new Z180 based SBC beta testing

new Z180 based SBC beta testing Michael Kerpan madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 9:34 PM, Randy Dawson <rdawson16 at hotmail.com <http://www.classiccmp.org/mailman/listinfo/cctalk> > wrote: 'University Board' trainer, a video card that plugged on top from Eyring Research I suspect that TMS9918s have to be sourced from dead MSX-1s or 99/4s. BTW, does anybody know if the Yamaha 9938/58 enhanced clones were pin-compatible? The extra colors and hardware acceleration might be nice to have if they'd fit... Mike -----REPLY----- Hi! The TMS9918A and AY-3-8910 are both optional components on the N8. They are both available through multiple vendors and consistently on eBay. They are relatively common and low cost if you look around a bit. The initial build and test team mostly used the bare Z8S180 CPU with its dual serial ports for debugging the boot ROM and CP/M. However, adding the video and audio are very handy debugging tools so I would not discount their usefulness. The V9935/V9958 are not pin compatible but are software backward compatible. They use the Shrink DIP-64 so they are about the same physical size but more complex to trace route. I won't consider upgrading the N8 to use the V9938 or V9958 until after our N8VEM S-100 VDP board comes out based on the V9938/V9958 and verifies the design. The separate N8 design is too far along for such a radical change and the TMS9918A is sufficient for usable NTSC composite video comparable to Commodore 64, Apple II, Atari 800, Jupiter ACE, Timex/Sinclair 1000, etc. Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch