I still have mine...
I bet you don't use it much 
Rob
I bet you don't use it much smiley
No not much. lol.
Tom...
Z80s as microcontrollers now exist, if that matters to you. Zilog makes "eZ80", Z8 "Neo", and "Z16" (16 bit architecture) as well as 8051 microcontrollers. You may be able to sample them. They also provide a free compiler and a very cheap programmer.
Compiler/IDE: Search for "ZDS II – eZ80Acclaim! version 5.2.1 with RZK and TCP/IP Object Code" on Google (it's at the Zilog Store but there is no direct link).
I was able to get simple projects running with the Z8 Encore, eZ80, and the Z16 microcontrollers using the linked programmer and the free software.
Hi bozgrul35 ,
The Z80 I remember that, did a lot of work on that, in fact learnt most of my stuff on it back in the 80's.
Take a look here: http://melsaunders.x10.bz/
Regards
Mel.
Love that stuff Mel, do you still use it?
Last I looked (maybe a year ago) you could still buy all the Z80 chips, SIO, PIO, CTC, etc etc. Over that period I have designed several modern boards with LPCs/SAMs etc but they all get too complicated for a one-man band to develop and produce in a reasonable time frame, and of course they are out of date two weeks later and also there are so many great 32-bit boards around now for about $1.50 I see little point in producing yet another one.
So, maybe the answer is to go retro, after all there won't be any competition
A Z80 board with an AVR co-processor that acts as an EPROM emulator would be a simple and fun project, but the question is what the heck would you do with it? Once you get it working and flashing a few LEDs what's next?
If I could think of an answer it might be worth doing.
@Joe, that $29 dev kit is "Z8 Encore! XP F08xA Series Dev Kit" but lower down it also says "For Use With/Related Products Z8 Encore!®, Z8 Encore! XP®, eZ80Acclaim!®, ZNEO™ Dev Boards" so I guess that's the compiler/assembler one could use for the Z80.
Is that correct?
So for the Z80 you would not use the hardware in that kit, just the IDE/compiler?
Rob
Interesting using C on a Z80, twas all ASM in my Z80 days.
So you are using the flash-based units. If one was to go retro and use an standard Z80 you'd ditch the hardware and use the compiler/IDE to get a HEX file, then get that into an EPROM.
Why did you do these? Was there a need to evaluate the Zilog products? Miss the old days?
Rob
Graynomad:
Interesting using C on a Z80, twas all ASM in my Z80 days.So you are using the flash-based units. If one was to go retro and use an standard Z80 you'd ditch the hardware and use the compiler/IDE to get a HEX file, then get that into an EPROM.
Why did you do these? Was there a need to evaluate the Zilog products? Miss the old days?
Rob
No need. I just wanted a new toy to play with. It doesn't matter if it isn't as shiny as some of the others. I have no anticipated applications for it and as far as 8-bits go. I do feel a lot more familiar with the AVR architecture.
Oh yes, I know that this post it's very old .... as I am.
At the speed of 1 or 2 MHz of clock for the CPU Z80, Arduino could became a kind of EPROM because when the CPU place the address, Arduino could put the "CODE" of this address lines and then wait for the Fetch. After this, Arduino can wait the next address, and behave as before.
It's a non sense task, but it can be interesting, because you could write a small program code in Arduino.
A strange idea.
As long as this thread has been resurrected from the dead, I'll point out this recent project that implements a Z80 system in 4 chips - the Z80 itself, a 64k RAM chip, an ATmega32a running Arduino SW that does the boot processing and all the I/O, and a 7400 as some higher-speed glue logic.
The ATmega32a is a 40-pin DIP, so it has enough signals to fully control nearly all of the Z80 signals, and can DMA to enough of the memory to load a bootloader, which can then load other SW, including CP/M.
It's got a bunch of clever design elements; IO reads and writes put the Z80 into wait states and wake up the AVR, which manipulates the bus and then lets the Z80 run again...
If you want to interface directly to an old microprocessor then the Parallel Propeller chip is a much
closer fit to what's needed, as it has lots of PLLs to generate clock signals, is fast enough, has cycle
perfect timing and 8 cores to parcel the work out to - but a standard Arduino with 8-bit processor
is going to struggle. You would need to underclock the Z80 by a fair bit I suspect, send it clock edges and
check for Z80 bus control pin changes and service then (memory read/write, refresh, I/O, halt), emulating
the RAM/ROM for the thing. To my mind that requires about 36 pins I think, so Uno and so on are out
without some clever interfacing circuitry for the busses