The Trump Z8000 board needs your help
[Smbakeryt] needs your help. He bought a 1984 Z8000 coprocessor board for the PC, but the software is missing. Apparently the co-processor - called Trump Card - appeared in Byte magazine courtesy of the famous [Steve Ciarcia]. The schematics have been published, and if you sent [Steve] proof that you built it, he would send you the software. The product was later released, but nobody seems to have the software, so [Smbakeryt] is on the lookout.
The board itself was pretty amazing for its time. It added a 16-bit Zilog Z8000 processor with 512 KB of RAM. Big iron for 1984 and a bit more performance than a stock IBM PC of the era.
We miss the days when computer equipment accompanied large binders of documentation. These days you are more likely to get a sticker with a URL. The Z8000 was a good processor and could emulate the Z80, but it never became very popular. In addition to Zilog's System 8000, the processor found its way into some Unix computers, including the Onyx C8002 and several Olivetti computers. Commodore planned to use the processor in a canceled project. The Z8000 was notorious for not using microcode and therefore fit on a relatively small die with 17,500 transistors (compared to the 8086's 29,000 transistors).
We hope someone can help you with the software. If you want your own Z8000 system, you might be better off using Clover. Or stick with a low-cost Z80.
[Smbakeryt] needs your help. He bought a 1984 Z8000 coprocessor board for the PC, but the software is missing. Apparently the co-processor - called Trump Card - appeared in Byte magazine courtesy of the famous [Steve Ciarcia]. The schematics have been published, and if you sent [Steve] proof that you built it, he would send you the software. The product was later released, but nobody seems to have the software, so [Smbakeryt] is on the lookout.
The board itself was pretty amazing for its time. It added a 16-bit Zilog Z8000 processor with 512 KB of RAM. Big iron for 1984 and a bit more performance than a stock IBM PC of the era.
We miss the days when computer equipment accompanied large binders of documentation. These days you are more likely to get a sticker with a URL. The Z8000 was a good processor and could emulate the Z80, but it never became very popular. In addition to Zilog's System 8000, the processor found its way into some Unix computers, including the Onyx C8002 and several Olivetti computers. Commodore planned to use the processor in a canceled project. The Z8000 was notorious for not using microcode and therefore fit on a relatively small die with 17,500 transistors (compared to the 8086's 29,000 transistors).
We hope someone can help you with the software. If you want your own Z8000 system, you might be better off using Clover. Or stick with a low-cost Z80.
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