{"id":1323,"date":"2019-12-10T11:50:23","date_gmt":"2019-12-10T09:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cornay.co.za\/wp\/?p=1323"},"modified":"2019-12-10T11:50:23","modified_gmt":"2019-12-10T09:50:23","slug":"laptop-like-its-1979-with-a-16-core-z80-on-an-fpga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cornay.co.za\/wp\/2019\/12\/10\/laptop-like-its-1979-with-a-16-core-z80-on-an-fpga\/","title":{"rendered":"Laptop Like It\u2019s 1979 with a 16-Core Z80 on an FPGA"},"content":{"rendered":"

When life hands you a ridiculously expensive and massively powerful FPGA dev board, your first reaction may not be to build a 16-core Z80 laptop with it<\/a>. If it’s not, perhaps you should examine your priorities, because that’s what [Chris Fenton] did, with the result being the wonderfully impractical “ZedRipper.”<\/p>\n

Our first impression is that we’ve got to start hanging around a better class of lab, because [Chris] came by this $6000 FPGA board<\/a> as the result of a lab cleanout; the best we ever scored was a few old Cat-5 cables and some power strips. The Stratix FPGA formed the heart of the design, surrounded by a few breakout boards for the 10.1″ VGA display and the keyboard, which was salvaged from an old PS\/2. The 16 Z80 cores running in the FPGA are connected by a ring-topology network, which [Chris] dubs the “Z-Ring”. One of the Z80 cores, the server core, runs CP\/M 2.2 and a file server called CP\/NET, while the other fifteen machines are clients that run CP\/NOS. A simple window manager shows 80 x 25 character terminal sessions for the server and any three of the clients at once, and the whole thing, including a LiPo battery pack, fits into a laser-cut plywood case. It’s retro, it’s modern, it’s overkill, and we absolutely love it.<\/p>\n

Reading over [Chris]’s build log puts us in the mood to break out our 2019 Superconference badge<\/a> and try spinning up a Z80 of our own. If you decide to hack the FPGA-est of conference badges, you might want to check out what [Sprite_TM] has to say about it<\/a>. After all, he designed it. And you’ll certainly want to look at some of the awesome badge hacks we saw at Supercon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thanks to [yNos] for the tip.<\/p>\n

source https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2019\/12\/10\/laptop-like-its-1979-with-a-16-core-z80-on-an-fpga\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When life hands you a ridiculously expensive and massively powerful FPGA dev board, your first reaction may not be to build a 16-core Z80 laptop with it. If it’s not, perhaps you should examine your priorities, because that’s what [Chris…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more Laptop Like It\u2019s 1979 with a 16-Core Z80 on an FPGA<\/span> ›<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

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