feilipu

z88dk has just released version 2.2. It is the first release in nearly 18 months.

z88dk is a collection of software development tools that targets the i8080 and z80 family of machines. It allows development of programs in C, assembly language or any mixture of the two. What makes z88dk unique is its ease of use, built-in support for over 100 z80 machines and its extensive set of assembly language library subroutines implementing the C standard and extensions.

There are lots of improvements to digest. I've pasted the release notes below for easy reference.

z88dk-gdb - IDE debugging is now supported using CLion/VSCode with MAME, or FUSE (Spectrum Emulator). z88dk-z80asm - Is now a MACRO assembler, supporting all of the classic macro assembly key words. Additionally many synthetic instructions have been added across all platforms. A new FLOAT directive allows the assembly of floating point numbers in any one of the library's formats. The Intel 8085 undocumented instructions are now supported, as are all Z80N extension instructions.

z88dk-zsdcc - The latest stable release SDCC 4.2.0 has been patched to support z88dk and is included. The traditional z88dk calling conventions (__z88dk_fastcall & __z88dk_callee) have been retained.

Further integration of the classic and new libraries has been completed. To a large extent Z80 machines now share the same code base across both libraries. For the other machine types found in the classic library (I8080, I8085, and GBZ80) code has been organised for hierarchical inheritance, rewritten to be re-entrant, and provide callee support wherever possible.

The floating point maths libraries have been extended, with the Microsoft mbf32 library receiving code optimisation paths with I8085 and Z80 specific instructions. The IEEE single-precision math32 Z80 support has been further performance optimised. The am9511 APU maths library now works with I8085 CPUs and the classic library.

Improved or new support for many machines including the GL6000, the homebrew Micro85, the Radio86 family, the SAM support was extensively reworked, the Sharp MZ800 video was reworked, and support for the PTC Sol 20 was added. Support for the RC2014 using the I8085 CPU was added, making use of the tighter integration between classic and new libraries. The CP/M target has been extended to support disc creation for Amstrad, Televideo, and Bondwell systems, and Amstrad PCW Graphics support was added. A generalised CP/M GSX graphics library is also now available.

And finally, building z88dk from source on ARM64 (AArch64) architecture (eg Apple M1, or Raspberry Pi 3 or later) is now supported, enabling a new generation of host systems.

Some additional web references.

I broke mine on assembly. This is how I went about fixing it. https://feilipu.me/2016/06/08/rc2014-troubleshooting/

To reprogram the EEPROM, you need a programmer. This is one I use. https://feilipu.me/2016/06/08/tl866_testing/

This is an Arduino compatible board, which provides probably the "most capable" micro-controller in the AVR range on the standard Uno footprint.

It can do analogue output from DC to 48k samples per second. And it has supporting amplifiers for headphones and microphones (sampled using onboard ADC).

It is not a musical instrument. It is a platform to develop and test applications using analogue output and input. Voice is one good application, but there are many others.

Its also quite cheap at AUD50 (USD40) each. The Modi or Magni devices are USD99 each. Different applications. Different cost points.

Getting sound and audio into Arduino projects has been difficult, because there are almost no integrated DAC and amplifier solutions for the Arduino Shield format. And there are fewer (none) that also have integrated microphone amplifier capability. Even the newer ARM based Arduino (Due, Zero, 101) boards with an on-board DAC don't have the headphone and op amp outputs, nor the microphone amplifier input, integrated on-board.

The Goldilocks Analogue has everything needed to build useful audio based projects, such as musical synthesizers, baby monitors, sound pollution monitors, and IOT audio applications.

Expanding on some of the project options...

Synthesiser - synthesising any waveform you like (using a look-up-table, or algorithmic calculation) is very cool. Then adding, convolving, and filtering these waves. Also cool. For anyone trying to get a handle on waveforms, and digital sampling and filtering (like me in 2nd year engineering) having a tool like this would have been great.

Anything using voice - How about a 802.15.4 mesh Walkie-Talkie? Xbee supports up to 24kbit/s real-world, I've demonstrated. With a bit of G.726 audio compression, you could talk to anyone "off grid" in a Xbee mesh using secure communications.

Capturing sound into an IoT Cloud service - A lot of low bandwidth networks (LoRa) can never support video, but they could support segments of audio. High compression encoding (no need for real-time), and then sending 15 seconds of audio surrounding an "event" over a LoRa network (0.3 kbps to 50 kbps) can provide context to the event, or be recognized and actioned by Siri / Cortana / Google in the Cloud.

I'm planning to make an audio environmental monitor which can sample sound at a location, and upload it to an IoT provider as needed. High sound levels alone are often not enough to determine what is good sound (wind noise), and what is bad sound (music at 3am), so having 15 seconds (for example) can be enough to differentiate a response.

Ah... you can get up and go to the bathroom during "take-off" is one of the main reasons that come to mind.

But, there are may others relating to carbon footprint per tonne.km traveled, which have greater relevance.

This is all missing the point. And is a typical case of solving the problem with a "bigger hammer".

China is building a national rail network running at 350km/h to with the goal of putting any city within an 8 hour travel radius of Beijing. http://www.globalissues.org/news/2010/09/30/7114

Kind of makes domestic air travel somewhat obsolete and really quite unnecessary.