Ciarcia's Z80 and Z180 projects
Gregg C Levine
During the late eighties and possibly the early nineties, an
enterprising individual named Steve Ciarcia designed and built a pair
of systems.
One was a single board based Z80 system, and the other was a Z180
system. As Steve explained it in the issues of Byte Magazine that
described it, the Z180 originated with Hitachi as the HD64180 and
Zilog actually got permission to second source the thing as the Z180.
That system was essentially a full system. It was stuffed into a lunch
box of all things. The Z180 ran a version of CP/M updated to
accomodate the processor, because it used an updated release of the
command processor program.
Now the obvious, did anyone in the group actually build either one of
these? The SBC would have been described in a book he wrote, and the
box in a series of articles. I think it was eventually reprinted in a
book containing his series of articles.
---
Gregg drw...@att.net
Jeff Jonas
> an enterprising individual named Steve Ciarcia
> designed and built a pair of systems.
Steve Ciarcia's "Circuit Cellar" was his
"build the ___" column in Byte magazine.
Most of those projects were reprinted as books.
For many years, he's been publishing his own magazine
http://circuitcellar.com/
The kits and fully assembled projects were sold by Micromint.
They're still in business
http://micromint.com/
Here are pix of the MicroMint SB-180 in a "shoebox" case
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/mmint/index.htm
the specs
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/mmint/sb180.txt
>One was a single board based Z80 system, and the other was a Z180
>system. As Steve explained it in the issues of Byte Magazine that
>described it, the Z180 originated with Hitachi as the HD64180 and
>Zilog actually got permission to second source the thing as the Z180.
>That system was essentially a full system.
> It was stuffed into a lunch box of all things.
I bought a Muppets lunchbox wanting to duplicate that
but the thin 3.5" floppy drives were $$$ at the time.
I only had full height 5.25" floppy drives at the time.
Just the floppy drive filled the lunchbox!
> Now the obvious, did anyone in the group
> actually build either one of these?
No, I breadboarded my own Z80
(using a Timex/Sinclair 1000 for the front panel)
and then bought a Servo-8 Z80B CP/M single board computer
(what was my main system for several years).
I'm ashamed to admit this, but I have a SB-180 in storage.
I bought it used ("pre-owned")
but just never had a compelling need to use it.
The Linux PCs ate all my time and attention :-(
-- Jeffrey Jonas
CBFalconer
Yes. That was the event that resulted in upgrading DDTZ to handle
64180 (Z180) instructions. The result is available at:
<http://cbfalconer.home.att.net/download/cpm/>
--
[mail]: Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
[page]: <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>
Try the download section.
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **
Rolf Harrmann
On Sat, 10 May 2008 03:18:05 GMT, Gregg C Levine wrote:
>One was a single board based Z80 system, and the other was a Z180
>system. As Steve explained it in the issues of Byte Magazine that
>described it, the Z180 originated with Hitachi as the HD64180 and
>Zilog actually got permission to second source the thing as the Z180.
>That system was essentially a full system. It was stuffed into a lunch
>box of all things. The Z180 ran a version of CP/M updated to
>accomodate the processor, because it used an updated release of the
>command processor program.
Look this Sites search Nov 2007
http://retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/s_point.html#2007
My Homepage
http://www.hd64180-z180.de/hd64180.html
Rolf
BruceMcF
> The kits and fully assembled projects were sold by Micromint.
> They're still in business
> http://micromint.com/
... but they no longer are in *that* business. They sell a V25 RTC
(stackable) board, but I don't think they still have any Z80 or Z180
gear.
no....@no.uce.bellatlantic.net
>Hello!
>During the late eighties and possibly the early nineties, an
>enterprising individual named Steve Ciarcia designed and built a pair
>of systems.
Actually it was mid 80s, the September 1985 issue of Byte fo rthe
SB180.
>One was a single board based Z80 system, and the other was a Z180
>system. As Steve explained it in the issues of Byte Magazine that
>described it, the Z180 originated with Hitachi as the HD64180 and
>Zilog actually got permission to second source the thing as the Z180.
