Z80 CP/M SBC design project

There is at least one existing Z80 CP/M Single Board Computer product -- and a large number of enthusiastic potential users of a new one -- over at the comp.os.cpm newsgroup.

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Guy Macon

Bah! Buncha wussies you all are! Real Real Engineers build their computers with tubes, which they make themselves from sand and various ores they find around their property! ;-)

Real Real Real Engineers use semiconductor junctions formed from various ores (e.g. galena) or burnt items (galvanized steel), but that's another story.

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms

In the case of the Z80 board (wanted to stay out of this thread), yes, but the 'real' engineers should perhaps not simply use CP/M2, but write their own version of it. I not only designed the Z80 system, a whole lot of interface boards, but it also ran my own CP/M clone (actually it was written specifically for the Z80). As always, the software is just as important as the hardware. No half work guys!

And as to PCBs, no way, in just a couple of evenings I build this: ftp://panteltje.com/pub/s/wiring2.jpg component side: ftp://panteltje.com/pub/s/z80_board.jpg Sorry it was a foggy day ;-)

Actually there are many more boards, like VDU, EPROM programmer, packet radio modem, floppy controller, sound, ramdisk, etc.

But these day I play with computers, Linux based, like I played in the old days with transistors. Ever larger integration, you even are no longer interested in the processor type, could be in FPGA. This is the way things go, dunno what a next step would be, networks, there is a lot of power in modern hardware, it is fun to find applications that make full use or at least intelligent use of that power (unlike for example Vista). After all... it is also about what the technology can do for us... And it has to be fun too. I do not like to repeat old projects really, not very interesting. More like 'oh, I know how to do that'.

Really Real Engineers move to a place where those vacuum tubes work without any inconvenient glass envelopes or vacuum pumps.

--
Guy Macon

Incidentally, you don't want to overheat zinc or galvanized metal without good ventilation - as zinc fumes are really not good for you (metal fume fever, etc)

Yeah, nasty stuff- funny too though. Some people are hypersensitive to it, choking from a mere whiff; others (myself included) don't seem to suffer any effects, at least yet. Metals, go figure.

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms

Actually an interesting project might be to build a fluidic computer. (uses pipes and aerodynamics to do logic)

Fluidic logic was used commercially a long time ago and still probably has uses (e.g. where radiation would damage silicon).

If you could build a fluidic computer which could do more than a few dozen instructions per second then strangely enough you may be able to sell it in Europe. Since it is not electronic, adding it to a piece of mechanical machinery does not condemn the whole contraption to RoHS, WEEE, EMC and various other bribe solicitation schemes. This is a real problem for the manufacturers of gas cookers at the moment (look on the list of proposed RoHS exemptions.) As far as I remember, they use some lead in the aluminium alloy of the gas valves or nozzles or something, and as soon as they add a clock or timer, the thing suddenly becomes subject to RoHS forcing a re-design of the gas handling parts, using (much more expensive) brass in place of the aluminium alloy. (As everyone knows, lead is only toxic when it has been used in proximity to electricity, that's why it's ok to put it on the roof to channel away all that acid rain to the downpipe.)

If you could make a nice little pneumatic PLC to control machinery and appliances, you might just sell some. You could even carve it out of a block of solid lead!

Chris

A quick update to this...

I just received a batch of ECB backplane PCBs so if anyone would like to build their own Z80 CP/M SBC home brew computer with an ECB backplane, please contact me offline. Thanks!

Andrew Lynch

PS, more peripherals are in the works pending completion.