Hello From Canada

[Zilogoz80]

Hello every body, I'm glad I found this site, it looks there is alot of people with same interests and hobby as myself, an will be nice to share experiences with all of you.

I have special interest in vintage computers as well, specifically the 8 bit ones, they are a lot of fun to program and much easy to understand.

I'm a technician, I designed my own Z80 microcomputer 15 years ago, I still work on it some times adding new things.

In my collection I have:
ZX80, ZX81, Multitech MPF I Z80, Apple II+, Commodore 64, Atari 800, Heathkit ET3400.
Well not much but all documented and with software to run in them.

Thanks, I will start posting some questions right away!

[tezza]

Welcome.

A ZX-80. I do remember seeing one of those in the flesh at one time but not for many, many years. Has it got the "81" upgrade or is it the real original?

[Terry Yager]

I'm a technician, I designed my own Z80 microcomputer 15 years ago, I still work on it some times adding new things.

Pictures? Schematics?? Software??? Etc. <drooling>...????

--T

[Erik]

Welcome aboard, eh!

Enjoy the forums!

[Druid6900]

Canada's a big place. Where abouts, exactly?

We have a fair smattering of Canucks taking over, umm, I mean, on the board here and some of us might be close to you.

Welcome to (The Great White North) Vintage Computer Forums (has a nice ring to it, HUH?) LOL

[willowmoon93]

Welcome aboard .... that is so cool that you own a ZX-80. Droooooooool........

[Zilogoz80]

Hi, sorry I wasn't around.

Thanks to you all for the reply,

Well to start I'm in Calgary, Alberta (Canada),

The ZX80 I have is in original condition, no upgrades or changes to it, it says USA model on the back, It works but video is blurred, you have to tune in a TV on channel 2, I'm tempted to mod it so I can use a regular composite video input, problem is I like to keep it in its original condition (any sugestions here?).

I will be posting schematics and pictures of my Z80 microcomputer, interestig part of this design is it uses an UART 8250 to comunicate with a regular PC by RS232 com port so I can Upload and download programs, no need for drives , comunication program on the PC side is programmed on Visual Basic.

Cheers!

[MikeS]

Hi, sorry I wasn't around.

Thanks to you all for the reply,

Well to start I'm in Calgary, Alberta (Canada),

The ZX80 I have is in original condition, no upgrades or changes to it, it says USA model on the back, It works but video is blurred, you have to tune in a TV on channel 2, I'm tempted to mod it so I can use a regular composite video input, problem is I like to keep it in its original condition (any sugestions here?).

I will be posting schematics and pictures of my Z80 microcomputer, interestig part of this design is it uses an UART 8250 to comunicate with a regular PC by RS232 com port so I can Upload and download programs, no need for drives , comunication program on the PC side is programmed on Visual Basic.

Cheers!
-----
Sounds interesting...

Any chance of you sharing some secrets, like the BIOS source and the VB program?

mike

[Zilogoz80]

-----
Sounds interesting...

Any chance of you sharing some secrets, like the BIOS source and the VB program?

mike

Sure, I will be posting this design for discusion soon, I would like to get input as of how to improve it, Now I'm working on adding commnets to the source code (monitor program) all is in assembler, I know what it does but comments will help others when looking at it. I used TASM to compile it to Z80 obj code. The Visual basic part handles programs as HEX files.

Any sugestions where in this forum Home made designs can be posted?

[Yzzerdd]

Vintage computer programming should suffice.

Sounds like an intresting system...
Welcome to the forums!

--Ryan

[Terry Yager]

Canada's a big place. Where abouts, exactly?

We have a fair smattering of Canucks taking over, umm, I mean, on the board here and some of us might be close to you.

Welcome to (The Great White North) Vintage Computer Forums (has a nice ring to it, HUH?) LOL

Take off, eh? I think your toque is a little too tight!

--T

[MikeS]

Take off, eh? I think your toque is a little too tight!

--T
----------
Ah, *that* explains it... forgot to take it off after an *exciting* evening of curling. Thanks for the tip!

Another hoser

[Zilogoz80]

Ehh! my toque is white and red with the mapple leaf in the middle...ehh :cool:

[Micom 2000]

Canada's a big place. Where abouts, exactly?

We have a fair smattering of Canucks taking over, umm, I mean, on the board here and some of us might be close to you.

Welcome to (The Great White North) Vintage Computer Forums (has a nice ring to it, HUH?) LOL

Well since we've taken over much of the entertainment media: TV, Films, and energy sources, it's time to move on to the cultural fringes. We're an insidious bunch. As a Canadian songster Leonard Cohen wrote " First we take New York, then we take Berlin."

Welcome to the Cabal. Calgary's just a few Grainfields and the city of Regina away from me.
One of my latest discoveries was a Vintage Computer dealer in Latuque, Quebec, which is possibly even further north than I am.

Lawrence

[MikeS]

Well since we've taken over much of the entertainment media: TV, Films, and energy sources, it's time to move on to the cultural fringes. We're an insidious bunch. As a Canadian songster Leonard Cohen wrote " First we take New York, then we take Berlin."
<snip
Lawrence
--
Aw, c'mon, don't scare 'em! We're not that greedy; LC didn't say we're gonna take _all_ of New York...

That doesn't even scan properly; and you call yourself a musician/artist... ;-)

m