>That system was essentially a full system. It was stuffed into a lunch
>box of all things. The Z180 ran a version of CP/M updated to
>accomodate the processor, because it used an updated release of the
>command processor program.
>
>Now the obvious, did anyone in the group actually build either one of
>these? The SBC would have been described in a book he wrote, and the
>box in a series of articles. I think it was eventually reprinted in a
>book containing his series of articles.
>---
I have one of the latter, the SB180 and use it still. Mine unlike the
ariticle is in a IBM PS2 case (flat pizza box) with a 20mb MFM
drive and a Xybec SCSI/MFM bridge board. I also have the SCSI
adaptor. So the system has two 3.5" drives and a hard disk and
has Zrdos on it.
I also have the BYTE with the article and the lunch box with two 3.5
floppies was a but too crude/cute for me. It did prove a point as
system before then were big compared to that.
It would be tough to build one exactly now PC board aside. The FDC
used is scarcer then hensteeth and the SCSI chip (5380) was never that
common. Otherwise it's simple and very buildable.
Oh, I also have the latter board the BCC180 that was intended for
control apps.
Allison
>Gregg drw...@att.net
Dennis Boone
> system. As Steve explained it in the issues of Byte Magazine that
> described it, the Z180 originated with Hitachi as the HD64180 and
> Zilog actually got permission to second source the thing as the Z180.
> That system was essentially a full system. It was stuffed into a lunch
> box of all things. The Z180 ran a version of CP/M updated to
> accomodate the processor, because it used an updated release of the
> command processor program.
> Now the obvious, did anyone in the group actually build either one of
> these? The SBC would have been described in a book he wrote, and the
> box in a series of articles. I think it was eventually reprinted in a
> book containing his series of articles.
Yes, I still have my SB180, and it still works.
Anyone have the scsi or graphics options for this machine, and want to
part with it?
De
Gregg C Levine
wrote:
Hello!
Allison, you are amazing. I posted everything in that time period, and
the timeline idea, because naturally even my memory is going hazy.
This then becomes the obvious, can you post some place some good
photos of the whole thing?
Oh and I agree, both the FDC he chose, and now the SCSI controller,
the NCR5380, was never that common. The only place I ever saw it was
on cards for the SCSI drives, both tape and HD I have hanging around
here.
I believe Steve intended the SBC design as a simple developers idea.
The Z180 contraption was obviously intended as a real world applicant.
Building one or the other was never intended, I am only gathering data
for a project based on the Z80, but definitely not in that ballpark.
--
Gregg drw...@att.net
Jeff Jonas
> Anyone have the scsi or graphics options for this machine,
> and want to part with it?
Photos of the COMM-180-S SCSI daughterboard
shows a low parts count,
so it might be reasonable to reconstruct.
http://oemstrade.com/search/53C80 shows the 53c80
is still available from Mouser, Digi-Key and others.
google found
http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/1999-April/125080.html
for related discussions.
Drat. I was curious about using SCSI for inter-processor communications
and never knew (until now) that Ampro highly advocated such development
with their LittleBoard. I bought the wrong system.
glen herrmannsfeldt
(snip)
> It would be tough to build one exactly now PC board aside. The FDC
> used is scarcer then hensteeth and the SCSI chip (5380) was never that
> common. Otherwise it's simple and very buildable.
The 53C80 was used on many models of Macintosh.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=12315
Not only that, but as I understand it Apple directly drives
the SCSI bus without any buffers, unlike the chips were designed
to do.
I don't know how different the 5380 and 53C80 are.
-- glen
Jeff Jonas
>> The FDC used is scarcer then hensteeth
>> and the SCSI chip (5380) was never that common.
>The 53C80 was used on many models of Macintosh.
I have a box of ISA cards with the 53c80
and just a few TTL chips,
so the 5380 may not have been so "rare".
They were certainly obsoleted by high speed SCSI-2 chips.
I think the later ones integrated the PCI bus interface too.
