Instead of trying to build it to fit in an Altoids can as originally designed by Lee, I decided to make the build a little bit more versatile for future expansion and used Arduino-style connectors to enable stacking additional cards below the CPU board.
It's a good thing I did as Lee is working on a Serial/RAM/SD-card board that will allow this little gem to run CP/M!
Along the way, I also discovered the joys of FTDI USB-Serial mini-boards. Yay! No more RS232 voltage converters! And painless serial console from my Mac.
My other touches of "customizations" include IC sockets for the TTL chips and a barrel socket for an external 5V power supply for when the FTDI is not being used. When the FTDI board is used, a short across pins 19 and 20 of J2 connects VIN to VCC, thus powering the whole setup from the USB port of the Mac.
Nice build. Good idea to go below the CPU card, I did not think of that, it might have let me keep the front panel as a debugging aid in the early days of the olduino/Z.
ReplyDeleteI like the Z80 membership card too. A few days ago, I soldered the SIO card, CP/M works well from the SD card. Great work from Lee and Josh.
ReplyDeleteIs the serial/RAM/SD-card board already available?
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ReplyDeleteDarn... I wrote "Yes, the Z80-SIO card is available. See..." and the URL. It didn't post. I'll try it this way. See sunrise-ev dot com slash z80 dot htm # z80-sio
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