64bit data 128Bit address...Re: Building a Z-80 (64bit!!!)

First of all, thanks Allison for bring up the technical limitations. Keep them comming. As for a 64Bit data bus, there is no reason for a 64bit instruction but, but with 64bits of data, you can do a hell-of-alot with video and signal synthesis (i.e. sound). Now Hans said: It is good design in my opinion to have your address bus twice as wide as your data bus. If you keep thinking like "you'll need $16,000,000,000.00 in memory for that address size" you'll do the same stupid thing as: Micro$oft ("640K is more than enough for anyone"), old programmers ("year 2000 is 20 years away. This stuff will be obsolete by then"), and let us not forget Intel with their screwy memory addressing schemes on their pre-X386s. Think ahead! It wouldn't cost that much more or requrie much more effort to add a few bits to the address bus. Wow, I didn't intend for that to sound as sarcastic... No offence intended Hans. As for the suggestion of using a DEC alpha to emulate a Z-80... I thought about it but, those darned Alphas are way too expensive for us hobbist. Tell me more... what are Verilog, Xilinx or Altera? Anyone know if Zilog is going to beef up the Zx80 line???? Arfon "Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." -- Rich Cook