Since I like playing around with electronics, and I enjoy learning new things with coding, I decided to combine the 2 passions and build my own computer in my spare time: the Whizz80.
This however isn’t your typical modern day computer that you can just buy from your local computer shop and plug in and run the latest operating system and software – that would be too easy. Instead I am building a computer right down to the individual chip level, and building it up with its own operating system (WhizzOS)....
It’s been a while since I last posted an update on the Whizz80 computer. I’ve been a bit slack in documenting my progress because each time I move a little step closer and it is more fun to keep building and designing rather than writing up documentation. However I have reached a bit of a milestone with a simple, yet working system so now is the time to pause and take note on what I’ve done so far....
I’ve spent this weekend migrating the old whizz80.com website from using GRAV to Hugo. To speed up the process I’m using the same workflow that I use for my blog site for the new whizz80.com site.
While I did enjoy using GRAV, I did find it a little bit clumsy with updating the website in comparison to Hugo. I was probably over complicating the process because I was using a GRAV plugin that would pull down changes from a github repository....
After trying different z80 assemblers and simulators, I have found a z80 development workflow that works well for me on my mac .
There are quite a few open source tools to use, and finding the right combination has really improved my z80 assembly learning.
The z80 development workflow I have come up with the following workflow:
Z80 Development Workflow There are four stages of my work flow....
The system back plane for the Whizz80 has been redesigned and refined.
I’ve been using Eagle to design the schematic for the Whizz-80 computer. I originally started to hand wire parts of the circuits on prototyping PCB board but found that point to point wiring was just too hard, so I’ve now decided to get PCBs manufactured instead.
So I’m starting with the System back plane – this is a rather easy board to produce as it is almost a ‘strip board’ but with a custom silk screen...