[Smbakeryt] wishes your lend a hand. He purchased a 1984-vintage Z8000 coprocessor card for the PC, however the instrument is lacking in motion. It seems that, the co-processor — known as a Trump Card — seemed in Byte mag courtesy of the well-known [Steve Ciarcia]. The schematics had been revealed, and in the event you despatched [Steve] evidence that you simply constructed it, he’d ship you the instrument. The product was once later commercialized, however no person turns out to have the instrument, so [Smbakeryt] is looking for it.
The board itself was once lovely superb for its day. It added a 16-bit Zilog Z8000 CPU with 512 Okay of RAM. Giant iron for 1984 and a excellent bit extra efficiency than a inventory IBM PC of the generation.
We omit the times when laptop equipment got here with large binders of documentation. At the moment, you might be much more likely to get a decal with a URL. The Z8000 was once a pleasing processor and may emulate the Z80, but it surely by no means become massively well-liked. Along with Zilog’s Device 8000, the CPU discovered its means into some Unix computer systems together with the Onyx C8002 and several other Olivetti computer systems. Commodore deliberate to make use of the CPU in a canceled undertaking. The Z8000 was once well-known for now not the usage of microcode and, thus, it have compatibility on a moderately small die with 17,500 transistors (in comparison to the 8086’s 29,000 transistors).
We are hoping somebody can lend a hand out with the instrument. If you need your personal Z8000 machine, you could be at an advantage with Clover. Or, stick to a Z80 at the reasonable.