Z80: The 1970s Microprocessor That Refuses to Die
Z80–The 1970s Microprocessor Still Alive
The Z80, launched in 1976, was designed by Federico Faggin and his team after leaving Intel. It combined the best of the Intel 8080 and Motorola 6800, using 8,200 transistors to run all 78 instructions of the 8080 plus extras. It powered iconic home computers like the TRS-80 and ZX Spectrum, and remains in production today, notably inside Texas Instruments calculators. This article traces its history and enduring legacy.
It appeared suddenly from nowhere, captured the market quickly, and then few years later disappeared from main stream personal computers due to the success of the IBM PC and PC clones.
- JoeAltmaier
My first ambitious project was a Z80 assembler. The Z8000 (much later) was distinguished by being the last random-logic (not microcoded) microprocessor of it's day.
- getfacl
Tom Jennings, the creator of fidenet, is producing a nice modern Z80 computer[0]
- Lio
> Then, as a young engineer, I worked in a large mainframe computer system based on Z80.
This sentence threw me a little bit. Which mainframes were based on the Z80? I'd love to know more about that.
- meekins
Due to its simplicity it's a fun little processor to program. Hacking on some assembly on a ZX spectrum emulator is a nice way to stay sane in this high abstraction LLM age.
- julienmartlet
Ironically (and sadly) the Z80 was discontinued not very long after this piece was published.