The inkjet commiseration is welcomed and appreciated 😄

How did you manage to miss the zx81 off the list of z80 based machines.. Clive sinclair would be turning in his grave! Thanks guys for another great show.

@TheFoggyjones

17 күн бұрын

He'd be turning so much if you attached a dynamo to him he'd be capable of powering a small 3 wheel electric car.

@dh2032

14 күн бұрын

zx80 too

Side bar - "Grundy" where I grew up was just underpants. "Grufty grundies" meant someone had dirty underwear, usually implying a containment failure.

Really nice to hear the positive comments regarding those buying vinyl without owning a turntable, and not ridiculing the idea. You absolutely get it 🙏 Great episode!

Guys, guys. The z80 lives on already. Time to review the eZ80 - which sounds way cooler if you call it the easy80 - as used in the Agon Light.

RIP Z80 - my first foray into machine language was on a Z80 (TRS-80 Model 1, Level 2). The assembler (loaded from cassette) took up almost all of the 16Kb that my machine had. 48 year's is a good run indeed.

The z80 processor was also used in the Harrier Jump Jet.

Z80 cards from multiple companies were among the most popular add-ons for the Apple II in the early 80s, so its impact was felt in the rival 6502 world as well

Heij! Thanks for the point out, my Voltcraft Digi-Scope Converter 500 uses a Z80. The Voltcraft is a box what turns Your simple, stupid oscilloscope into a smartie. The box was sold 1986 in Germany by Conrad Elektronik for around 600DM and was a steal at that. A similar functionality fitted scope was around 2000 and You could use any scope with an x/y input. I use it to see how many watts an amp puts out into 8ohms. It has limitations and every Fnirsi scope can outperform the Voltcraft but I like it. The box even has a Centronics connector for a FX80 mode printer so I bought an Epson dot matrix printer: Ta-Daah, I could check the output power and give You a paper with Your amp. You guys do a nice show, I enjoyed this one. I too am an old fart that can-not-let-go-of-his-old-stuff. I am not a hoarder! I am a curator, I take care of a growing museum and try to remember all the stories the things came with. Some would consider my flat a e-waste dump, I say I preserve history. I generally use old stuff. That (and my cats) de-celerate my life enough. And I DO NOT USE (a)social media. Screw that. This is enough for me.

I have been slapping assembly into a z80 for quite a few years, these chips are so ubiquitous that if a device is not running on an ARM processor these days then its likely a Zilog Z80 - so check your underwear ;) - Just a shout out for the CPC464/6128 - IMHO the logical extreme of a Z80 based computer and Locomotive Basic being one of the most under appreciated BASIC's of the era. Its always sad to see something that is almost as old I am become depreciated ( the humble Z80 ) but just putting it out there - Z180 ;) to Federico Faggin & Masatoshi Shima designers of the Z80 - 46 years is quite the run! Thanks for Week In Retro gentlemen

The Z80 can't die, it's been reproduced in FPGA form for a start. And it can run the big box adventure games Dave showed and my latest purchase 'Head Over Heels' for the Spectrum Next.

@dschoene57

18 күн бұрын

You can also scoop up a U880D from East Germany. which is a Z80 clone.

@JVHShack

18 күн бұрын

​@dschoene57 There's also the eZ80 CPU, which is binary compatible with the original Z80 and *still* being manufactured.

The Z80 was in the DEC Rainbow PC along with an 8088. It meant the DEC Rainbow could run 8 and 16 bit CPM as well as MSDOS. The DEC Rainbow was an attempt to compete with IBM PCs. I actually specified one for a project and DEC sent me a branded mug.

Ah, finally! Someone else who said "grundie!" We said that in my hometown in the U.S.

Dave: actually I think you 'l find that the Amiga never died and never will!!!11111 ;)

neil, i'm sure we're brothers or something, my fav printer is also the canon bj10ex.. i wish i'd never sold mine. it was great. however i sold it for a canon aculaser 2000.. which at the time cost just short of a grand. it's served me well for the past 25 years.. and is only now reaching the end of life.. i dare say with some new bits and bobs it would work flawlessly again, problem is.. those bits and bobs are very difficult to find and consequently very expensive.. i look back on my bj10ex with fond memories..

Keep up the great shows!

There are at least 20 Chinese Z-80 clones and they continue to find use as controller chips. I doubt the Zilog discontinuation will have any impact on the world, it simply didn't make sense for them to compete with Chinese vendors.