<slight topic drift>
Talking of Apples and specific chips:
when I was writing Unix SDLC drivers for the 8530 chip,
I marveled that
- it was the main chip for AppleTalk:
http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.02/02.04/ATalkConnections/index.html
- it was essentially a Z80 SIO with a more general interface
- no chips have surpassed it for handling SDLC.
In fact, I'm frustrated that most microcontrollers have
dumber UARTS: little to no buffering/FIFO, no sync or SDLC.
</topic drift>
>http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=12315
>Not only that, but as I understand it Apple directly drives
>the SCSI bus without any buffers,
>unlike the chips were designed to do.
Sigh, that's a problem with being an early adopter/pioneer.
I bought the Servo-8 6MHz Z80B
instead of the extremely similar Ampro littleboard.
The Servo8's on-board SASI port is just buffers with
no SCSI chip to assist with bus timing or data transfer.
>I don't know how different the 5380 and 53C80 are.
I found no notes on that, but I found:
David Coburn's web site:
Micromint/CircuitCellar SB180 single board computer
http://scott.squidliver.net/sb180/sb180.html
***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
From: Paul R.Hunt
Subject: Re: The SB180FX, SCSI and DMA
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2003 19:51:09 +1000
>>I, along with a number of other folk, have long been frustrated trying
>>to get DMA data transfers to work with the NCR53C80 on the SB180FX.
>>I have _finally_ succeeded, having pinpointed the problem, which
>>turned out to be a trace routing error on the circuit board. My board
>>is identified thus: "SB180FX (C) MICROMINT INC. 1986 REV. 1.0"
Well, I have working SCSI code which will write and read a sector
using DMA. Next step is to graft the code in a CP/M 3 BIOS.
no....@no.uce.bellatlantic.net
<drw...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
I may be able to borrow a digi camera but I don't maintain a site,
that's part of my day job.
>Oh and I agree, both the FDC he chose, and now the SCSI controller,
>the NCR5380, was never that common. The only place I ever saw it was
>on cards for the SCSI drives, both tape and HD I have hanging around
>here.
At the time they were good choice for fewer parts and in teh case of
the SCSI part nearly the only game in town.
>I believe Steve intended the SBC design as a simple developers idea.
>The Z180 contraption was obviously intended as a real world applicant.
BCC180 was the industrial controller aimed at the embedded market and
I think still available or it was till very recently.
>Building one or the other was never intended, I am only gathering data
>for a project based on the Z80, but definitely not in that ballpark.
Check out yahoo groups Alpaca.. may eb what your thinking of.
Allison
no....@no.uce.bellatlantic.net
53C is for CMOS.
There are differences but for the most part they are sufficently the
same for a possible implmentation save for they are going
away fast. Both are very old parts.
Allison
>-- glen
no....@no.uce.bellatlantic.net
>> Yes, I still have my SB180, and it still works.
>> Anyone have the scsi or graphics options for this machine,
>> and want to part with it?
>
>Photos of the COMM-180-S SCSI daughterboard
>shows a low parts count,
>so it might be reasonable to reconstruct.
>http://oemstrade.com/search/53C80 shows the 53c80
>is still available from Mouser, Digi-Key and others.
You should go to those sites and try to actually buy them... most are
nonstock, mouse has some listed as obsolete in Pdip or PLC44
package and minimum tube buy (around 100$).
>google found
> http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/1999-April/125080.html
>for related discussions.
>Drat. I was curious about using SCSI for inter-processor communications
>and never knew (until now) that Ampro highly advocated such development
>with their LittleBoard. I bought the wrong system.
That was the case and Ampro was also one of the biggies that were the
advocates of the SCSI standard. Before that is was SASI and almost
but not quite the same.
What no one mentioned is the 53(c)80 series was a pain to program as
well. It had, uhm, quirks.
Allison
Bill
>Drat. I was curious about using SCSI for inter-processor communications
>and never knew (until now) that Ampro highly advocated such development
>with their LittleBoard. I bought the wrong system.
You might search for stuff from Emulux, while you're at it.
I first got into them for their tape interface boards, then later
for SCSI - ESDI controllers when some IBM drives came up
surplus really cheap. Was IBM the first to use ESDI? At least
twice as fast as anything I'd seen up to then.
