Cidco MailStation as a Z80 Development Platform (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Cidco MailStation as a Z80 Development Platform (2019)

jcs.org

64 pointsrobin_reala9 comments

I think this was posted here because of the question on Retrocomputing Stackexchange: “What was the last commercial Z80-based computer sold?” (https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/a/31883/11579)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S1_MP3_player used a Z80 SoC, and at least from a quick search, appears that they're still in production.

I love that this site has an Easter egg if left idle long enough.

How much room is there for a custom PCB? I'm a 6502 guy so I would like to keep the case but put something there with my favorite CPU.

I've learned Z80 and 8051 a decade or two ago, and then forgot everything. Honestly both were easy to pick up, but I assume you're opinionated and/or an expert?

Anything in particular that you like about the 6502?

I think people like the way the 6502 wires up to peripherals. Myself I think the Z80 is much better because it has enough registers and addressing modes that you can write compilers for it. I know they had C compilers for it in 1984 because I typed in a C program for CP/M from Byte magazine and got it to run on my 6809-based TRS-80 Color Computer. Programming languages for the 6502 were usually implemented with virtual machine techniques like

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWEET16

or the truly atrocious

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCSD_Pascal

which was one reason a generation of programmers hated PASCAL with a passion and declared you could pry BASIC from our cold dead hands.

Myself I'd want to hollow it out and put something based on

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_eZ80

because it is way faster, has a bigger address space, and has wider registers so you can do pointer math over that bigger address space unlike this turkey

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WDC_65C816

A lot of people enjoyed writing assembly for the 6502 back in the day though.

eZ80 looks cool. Indeed looks like an interesting mcu to build a tiny general-purpose computer from scratch. (Somehow I always found bank-switching kinda ugly, address space is better when there's more of it.)

I find it fascinating how these 70s/80s microprocessors still keep getting pushed with backward-compatible updates. (Most notably, x86-64.)

UCSD Pascal was marvelous over the plain ISO Pascal from early 1970's, and the inspiration for Clascal and Object Pascal at Apple, that eventually was embraced by Borland, and a few competitors like TMT that wanted a piece of the Pascal pie on PCs.

And the Constellation OS from Corvus Systems.

C compilers on Z80, at least on Spectrums were really lousy in terms of code generation, plus the whole dev experience unless on a +3 A with drive, those kind of machines were designed for a BASIC interpreter + Assembly.

I just have a few decades of experience with 6502 and none with Z80, so it would be much easier for me to program it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com