Gold!

[Patrick Skerrett]

I picked up a surplus Mostek MK388OP cpu and had to give it a try in the 2014. I had to clock down to 2.5Mhz but it works perfectly fine. Gorgeous ceramic and gold! A thing of beauty. I’ll have to design a new enclosure now to properly show this thing off.

[Spencer]

That's a beauty! Yes, certainly does need to be in prime spot on the backplane to show it off.

I have a white ceramic Soviet Z80 clone (2mm pitch pins, rather than 0.1") that'll end up being part of an RC2014 Mini After Dark, once I can find enough white chip sockets. That won't run at 7.3MHz either, but speed isn't important when things look as nice as these.

Spencer

On Saturday, 17 January 2026 at 18:32, Patrick Skerrett <pat...@skerrett.net> wrote:

I picked up a surplus Mostek MK388OP cpu and had to give it a try in the 2014. I had to clock down to 2.5Mhz but it works perfectly fine. Gorgeous ceramic and gold! A thing of beauty. I’ll have to design a new enclosure now to properly show this thing off.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RC2014-Z80" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rc2014-z80+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rc2014-z80/CAMvG2pwm3YOVXrm-gG0LqYazMe0otnwO3K0-yqjuryqu2%3DaYxA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Olev Toom]

Hello!

Spencer, could you please show a photo of this Soviet clone? I didn't know that SU produced Z80 clones. I knew that in the East bloc the DDR (East Germany) made Zilog copies.

Also, is the pin pitch really 2 mm, not 2.5?

Best,olev

To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rc2014-z80/rG9bh4zKN4c4IYlDkumcbQAYbzN7fljCxF1_QoKSCZ88l0Gbv2i23eS7N5kpE4ozwpLLrimiBmUMJxHKsOcXgZmp5Bm4I04gFg3eKGFx84I%3D%40z80kits.com.

[Spencer]

It's a T34BM1, which I have seen listed as a USSR device, although I think you might be right about East German.

And you're certainly right on the pin pitch. It is 2.5mm.

Spencer 

-------- Original Message --------

To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rc2014-z80/CAJzoXsmmP4o2OvvPG_SYAYiWqDrFwyTurcosD5F9y601APP-jg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Olev Toom]

Spencer, you were right. This is really a Soviet (or better Russian, because produced from 1991 on) chip. Some words about this here:

https://zeptobars.com/en/read/t34vm1-z80-angstrem-mme

where they think that it is really the DDR U880.

Thank you for new knowledge, In 1991 I had lost any interest in Russia,

olev

To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rc2014-z80/TvPP4tAJzO3JGqseBjfAyDScuAM9JqWvzkGp0kDiq__2goEWni8P49SlHEw-QHIWZh1GseYsu4TA75Z1abXnlCfVpkJwN4G47APQGLBGZcs%3D%40z80kits.com.

[Patrick Skerrett]

Please do post photos when you get the white ceramic CPU installed Spencer. I would love to acquire one of those as well but I have yet to see any in a reasonable price range! 

[Neil Harrison]

Later this year I'll be able to celebrate the 50th birthday of the venerable Zilog Z80 that started me on this journey. Somehow I got hold of a copy of BYTE magazine that year and it had had a Z80 S100 board schematic in an article. This fired up my ambition to build my own computer and so and ordered the Z80 and eight 2102 1kx1 SRAMs from an ad in the back of the magazine. Brave stuff when ordering components internationally was far less of a thing than today. I think the Z80 cost me a little under £60 landed at the time. The CPU and RAM got hand wired onto some Veroboard panels which had gold edge connectors so that I could build something with multiple cards and a bus. The first firmware was programmed into a 1702 UV EPROM - a whole 256bytes also in a white ceramic package with a window. Sadly that has been lost over the years - I wish I still had that too. 

[Phillip Stevens]

You can pair it with a gold “Intel” APU for the full RC2014 bling effect. 

[Peter Onion]

I have this in my "things from long ago" box :-)

[Ed Silky]

I have a similar box, with one of these...

A DEC Alpha!

-Ed

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RC2014-Z80" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rc2014-z80+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rc2014-z80/dd6c409e-0c08-4535-9c9d-f2bb066fa26dn%40googlegroups.com.