FORTH, Inc .' s microFORTH was developed for the Intel 8080, Motorola 6800, and Zilog Z80 microprocessors starting in 1976.

It was an attempt to draw attention from the less-delayed 16 and 32-bit processors of other manufacturers ( such as Motorola, Zilog, and National Semiconductor ) and at the same time to counter the threat from the Zilog Z80 ( designed by former Intel employees ), which became very successful.

The Neo Geo was marketed as 24-bit, though it was technically a parallel processing 32-bit system with 24-bit addressing and a 16-bit data bus with an 8-bit Zilog Z80 as coprocessor.

Numerous versions included Apple II, TI 99 / 4a, DEC PDP-11, Zilog Z80 and MOS 6502 based machines, Motorola 68000 and the IBM PC ( Version II on the PC was restricted to one 64K code segment and one 64K stack / heap data segment ; Version IV removed the code segment limit but cost a lot more ).

CP / M would also run on systems based on the Zilog Z80 processor since the Z80 was compatible with 8080 code.

The ports were driven by the Zilog SCC which could serve as either a standard UART or handle the much more complicated HDLC protocol which was a packet oriented protocol which incorporated addressing, bit-stuffing, and packet checksumming in hardware.

Zilog went public in 1991, but was acquired in 1998 by Texas Pacific Group.

2007 was the last year Zilog introduced any new 8-bit microcontroller products.

StarDivision developed the first version of StarWriter for the Zilog Z80 home-computer system, the Amstrad CPC ( marketed by Schneider in Germany ) under CP / M, and later for the Commodore 64 under Microsoft BASIC, which was later ported to the 8086-based Amstrad PC-1512, running under MS-DOS 3. 2.

The initial port of Xenix was to the Zilog Z8000 series and subsequently to the Intel 8086 / 8088 architecture ported by The Santa Cruz Operation.

Microsoft Xenix originally ran on the PDP-11 ; the first port was for the Zilog Z8001 16-bit processor.

The downside of the system was that it required much more advanced decoders, typically featuring Zilog Z80 or Motorola 6809 processors with RGB and / or RF output.

The result was the Commodore PET ( RAM, discrete logic graphics ), launched in 1977 – one of three historic home / personal computers to appear that year, the two others being the Apple II ( also 6502-based ) and the TRS-80 ( with a Zilog Z80 ).

The downside was that it required much more advanced decoders, typically featuring Zilog Z80 or Motorola 6809 processors.

Another feature the Astrocade did not include was the ability to process arrays with any reasonable speed, so the UV-1 included the Zilog supplied FPU for added performance.

It was powered by a Zilog Z80 running at 2. 106 MHz with 4 to 48 kilobytes of RAM, giving it performance parity with the TRS-80.

The Franklin REX 5, ( also known as the “ Rex-Pro ”, as the “ Rex 5000 ”, and with cosmetic variation as the “ Rex 5001 ”) was one of the Rex line of Personal Digital Assistants, each a PCMCIA PC card and thus the size of a credit card, built around a Toshiba microprocessor emulating a Zilog Z80.

In some early microprocessor designs, memory management was performed by a separate integrated circuit such as the VLSI VI475 or the Motorola 68851 used with the Motorola 68020 CPU in the Macintosh II or the Z8015 used with the Zilog Z80 family of processors.

The computer was based on the Zilog Z80 CPU, and featured:

) Set in an aluminum case, it weighed 29 pounds ( 13 kilograms ) and was equipped with a Zilog Z80 microprocessor, 64 kilobytes of RAM, and two 5¼-inch double-density floppy-disk drives.

A Zilog Z8000 port of Coherent was also used by the canceled Commodore 900 system.

The first Sun workstations ( then based on the Motorola 68010 ) ran a V7 port by UniSoft ; the first version of Xenix for the Intel 8086 was derived from V7 ; and Onyx Systems soon produced a Zilog Z8000 computer running V7.

Other well known 8-bit microprocessors that emerged during these years were Motorola 6800 ( 1974 ), General Instrument PIC16X ( 1975 ), MOS Technology 6502 ( 1975 ), Zilog Z80 ( 1976 ), and Motorola 6809 ( 1978 ).

The Z80 came about when Federico Faggin, after working on the 8080, left Intel at the end of 1974 to found Zilog with Ralph Ungermann, and by July 1976 they had the Z80 on the market.

When Faggin left Intel at the end of 1974 to found Zilog with Ralph Ungermann, he was department manager for MOS Research and Development with almost 80 engineers reporting to him and more than a dozen products under development.

Co-founder of Zilog with Ralph Ungermann, and CEO from its inception in November 1974 until the end of 1980, F. Faggin conceived and designed the Z80-CPU and its family of parts.

Faggin conceived the Z8 in 1974, soon after he founded Zilog.

* 1974: Data Board 4680-the number is a short form of the three microprocessors supported by the bus of this system: Intel 4004, Motorola 6800 and Zilog Z80.

The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog and sold from July 1976 onwards.

Jim Thorburn led Zilog back into profitability by FY 2007 they had $ 82 million in sales.

On January 2008, Zilog declined an unsolicited proposal made by Universal Electronics Inc to acquire the company.

Initially, bus implementations were proprietary ( such as the Apple II and Macintosh ), but by the late 1970s manufacturers of Intel 8080 / Zilog Z80-based computers running CP / M had settled around the S-100 standard.

Both designs were eclipsed for desktop computers by the compatible Zilog Z80, which took over most of the CP / M computer market as well as taking a share of the booming home computer market in the early-to-mid-1980s.

The basic systems were powered by a Zilog Z80 driving the display chip with a RAM buffer in between the two.

All PCW models, including the PcW 16, used the Zilog Z80 range of CPUs: Z80 at a clock speed of 4 MHz but slowed to 3. 4 MHz by the internal clock in the 8256 and 8512 ; Z80 at 4 MHz in the 9512, 9256, 9512 + and PCW10 ; and Z80A at 16 MHz in the PcW16.

Software previously distributed by the JPO is still available through commercial resources at Software Engineering Associates, Inc. ( SEA ) as are other combinations of host / target processors including WinX, Linux, Apple iBook, SPARC, VAX, 1750A, PowerPC, TI-9989, Zilog Z800x, Motorola 6800x and IBM 360 / 370 / z.

ValDocs, an even earlier integrated suite, actually comparable to the original Macintosh of 1984 and Apple Lisa of 1982 was produced by Epson, a complete integrated work station based on the previous Zilog Z80 processor and CP / M operating system with GUI and " WYSIWYG " typography on the monitor and printing.

The Zilog Z800 was a 16-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog to be released in 1985.

The Z8000 is a 16-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog in 1979.

*" Zilog Z80 Microprocessor Oral History Panel " Federico Faggin, Masatoshi Shima, Ralph Ungermann, Ralph Ungermann.

At Zilog, Faggin conceived the architecture of the Z80 microprocessor and helped Shima, who had joined the new company, in its design.

The new random logic design methodology with silicon gate technology devised by Faggin was used for all the early generations of microprocessors at Intel and Zilog.

Shima moved to Zilog in 1975 and, using only a small number of assistants, developed the transistor-level and physical implementation of the Z80, under the supervision of Faggin, who conceived and designed the Z80 architecture to be instruction set compatible with the Intel 8080.