> 8080, please. The 8086 was designed to be assembly-level source compatible with 8080's so porting software (here's to you, Gary) from CP/M would be easy.

1. The 8086 was not designed to be assembly-level source compatible, but nevertheless intended that assembly code from 8080 could easily be ported to 8086 (mostly find & replace)

2. Zilog developed a different assembly language for the Z80 than Intel used for the 8080 (for copyright reasons, I think - though nearly everybody would agree that Zilog's assembly syntax is better; compare for yourself: http://nemesis.lonestar.org/computers/tandy/software/apps/m4... ). The Z80 assembly language was a strong inspiration for the x86 (8086) assembly language (Intel syntax).

3. The Z80 introduced two index registers (IX, IY) over the 8080. A strange coincidence that Intel also did introduce two index registers for the 8086 (si, di).

4. Do the INI/INIR/IND/INDR/OUTI/OUTIR/OUTD/OUTDR that were introduced by Zilog for the Z80 strongly remind you of the INS/REP INS/OUTS/REP OUTS (just consider that the 8086 uses the direction flag) instructions of the 8086?

etc.

TLDR: Intel took more "inspiration" from the Z80 than is generally acknowledged.

The 8080 and 8086 designs draw directly from Z80. You can see it in the assembler mnemonics and how the operands are handled. And segmented memory access, oh my!

The 8080 predates the Z-80 by about two years.

He likely meant the 8086 and 8088.

That's possible, but, still, even though I find the Z-80 a rather kludgy and inefficient thing (compared to the simplicity of the 6502 and the 6502 machines we had at the time), if felt much neater than the 8086 family.