The CPUville Z80 Single Board Computer

In this video I describe and demonstrate an interesting little kit I purchased and built recently - the CPUville Z80 Single Board Computer.

[derekchristenson]

Thank you for making a video on this! I've built one as well, and I agree that the documentation is great. So, too, is the board layout, with plenty of room, both from a beginner's perspective and just as a nice-looking board. This kit deserves more publicity than it seems to get.

I'd like to add that I had a little issue with the front-panel "slow clock" board, which Donn also sells, and he was very helpful in diagnosing what was wrong. It turned out to be a sometimes-faulty / out-of-spec 74LS04 (it worked great in some applications but completely locked up and overheated as part of the clock circuit), and he sent me a free (and tested) replacement. Donn also corresponded with me about running Tiny BASIC (because I asked about it), which an earlier version of his CPUville computer ran instead of CP/M. And, he was nice enough to send me the hex file for a version that would work. Naturally, it's a better idea objectively to just run BASIC-80 from CP/M (Microsoft BASIC being much more fully-featured than Palo Alto Tiny BASIC), but it was neat to be able to run that as well, just for historical experience.

[gauravgulati]

Thankyou for this excellent coverage of the kit in action. I’ll be buying it.

[Dbumbaca]

thank you for making this video. I built a cpuville Z80 computer several years ago, and it was the first Z80 computer I made from a kit. CPM was an add-on board then, so was the serial board. CPM had to be compiled from scratch, the instructions were excellent, and I am grateful for the experience.

[edgeeffect]

Wow! I haven'y seen that Sybex CP/M handbook for "a million years". :)

[Moonlight]

Nice video Jeff. I recently built one of these from the kit. Went together like a dream and worked first time. Followed the instructions and now have it running CP/M. I built an Australian kit based Z80 computer(Microbee) in the 80's and have longed to have something similar to play with again. I was particularly interested in your BASIC, C and Turbo Pascal examples so that will be on my list of things to work on. Well done.

[vanhetgoor]

Often CP/M programmes hardly work. Back in the days of early computing not all things were ready, while some computers had cursor keys, others used I JK M. It took ages to fill a screen with information and scrolling lasted till the day of resurrection. Maybe, just maybe it would be time for another version of the control program for microcomputers, a 2023 update.

[erics-little-world]

Very nice device! What a pitty such thing was not available in the day - at least not at such a pricepoint

[kaznm]

It's funny that some comments seem to suggest that you have wasted time and effort on your CP/M machine. I guess it might be hard to understand if you have never known a world where MS Windows did not exist, nevermind 'droid and IOS. I remember making a Z80 run on a breadboard when I was not yet old enough to drive a car. I didn't have an EPROM programmer at first, but I had an EEPROM that I was able to use somehow.. I don't remember how.

I have been looking for the debugger that I used on my CP/M machine.... it was called "STEPPER". Wonder if anyone knows where to find it or perhaps this is a false memory. It was a full-screen interactive debugger that, if I recall, had registers at the top and a page of memory at the bottom half of the screen, and I think the current instruction disassembled in the middle.

[tubeDude]

I' sure I'm one of the few people that new about and used MP/M. I also knew Gary Kildall. His office was next to KSBW 8
in Monterrey CA

[soupwizard]

Hey thanks for the review, I've been thinking about buying one of these. It looks uncommonly well done and documented, a nice all-in-one CP/M board. How long an IDE cable were you able to use with the drives?

[drnapster]

i have the same ide flashcard adapter you have can you explain the power delivery to it to me? im not sure what pins to connect to what and cant find paperwork on the adaptor... thank you!

[BryanChance]

Does it have sound or graphics? I presume no because you're on s serial terminal?

[AbcXyz-rnlz]

I had ansi and xmodem services on custom PCM modems on this chip as a kid. I also wrote a spreadsheet and regression A.I. for stock ticker data. You had use assembly and have good GC as a coder cause memory and IPC, also software FPU

I still use what I learned as a z80 coder in security today. You were forced to learn about cache and allocation stuff and GC

[NicholasMarkovich]

Congratulations, you built a Gameboy.

[pikadroo]

Jeff… can I call you Jeff? No. Just no.

[scor]

That’s makes no sense. That’s not a Sinclair replica which could make it. That’s not an emulator in Raspberry Pi which could save hours and days for something useful. That’s a procrastination