Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Don Y Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design Subject: Re: Zilog stopping Z80 production Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2024 13:40:13 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 29 Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2024 22:40:22 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="59f61a4c87b02571412a42185e0d7e60"; logging-data="1931622"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+I55avWveMFaZV3FSoa+Ch" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/102.2.2 Cancel-Lock: sha1:oN9qj4sQJad3l1Wzg9ZwOturX4g= Content-Language: en-US In-Reply-To: Bytes: 2258 On 4/23/2024 6:09 AM, Peter Heitzer wrote: > The most difficult part is to put all into a 40 pin 300 mil package as > a drop in replacement. The most common Zx80's were 600mil. > If all I wanted was a machinery to run Z80 software > my choice wuild be a RP2040 board. > https://github.com/djbottrill/rp2040_z80_emulator You can likely emulate a Zx80's *software* faster than even the fastest devices, nowadays. But, for legacy software, you would have problems supporting the I/Os -- even if you virtualized them. One amusing anecdote re: MAME's nominal emulation of older games is how they can't[1] ensure the same timing relationships that were guaranteed in the original hardware. Getting the functionality correct but the timing "off" can have visual consequences. Part of that is a consequence of trying to get more performance out of the hardware than was nominally available. And, part was a lack of concern for "portability" (of which emulation is probably the epitome). [1] You could, of course, do so -- by dramatically increasing the complexity of the emulator!