Bill
BruceMcF
> BCC180 was the industrial controller aimed at the embedded market and
> I think still available or it was till very recently.
Ah! "BCC" (smacks hand on forehead) ... yes, Micromint still carries
those. At $500 the processor board is a bit pricey for my purposes,
but when I said they didn't have any Z80 systems, I missed one of
their product line pages.
no....@no.uce.bellatlantic.net
But it's still a cool board and with a CF or IDE hung off the
parallel ports you have a nice CP/M system that has more than
256K of ram (ramdisk or banked for CP/M3). Also theres room for
a mix of up to four 62256 rams (32K) and 27(c)256 eproms for
128K mix orf ram or eprom enough for a rom/ramdisk.
If you had the schematic it's buildable as the only hard part is the
PLCC 64180 as the rest of the parts are DIP TTL and no PALS/GALS.
Allison
BruceMcF
> On Sun, 11 May 2008 11:13:02 -0700 (PDT), BruceMcF
>
> >On May 11, 8:09 am, no.s...@no.uce.bellatlantic.net wrote:
> >> BCC180 was the industrial controller aimed at the embedded market and
> >> I think still available or it was till very recently.
> >Ah! "BCC" (smacks hand on forehead) ... yes, Micromint still carries
> >those. At $500 the processor board is a bit pricey for my purposes,
> >but when I said they didn't have any Z80 systems, I missed one of
> >their product line pages.
> >http://www.micromint.com/products/bcc180.htm
> But it's still a cool board and with a CF or IDE hung off the
> parallel ports you have a nice CP/M system that has more than
> 256K of ram (ramdisk or banked for CP/M3). Also theres room for
> a mix of up to four 62256 rams (32K) and 27(c)256 eproms for
> 128K mix orf ram or eprom enough for a rom/ramdisk.
Horses for courses of course ... its not along the lines of what I'd
want, that says nothing in particular at all about whether its a nice
board.
> If you had the schematic it's buildable as the only hard part is the
> PLCC 64180 as the rest of the parts are DIP TTL and no PALS/GALS.
I'd just like to be able to program PEEL's ... they are EEPROM based,
it seems that it should be possible to do that for a price point at
least a little less than $500.
Jeff Jonas
Oy, another project I never completed in time.
I have several SASI and SCSI "bridge" cards
for SMD, MFM, QIC, floppy.
In the late 80s, SCSI was gaining acceptance but many places
still had vested interests in running old hardware,
thus the "bridge" cards to convert old interfaces
(ST506, ST512, ESDI, SMD, QIC) to SCSI.
But most were before CCS (SCSI Common Command Set)
so the drivers were specific to each mfgr and card.
That was the main obstacle to my using them:
lack of drivers and the difficulty of writing my own.
Sun had "shoeboxes" of ESDI drives with the bridge card
so it worked with the newer SCSI interfaced systems.
AT&T similarly continued using/supporting ESDI drives
to the 3B2s. The floppy drive on some DEC systems
had a piggyback board, converting them to SCSI. (*1)
In the late 80s, I worked at Concurrent Computer Corp.
Their smaller system used a SCSI bridge card for
hard drives, floppy AND tape drive.
I was starting to learn the device drivers for that card
but had to jump ship before the facility was shut down.
I wish the Unix C source code was available,
for significant effort went into the drivers
to support the symmetric multiprocessor real-time OS.
>I first got into them for their tape interface boards,
>then later for SCSI - ESDI controllers
>when some IBM drives came up surplus really cheap.
Interesting: did you write the drivers yourself?
For what platform, what language?
Like you, I used to play the surplus market for computer parts,
but now the new parts are very cost effective.
-- Jeffrey Jonas
jeffj@panix(dot)com
The original Dr. JCL and Mr .hide
(*1) I find SCSI floppies appealing
since that allows >2 drives on a system, even externally.
That's why I still have some "floptical" drives:
they're natively SCSI and support standard floppy disks
as well as the 20 meg floptical disks.
Those drives are on "standby" since I now use USB flash drives.
