Comment on Zilog Calls Time on the Venerable Z80, Discontinues the Standalone Z84C00 CPU Family

homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• Thorry84@feddit.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Don’t forget about the MSX and the Gameboy (although that used a custom modified version of the Z80, but very similar)

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  • palordrolap@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The Z80 was a secondary processor in the C128. The main processor was the rival MOS8502, a descendent of the Z80's main rival, the MOS6502.

    The Z80 was included so that the C128 would be able to run CP/M software which was considered to be an important inclusion at the time.

    CP/M was supplanted by the ubiquity of IBM-compatible PCs and MS-DOS, which is a shame considering that MS-DOS started life as something deliberately quick and dirty based heavily on the syntax of CP/M. The dir command? That's from CP/M. The peculiar *.* wildcard syntax? Also from CP/M.

    Now, it's true that CP/M took a lot of inspiration from Unix and similar, but it wasn't trying to replace Unix. MS-DOS though? Arguably, it came to fill the same niche that CP/M already occupied. Except everyone was then on x86, not Z80.

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