After 48 years, Zilog is killing the classic standalone Z80 microprocessor chip

Z80 powered game consoles, ZX Spectrum, Pac-Man, and a 1970s PC standard based on CP/M.

8 comments

Shout out to the Ti-8X users and anyone who remembers zshell.

I doubt this announcement is going to affect the calculators, but it's amazing to see how many things still run off this technology.
- TI uses an outside vendor, SK Hynix I believe, for their calculator chips. Z80 isn't going anywhere.
  
  It is worrying though since I follow Collapse OS and a lot of its design aims at the Z80 due to its abundance. Killing off the DIP Z80 gives me some pause.
  
  Wow, collapse OS is quite the rabbit hole. Makes me think of the bootstrapping work described in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children_of_the_Sky
Think of all the arcade boards!!!!
- Would it be possible to come up with an FPGA solution for things like that?
  
  I'm certain the FPGA implementations exist going off MiSTer.
Anyone in need of a DIP socket compatible breakout module with a microcontroller emulating a Z80? That doesn't sound too hard to design and build.

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