Old Z8671- & P8052-BASIC MCUs

[matseng]

While rummaging thru my old electronics junk boxes I found both a Zilog Z8671 and an Intel P8052 CPU/MCU. Both are kinda special since they have internal BASIC interpreters and can be programmed by just hooking up a terminal to them.



The Zilog was made in August 1983 and the Intel in December 1984 so they are really ancient.  I also got a bunch of contemporary SRAMS and other crap so I can hopefully get them running without any modern parts. I just need a real VT100 terminal and I'm set :-)

I'll be using one of them for my entry in the Retrochallenge Competition, but not sure which one. http://www.wickensonline.co.uk/retrochallenge-2012sc/

[retrolefty]

Cool. That 8052AH may be old but apparently still available for sale:

http://www.micromint.com/products.html?id=97

[ChristofferB]

Nice find!
I've worked a bit with both. Apparently, you can get a FORTH version of the z8671..
The 8052 has routines for writing basic and assembler programs directly to EPROM, which I found really neat.
Note that when you establish serial to the 8052, the first character needs to be a "space" -it calculates the baudrate from that! I spent a loooot of time on debugging before i knew that...

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

--Christoffer
 

[TheSteve]

Did you happen to ever use the Z8671 and write code for it?

I have an ancient(but cool) battery charger/discharger that uses the Z8671/Z8681/Z8691 CPU's with an external eprom and sram. I'd like to make a few changes to the program and would like to some help with it.

I also have quite a few Z8681 "romless" CPU's in stock if anyone needs one.