Archive for the ‘Latest news’ Category

Fast serial port branch

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

Hi all,

Happy new year 2009. A new branch has appeared on the repository : the fast i/o 3. This is a direct hardware implementation of OS_SI. It not buffered like the previous and respect the whole API. It seems to work reliabily with hardware handshaking. Timeout works and escape key detection too. Software handshaking (Xon/Xoff) and parity will be implemented in a future version. Any feedback is of course welcome, specialy at high speed (19200 and 38400 baud) which should (now) work.

Welcome

Friday, January 18th, 2008

Happy new year to all the Z88 veterans!
I just wanted to post my latest Z88 hardware try which is unfortunately a failure… I presume you dont know what is the UKC84/00A.

It is a Z80 compatible clone but running froma 16 bits RISC architecture. It is 20% faster than a classic Z8400 (the CMOS Z80) at the same speed. It is up to 30% is the special KC80 which seems to be compatible with the Z88 because it works only in IM1 (interruption mode 1, the Z88 mode). So, I unsoldier the Z80 from the motherboard and fitted the UKC84/00A in a socket. Unfortunately, the Z88 never wanted to boot both in Z80 and KC80 mode. I presume it is a problem of timings… Lots of japanes people have replaced their MSX processor with this one and observed efficient overclocking.