Nathan's Z80 Project Mark 2: CPU Supervisor
Last updated: 24 Aug 2009 - 22:43
A large amount of the usual faff found in Z80 systems has been avoided in my design by including a PIC next to the Z80. This PIC replaces the reset timing circuit, the clock generation circuit for the Z80 and the need for ROM and associated decode logic to select the ROM chip. In addition it provides mass storage (via an SD card interface) and a useful in-circuit emulator for debugging.
All this is achieved by giving the PIC ultimate control over the Z80 by controlling the reset and clock lines, as well as the DMA control lines. The PIC can then control the system while the Z80 is in reset or DMA mode. Since PICs can turn their pins from input to output, several pins function both as input and output depending on what the PIC is doing (e.g. RD, WR, WAIT etc.) Others have been added specifically for debugging or booting (e.g. MREQ, IORQ, and address pins). To be able to drive the whole 16bit address bus the PIC uses a latch for the high 8bits. The lower 8 are driven directly b
Nathan's Z80 Project Mark 2: Debug Ports
Last updated: 24 Aug 2009 - 20:19
One thing I've learned about Z80 systems is that they are quite hard to debug, at least compared to modern micro-controller based things that you can always get to flash an LED at you or dump data through a serial port. To help with the inevitable debugging that this system is going to require I built in a couple of debug features. One is that I connected more control lines that were absolutely necessary to the PIC. These extra control lines coupled with its design requirement to be able to take over the whole data and address bus mean that it can run as an in-circuit emulator, with access to all the RAM and IO devices in the system. To make this access useful to me, I added a 4 pin port compatible with the Parallax PropPlug, a simple USB to TTL serial adapter. Basically it's like any serial to USB adapter but with only the receive and transmit lines, and without all the annoying RS232 signal level issues. So the plan is to write a basic debug mode for the PIC that accepts comman
Nathan's Z80 Project Mark 2: Real Time Clock
Last updated: 20 Aug 2009 - 22:41
The only additional feature I actually included in this project was the Real Time Clock (RTC) chip. I had got hold of this chip a couple of years back and was planning on using it in the Z80 Project (Mark 1). It was the last one Farnell had in stock and was then discontinued by them, I believed at the time that they were generally going out of production but I found this evening that they are still an "active" product according to Texas Instruments. There seems to be stock available from Digi-Key.
The chip provides a real time clock (i.e. counts seconds, minutes, hours etc.) as well as a number of additional functions with its built in CPU supervisor. There is a watchdog timer as well as brown-out detection and NVSRAM control. I'm only using it as a clock and counter though. There are only three components to fit to make it work which is one of the great advantages of this elderly technology, the chip itself which shares m
Nathan's Z80 Project Mark 2: UART
Last updated: 20 Aug 2009 - 19:44
I chose to keep the peripheral count low on this system, this was for several reasons;
- Less to debug
- Less to build (so faster, very important to stop me adding "features"!)
- Provides a better system for experimenting (more IO address free)
The basic requirement was for some sort of output display and some sort of alpha-numeric input. So the simplest solution I could think of was a UART, attached to something with a screen and keyboard running a serial terminal. I looked at using the PIC already in the system as a UART as well, but decided that it would be better used as a fast DMA controller with all its pins allocated to that. I had a 6402 UART chip of a similar vintage to the Z80 CPU lying around so that became the core of the UART peripheral.
There are three peripheral chips in the UART system, a 74HC4060 clock/divider chip, a MAX232 RS232 level shifter and a 74LS541, an 8 bit tri-state buffer. The clock/divider chip provides an independent clock source for the U
