The Z80 is a legend, and even though it's not powerful by today's standards one of the things I think makes it great is it was a "standard". There's something very powerful about a platform that doesn't change.
I'm really hoping raspberry pis can fill the roll of a "standard computer". Currently, they have pretty rapidly changing CPUs, etc. I would like to see a pi that settles down as "The Pi" that doesn't change for decades. This would allow all kinds of software (and OSs) to be written for it that stands the test of time. Download a binary and it just works. No need for updates/changes etc.
rstuart4133 · 4h ago
> even though it's not powerful by today's standards
I'm sure if you used the right metric, it could look good. Perhaps MIPS/gate.
> The good thing is that, for hobbyists anyway, there are so many used and new-old-stock Z80s floating around that the immediate impact of this won't hit for a while. After that, there are plenty of soft core (fpga) Z80 clones, as well as emulators to run on modern microcontrollers. Zilog also has ISA compatible microcontrollers that can be retrofitted. It's unfortunate that the official Z80 is being retired, but the future of retro-computing is cycle-accurate FPGAs. [...]
I'm really hoping raspberry pis can fill the roll of a "standard computer". Currently, they have pretty rapidly changing CPUs, etc. I would like to see a pi that settles down as "The Pi" that doesn't change for decades. This would allow all kinds of software (and OSs) to be written for it that stands the test of time. Download a binary and it just works. No need for updates/changes etc.
I'm sure if you used the right metric, it could look good. Perhaps MIPS/gate.
Relevant first comment by nanolith:
> The good thing is that, for hobbyists anyway, there are so many used and new-old-stock Z80s floating around that the immediate impact of this won't hit for a while. After that, there are plenty of soft core (fpga) Z80 clones, as well as emulators to run on modern microcontrollers. Zilog also has ISA compatible microcontrollers that can be retrofitted. It's unfortunate that the official Z80 is being retired, but the future of retro-computing is cycle-accurate FPGAs. [...]