Build Your Own Z80 Computer – Steve Ciarcia
Page Last Updated 02/04/2023
The Z80 was released in July 1976, about a year and a half after the 1975 Altair article
This book was released in 1981, about five years after the Z80 was released
During that 5 years, the z80 became very popular, and this book gave an incredible amount of technical and practical data on the Z80 and how to design circuits to make it a system, even if by todays standards the book presents some primitive designs
Not sure if 1981 is considered ‘early’ history of the microcomputer, but a lot of the small home computers were using the 6502, and there were other microprocessors available, the 6809, 8085, 8088, 8086
The home computer market appealed to the general public because you could buy a 1 size fits all computer, add peripherals and they were usable
But the Z80 was built into many ‘appliances’ in a microcontroller style, and most technical people were using the Z80 and it remained popular for a long time, and is still in use in the Gameboy handheld games
I think most of the people interested in this are what we call today ‘techies’ or ‘geeks’ and technical people were the target of this book.
Build Your Own Z80 Computer – Steve Ciarcia
Build Your Own Z80 Computer – Steve Ciarcia