Believe it or not, my first printer was a clunky and noisy HP monochrome inkjet. It was back when printer connected by the parallel port. It lasted for years, easy to maintain, and ridiculously cheap once you drilled a hole in the ink cartridge to refill with third party inks. Then followed a couple of HP three in ones. Both wireless and USB. The first was pretty good, but after a few years the print quality died. I then got an HP Envy, which was a disaster, as this was the time that HP decided to wheel out their subscription overpriced ink service (printer ink is the most expensive commodity on Earth now), and started putting chips in the cartridges. It wasn't long before the printer was declaring brand new cartridges as empty. Thankfully this was still before HP started making printers that stop the scanner from working if there is no ink in the machine. I still have some use for it, but my printer now is a Brother laser printer. I'll never buy an inkjet again.

I still use a lot of physical media, I prefer to still listen to my music on CD, Cassette, Vinyl Record or even Mini Disc. I still play games on my retro machines from floppy, CD or tape (although, the latter, not as often). I still watch films on DVD/Blu-Ray or even, on the odd occasion, VHS. Old platforms have their limitations, and limitation breads creativity (I'm sure that's a quote from somewhere) Also, there was a lot of discussion of vinyl record prices ............... what about cassette tapes? I agree with all the modern distractions - there's a really good reason why I like these old formats and old pieces of technology.

Not to be the "actually..." guy, but I think you'll agree that Federico Faggin deserves a proper pronunciation of his surname. It's "fudge-in". It was funny, though, to see Dave hesitate for the word he was about to pronounce 😁

@ThisWeekinRetro

13 күн бұрын

You can almost hear his brain scream "oh heck!"

No 'Ultima' reference this week? Unless I missed it?

@ThisWeekinRetro

18 күн бұрын

No, none this week. Means I don't have to keep a tally....which is nice. - Dunc

@Lordborak316

15 күн бұрын

It was in the patreon questions 😂

Zeds dead is from pulp fiction I thought

The z80 was the little CPU that could! I've bought and am awaiting delivery of five 20 MHz z80s, just to have a few on my workbench in case I work on something that needs one. One of my favorite retro boxen is the SC126 z180 single board computer. An 18.432 MHz clock, CP/M 3.0, 512 k of RAM, 512 k of ROM, and SD Cards for storage, all for under 100 USD for the fastest, most powerful CP/M system I've ever used. I will surely miss the z80 when it finally does vanish from the scene (if I live that long!). Physical media is not about nostalgia -- it's about actually owning something that a game company or console maker can't yoink from you the way so many have done with DLC lately. I have _never_ been able to afford "cutting edge" computer hardware, so I became adept at refurbishing off-lease Engineering Workstations to get the best bang for the buck. As for all this inkjet hatred: my worst printer was a THERMAL printer. My favorite inkjet so far has been an Epson Stylus C62. HP and so many others these days give away their printers to get you hooked on expensive inks. That's just wrong.

@absalomdraconis

Күн бұрын

I'd suggest adding some 8085s and their custom EPROM and RAM to your Z80 stock: I looked them up last year, and decided that they're almost perfect channel controllers for a Z80 CPU. Have them handle the more miserable work (e.g. BitBlit, or drawing a circle, or managing a floppy drive) while the Z80 does the real processing.

In the us the application of the explicit lyrics warning label is a voluntary practice.

I hope C128s aren't cannibalized for Z80s. Particularly eBay/etc. I've never tried, but I think it'd boot without one, so it may be yet another thing you have to confirm before bidding...

@davidspencer7254

16 күн бұрын

Best bit of the C128

The Z80 is also in the Sega Megadrive (along with the 68K of course). Apparently something to do with audio according to the interwebs. And possibly to do with Master System compatibility? As the Master System also, yes, uses the Z80. (sorry if you did mention these and I missed it). I must confess, as soon as you started this story I looked up availability and price. I'll be rich I tell you! RICH! Mwaahahahahaha

@ThisWeekinRetro

13 күн бұрын

Hi Chris!!

@005AGIMA

13 күн бұрын

@@ThisWeekinRetro Hey Duncan, Dave, and/or Neil. 😁. I'm guessing Duncan.

Ironically, I'd say it's better to reproduce the 8085 and standard interface chips for it and the Z80 than the Z80 itself, as those are likely to be (sometimes much) rarer than the Z80 itself. As for why specifically the 8085, it was Intel's follow-on to the 8080, mostly compatible with it, and ironically was more of a microcontroller than the Z80, so for a "high performance" new-design Z80 system you would realistically want the 8085 as a channel-controller (essentially the truely defining feature of a mainframe). Particularly since the 8085 itself had _built-in_ serial TxD & RxD, and between two of it's support chips you get a ROM, a RAM, a timer, some other such peripheral that I forget the nature of, and 20-something GPIO pins, so with a smidge of address decode and tristate buffers you get an almost perfect channel controller for a Z80 computer that you could pretty easily fit on something the side of a credit card. That in turn leaves your Z80 (or eZ80, or Z800, or ...) for heavier processing where they fit better than the 8085. Unfortunately, the 8085 didn't sell all that well, so there aren't that many of them.

