Via the Adafruit Blog, I found this nice article on the history and tech of the Zilog Z80.
Intertwined history
I used to know the story but long forgot that the Z80 pedigree includes folks who worked on the Intel 4004 (see right), widely recognized as the world’s first commercially available microprocessor, and the Intel 8008, the world’s first 8-bit programmable microprocessor.
Bumping into the Z80
My own history sorta glanced by the Z80. Where I lived in the 70s and early 80s (Brasil) really didn’t have personal computers.
At my high school, we did manage to get a set of TRS-80s (this would be maybe 1981 or 1982). Some friends and I went to the lab after school for the first week the school had them. Then sports season started and we could only come intermittently. And, as I recall, the guy running the computer lab sorta banned us. Haha.
The other ‘glance’ was a friend who had a black wedge Z80 computer (Sinclair ZX Spectrum?) plugged into, as I recall, a TV (likely around ’82 – so perhaps newly released). And I think he had some moon lander game on it. That’s all I recall. I ended up going into biology (away from math and computers), but my friend, last I saw him, was a Stanford PhD and working on robotic tractors. Yeah, I guess he got more out of the Z80 than I. Haha.
But today….
Fast forward to the present, as you know, if you’re reading this, I’ve spent the past year illustrating various chips. I tend to do MCUs and other chips, but not CPUs. But someone fondly mentioned the Z80 and I had to make it.
In my designs, I try different styles, especially how much blaze highlight to put in. Often it’s based on my mood, or just a feel for the look.
The Z80 was no different. But when I saw the three styles I tried, I saw that they would look cooler together, stacked.
Et, voilá.
Happy 50th, Z80.
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