After almost 50 years, Zilog announced that it will end production of the Z80 in June 2024.
Yup! End of an era...
d_kef
FB_IMG_1713548240927.jpg
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/ZiLOG/Z84C0020PEG?qs=ahrryRM2ahtaw12qdP6z5A%3D%3D
End of Life.
I bought 2 pcs
prices may skyrocket soon
I believe other companies will continue to produce it.
licensing issue
Chinese don't care about it. :D
cheap fake DIP 40 for all? ;D
Quote from: ZorrO on 19:52, 19 April 24I believe other companies will continue to produce it.
The last second-source manufacturer stopped years ago. Only the ez80 will be made after June
Where, except for hobbyists projects, was the Z80 still used?
Are there still new designs that used a Z80? Or just old designs that are still built, just never needed to be updated?
I think the fact that Zilog stopped producing the CMOS variants is a clear indicator, that there is no demand left.
The NMOS variant (which we would need for CPCs to have 100% compatibility) has been out of production from Zilog for a loong loong time. No one would create a new design with NMOS technology nowadays.
Goldstar, ST and some others have continued to produce NOS variants in mass production until the end of the 90s. So it should not be short stock in quite a while. Even if Ebay scalpers try to make a margin now. A single Zilog Z840004PSC up to 50€ ... :o They are going nuts.
You can find trustworthy sources of clones around 5-6 € at this point in time and gamble ones in China for 1-2€.
Also there is an interesting approach to put it on FOSS Z80. https://github.com/rejunity/z80-open-silicon via the Tiny Tapeout project. We could also consider to put the GA40007 and GA40010 on it. That would fit easily inside one of the fields, however the pinout is problematic as Tiny Tape out only supports 24 pins (8 in, 8 out, 8 bidirectional). For Z80 CPU they needed to multiplex the lines.