Gene writes: > That, IIRC was a new, super shiny, thing from zilog. No experience > with it, but if it was as unreliable as the z-80, was, I'm not sorry > it failed. The Z-80 had an instruction that swapped the > foregrund/background register sets. But it only worked on odd hours > of the day. And had no way of testing if the command had worked > without sacrificing 1 of the three registers. in both sets.
I used lots of Z80s and had good luck with them. I wrote an OS for my first Z80 homebrew computer that used register swapping to service interrupts and print in the background. It worked quite well. Most applications used only one register set, though, due to the need for Intel compatibility. My first Unix machine was an Onyx with a Z8000 running System III. The 8 inch disk got flaky after about ten years but other than that it was quite reliable. Odd architecture, though. I would have preferred 68k. -- John Hasler jhas...@newsguy.com Elmwood, WI USA