And once I found affordable SCSI interfaced QIC tape drives,
I had no real reason to try using SCSI bridge cards.
Yes, I like the concept of up to 7 devices using LUNs
(1: QIC tape drive, 4: floppy, 2: hard drives)
under only one SCSI bus ID,
but I rarely have a SCSI bus that full anymore.
Cheap multichannel SCSI cards reduced the need for that anyway :-/
Herb Johnson
> I think the P112 shares the same fate. Awesome SBC but no longer
> available.
>
> http://frotz.homeunix.org/p112/
>
> Andrew Lynch
Dave Griffith announced in mid-April in comp.os.cpm, that he is
considering offering more p112 kits from parts on hand. Look for
"P112" to find his post. I suggest anyone interested contact him via
the Web site linked above, which also links to a discussion group. I'm
not a part of that project, I just track it.
Speaking for myself, it makes more sense to support Dave Griffith's
work on re-offering a Z180 board, than to resurrect a Ciarcia design
which 1) has been out of production for many more years and 2)
presumably is owned by MicroMint who may object to reproductions
without permission.
Herb Johnson
retrotechnology.com
Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey USA
http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/ web site
http://www.retrotechnology.net/herbs_stuff/ domain mirror
my email address: hjohnson AAT retrotechnology DOTT com
if no reply, try in a few days: herbjohnson ATT comcast DOTT net
"Herb's Stuff": old Mac, SGI, 8-inch floppy drives
S-100 IMSAI Altair computers, docs, by "Dr. S-100"
Bill
>In the late 80s, I worked at Concurrent Computer Corp.
Sounds familiar for some reason ... did they make a small
cube-shaped computer with maybe eight board slots? About
a foot on a side?
I found something once, in a really heavy steel case, portable
dish washer sized, must have been a left over old-style case,
some integrator 'discovered' the little machine and just bolted
it into the big box - probably so he could get bigger money.
> Interesting: did you write the drivers yourself?
>For what platform, what language?
>
>Like you, I used to play the surplus market for computer parts,
>but now the new parts are very cost effective.
Started with a PC clone, kept making money through maybe
early 386s, about the time CD ROMs started popping up all over
Tried about everything SCSI that came along for PCs, settled
on the WD7000, they had a development kit with sources for
just about everything I ever heard of. Nice company.
I ran a 'data base' ... of sorts ... had access to about every list
there was. Sometimes a tape would stop by, and I'd have to stay up
all night reading it. So it was ready to go back in to work the next
morning. As if it hadn't been out all night at all. or...umm...call it
out for 'cleaning'...tapes needed that from time to time. Water
hookups, gas and electric, property tax rolls, besides obvious like
motor vehicles, drivers licenses, etc.
There used to be good money in that sort of thing.
Bill
Jeff Jonas
>>In the late 80s, I worked at Concurrent Computer Corp.
Bill:
> Sounds familiar for some reason ... did they make a small
> cube-shaped computer with maybe eight board slots?
> About a foot on a side?
That was probably a Convergent box.
I don't think Concurrent made ANYTHING small :-)
I know Convex made a large number cruncher,
but I never encountered their other products.
>> Interesting: did you write the drivers yourself?
> Started with a PC clone, kept making money through maybe
> early 386s, about the time CD ROMs started popping up all over ...
> Tried about everything SCSI that came along for PCs
> settled on the WD7000, they had a development kit with sources
> for just about everything I ever heard of. Nice company.
It "would be nice" if the source were available,
mostly for the device IDs, specific commands,
return codes and driver-logic for their specific "gotchas".
It's hard to reconstruct all that info
for folks trying to resusitate old equipment
(particularly stuff that's no longer supported
by the mfgr or any OS).
I have ONE Western Digital PCI wide SCSI controller.
Even the BIOS/firmware was nicer than the others
(Adaptec, Bustek/BusLogic).
But despite the lovely brochure assuring customers that
Western Digital was in it "for the long run",
they adandoned SCSI controllers.
> I ran a 'data base' ... of sorts ...
> had access to about every list there was.
Was that ever on-line for someone to have saved it?