Running a Z8-02 MPD on a breadboard

Some time back I acquired a Zilog Z8-02 MPD. This is the bond-out version of the Z8 microcontroller. The normal Z8 contained 2K of internal masked ROM and was packaged in a 40-pin DIP. The Z8-02 had no masked ROM (or possibly the masked ROM was disabled), and the address and data buses for the internal ROM, along with a few clock and control signals, were brought out to the extra 24 pins of a 64-contact ceramic leadless quad-in-line package (QUIP). Typically for emulation it would be used with a 2716 EPROM, or 2KB of RAM with address and data multiplexers for a fancy emulator. The ceramic leadless QUIP package was used for bondouts from Intel and Zilog, and later, for the Intel iAPX 432 components. Later it was replaced with the square JEDEC ceramic leadless package. Note that the ceramic leadless QUIP is unrelated to the more common leaded QUIP packages used by NEC, Rockwell, and Motorola. Unlike many modern leadless packages (DFN, QFN, BGA), the ceramic leadless QUIP is intended for use only in a socket, which was made by 3M. Today the sockets are even harder to find than the chips that require them. I designed a simple QUIP adapter for use with solderless breadboards, and wired up a Z8-02 MPD along with a 28C16 EEPROM for the program memory, a 62256 static RAM, address latch, and decoder. I programmed a copy of the Z8671 Basic/Debug interpreter into the EEPROM. To my amazement, it worked the first time. Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/22368471 at N04/sets/72157652653732622 The last "photo" is a screen shot of Kermit talking to it. I've entered an inefficient program to search for primes, and the screen shot shows it being LISTed, RUN, and then stopped after a few primes have been found. Not shown, I printed the value of some of the interpreter's globals, to verify that the static RAM was recognized properly. (The interpreter can actually provide minimal functionality with no external memory!) While Zilog only claimed it to be a subset of Dartmouth BASIC, the interpreter does not include the FOR statement, so IMNSHO it barely even qualifies to be considered a "tiny BASIC". The competing National Semiconductor INS8073 had 2.5K of ROM, and Intel 8052AH-BASIC had 8K, so they supported more features of BASIC.