More thoughts on building a Z-80 (64bit!!!)

Zworld makes a bunch of neat Z180 (Z80 + MMU & timers) boards. They are laden with i/o and features. One of them is extra tiny. They have a PC/104 based board that I successfully got working with a PC/104-based VGA card. Their dev tools are weird and overpriced but easy to work with. http://www.zworld.com People still use what are basically Z80s for various things including I think Nintendo Gameboy and the Starfix/Motorola REX PIM (PDA). There's also Zilog and Hitachi, who make the Z180 with eval boards and such http://www.zilog.com Z80, 8051 and other 8-bit cores are pretty accessible in Verilog if you contact the right companies and can throw a good sales pitch. <Dislaimer- crazy idea> Doing a virtual Trs-80 could be pretty fun on a modern Z180 board would be a lot of fun since you could make it basically fit in your hand and connect to either an LCD or a VGA monitor. <End of Disclaimer> The Z80 consists of very few gates, suck little power and is perfect for those mass-market low-cost devices that Americans refuse to make. It's a good "high-performance processor" for integrating into an ASIC which makes it perfect for lots small, hand-held devices. Thomas