This blog post describes the reZet80 DEV system.
First of all, reZet80 stands for "Reset me back to the 80s with the Z80".
The reZet80 DEV is a barebone (minimalistic) development system for the low-level Z80 retro enthusiast.
Its main use is programming in Assembler using the Z80 processor.
The system resembles the Z80 machines of the late 70s and early 80s.
But it is built from scratch and not a copy of any other Z80 system.
The reZet80 DEV builds the foundation for all my coming reZet80 projects.
It involves hardware and software development.
I plan to develop and build every single pcb trace and every single bit of machine code by myself from scratch.
Doing it yourself is believing (DIYIB)!
And: What you do yourself is what you get (WYDYIWYG)!
The reZet80 DEV includes a Z80 CPU, a motherboard, a power supply with on/off and reset switches, memory, I/O circuitry, a display, a keypad and of course the monitor software.
Pieces of hardware like LCD that were not available back then are also part of the system.
All peripherals will be connected directly to the Z80 and no other processor like for example AVR, PIC or ARM will be used, neither as a bootloader nor to attach peripherals to.
Two LCD displays are available: 16x1 and 20x4 characters.
To double the fun factor a real-time clock is included.
All we can do in the beginning is enter and display hexadecimal numbers but the full Z80 instruction set is ready to use.
The DEV will run my own monitor software.
This system will be enhanced on demand for convenience.
List of modules:
- Backplane
- Reset switch & power-on reset board
- Z80 CPU board
- 64 KiB ROM/RAM board
- I/O board
- LCD 16x1
- LCD 20x4
- Hexadecimal keypad (16 keys)
- RTC 72421
