Zilog 380
The new millenium is coming
We got the impossible, now we have ready the first 32 bits Z380 board for MSX of the world, this August will be a part of the MSX history thanks to this great new, this is not like other Z380 projects, this is not a simple piggy back over the old Z80, this is a real 32 bits new system, 100% MSX, now we use all the Z380 features thanks to the new Z380 board. The future hearth of our MSX and the future MSX generations.
Last 11th of August when the eclipse and the worldīs ending was coming I decided to go to Padialīs home and I got surprised when I could see for first time a Z380 board connected in a Philips 8235 till now I only could see the Z380 between testers and connected to a PC test board. But this day everything was different because I could see the Z380 connected to a simple 8 bits slot and I could comprobate that it works as a powerful coproccesor. Padial show me the 32 bits capacity of the Z380 and I could check that the 8235 was a new 32 bits computer thanks to a new magical chip of Zilog called Z380.
Padial demonstrated me how the Z380 works, the adressing modes and the full compatibility with the Z80 proccesor. Z380 it is a "de luxe" chip, it is great to have this proccesor in our system, in a little size the Z380 offer a powerful speed comparable to a Pentium, without hot and very stable.
As you can see in the picture, the Z380 board is really beautiful and it has a SIMMs bank where you can plug SIMMs from 1 to 128 Mb (72c). The Z380 proccesor now accept EDO memories, the DIMM memories are not supported, see the three chips at the righ of the board, they were the problematic chips because they had a factory error.The Z380 is at the top, close to the dark red eprom.
The step to the future is done, in the next MSX fair we will present the Z380 board for first time and we hope to go to Tilburg next year, if it is possible, we will make some programmers Z380 boards with a great discount, we want to give a solid basis to the Z380 board and a keyword for the future of our system, the MSX of the new millenium.
Before ending a Z380 characteristics resume:
4 Gb of linear adressing.
18 Mhz speed (there will be a 100 Mhz version)
32 bits internal, 16 bits bus.
New instructions like conditional jumps, division...
Full compatible with Z80.