Running a Z8-02 MPD on a breadboard

[Sean Caron]

Cool! I love doing SBCs ... I did a 6502 last summer, and I've got a
TMS9995 on the bench hopefully I can finish this summer. Neat package on
that Z8-02 ... never seen that before.

Best,

Sean


On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 3:41 AM, Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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@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.
>