@absalomdraconis

Күн бұрын

If anyone actually wants to try their hand at a 8085 board for a Z80 system, I'd suggest a VGA/DVI graphics card with it's configuration automatically adjusted to the info submitted by the screen itself. The Z80 _could_ do that itself, but there's no particular reason to slow down the Z80 with that, and lets extra cycles of the 8085 emulate at least basic VGA support functions. You could even hang mouse & keyboard off of it.

Isn't buying the vinyl but listening via streaming the same as buying old original boxed games but playing off sd card?

'Grundies' was another word for undercrackers. Underpants. Usually, scruffy ones u saw a kid wearing in PE at School. As in, "AArrgghh, look at his Grundies!"

is the explicit stickers a US thing or did it happen in the UK? we got them in Denmark, but no limitation on who could buy them.

@ThisWeekinRetro

18 күн бұрын

Yes have them in the UK.

The only printer I use now is a Samsung laser printer. I can leave it 6 months and it just works

an ICE40 FPGA is cheap, the same price as a Z80. it has an open source tool chain and in the 8k version you probably can fit in a Z80 and a 6502/65816 and a 16-bit MSP430 core and a dram controller and CPU bus controller to have a universal powerful retro CPU that you could slap in a C64, C128, atari 7800,....., sinclair, .... and have extra memory with an added dram.

I go onto Amazon and see at least ten different manufacturers of Z-80 and Z-80A, most of them Chinese, in either 28 or 40 pin DIP packages, from $5-25, seems well, alive, and plenty enough available to me, anything but dead.

When I worked on IBM minis in the early 1980s I found the green screens gave me headaches. I bought a 3rd part amber screen and used amber until we eventually switched to colour monitors several years later.

The extra for "a vinyl" is a stupidity tax and record companies are laughing all the way to the bank.

@nickwallette6201

15 күн бұрын

Go watch one of the videos on the -- what is it now, one? -- company left that produces the blanks, and the handful of engineers left that master to vinyl at Abbey Road Studios. Not to even mention the actual per-disc manufacturing process, which requires monitoring every so many for stamp quality, and replacing the master when they begin to degrade. It's a long, labor-intensive process that is nowhere near as easy or automatable as CD or even tape. The former, which, can even withstand a higher tolerance of manufacturing slop, because as long as the player can decode it (with error correction, mind), it's good enough. While defects in vinyl pressing are directly translated to audible defects. So yes. It costs more. It isn't out-of-line to say there's a little extra tucked in there because, if you're buying this, you're signalling that lowest price isn't your driving concern. But it's also legitimately considerably more expensive to produce, manufacture, and distribute -- and that is reflected in the cost of the end product.

z80 ftw plus suitable acronyms with the repair trial. slam the brakes. I'm your space in-vader.

The explicit lyrics sticker only applies to "evil" genres like rap and heavy metal.

To slow down, I use my time dilation machine. When I go into the chamber, everything speeds up around me. To cut a long story short, I’m from a parallel universe. When I was zapped by the dark emperor, your technology was far behind ours. I managed to construct my machine despite the technological drawbacks, and have been living in your 2024 for a few months. It’s very similar to our 1903.

Grundys wher e pants im my town of dover...just saying.

The beige box PC compatible is the most uncool computer by a long way. Plus those gave birth to RGB gamer monstrosities. Nah. Ugly all the way and no character or brand individuality.

Can we please stop calling it a "Zedd 80"? It's an American CPU - We don't say "Zedd Zedd Top", do we? While The Sinclair ZX Spectrum IS a British computer and therefore rightfully should be pronounced "Zedd X Spectrum", Zilog is in California, and therefore Z80 should be pronounced "Zee 80". It doesn't matter where YOU are from - pronounce it based on where IT is from. "Zee Zee Top". "Zee 80". "Zedd X Spectrum".

@ytthrowaway4584

18 күн бұрын

Plenty of Americans mispronounce ZX Spectrum. 🤷

@ScandalUK

18 күн бұрын

I would have no idea what you're talking about, compared to my instant recognition of Zed80

@TaswcmT

18 күн бұрын

​@@ytthrowaway4584 Exactly - when that is the wrong pronounciation, just as wrong is "Zedd 80".

@p_mouse8676

18 күн бұрын

Well in that case all English speakers mispronounce "van Gogh". Which is rather pronounced as Gog instead of Goh. It doesn't matter where you're from, pronounce it based where IT (or HE) is from.

@velimir_ikalovic

18 күн бұрын

Where I am from, it is Z (just lone "z" without any vovels or other addons). Thank you mr. Karadžić for creating perfect writing and perfect language.

The newer ‘e’ variant of the Z80 is still being produced. It is just the older package versions that are being retired. We will be fine.