Comment by apple4ever

8 years ago

I love that there is a group of people who still love the Z80!

Such a beautifully designed chip.

I was doing a little bit of Z80 work a while back, but I didn't particularly seem to appreciate its design (compared to say MIPS). Why do you think it's beautifully designed?

  • Admittedly, I do not have a lot of experience in other CPUs, but to me its just the way its designed. A simple syntax for assembly and the way it maps to byte values is clever. It doesn't require a lot of work to make things happen, ie "hacks" for interacting with IO. I also like how there is a separate IO bus from the data bus, which means IO doesn't take up memory. The register naming convention is simple, and having "alternate" registers is cool.

    Just seems simple and cool to me.