Hi,
although I don't remember the Z-80 being a clone
of the 8085
CPU like the author of that site claims. (or has my memory
gone faulty?)
Nope, I'm pretty sure you're right there.
As I remember it from back in the day, the design team at Intel who designed
the 8080 wanted to produce a "Super 8080" which put right some of it's
shortcomings (mainly the requirement for an external multi-phase clock
generator chip and external latch to produce a number of control signals),
but were refused by management types.
Said design team, allegedly, then left en-masse to set up Zilog; and
produced their "Super 8080" in the form of the Z80. Note that they also had
to come up with their own assembly language mnemonics as Intel had
copyrighted the 8080 mnemonics.
The brain dead morons who were left at Intel then produced the 8085, and
ultimately inflicted the mind-bogglingly prehistoric x86 architecture on an
unsuspecting world.... :-(
With the exception of the 8080 and i960, I firmly believe that Intel have
done more to hold back the development of the microprocessor than anyone
else!
TTFN - Pete.