.
1976 was hard work for a new uC (the chips were laid out by hand) but 1990 was dead easy.
Found this, pointed by Hackaday, an open source Z80 in hardware:
https://github.com/rejunity/z80-open-silicon
https://hackaday.com/2024/04/28/the-z80-is-dead-long-live-the-free-z80/
I think we would have preferred a 32016 or 32032 machine but they weren't available yet, or too expensive or something.You might have preferred at 32032, but only masochists preferred the 32016. It was very buggy. By the time they got the 32032 out and cleaned things up they were too far behind in performance the get anywhere. The 68020 had already got into most of the workstations.
you only need a pretty entry-level FPGA for implementing a Z80