Z80-MBC2 assembled Micro Computer OV

Z80-MBC2 with uTerm

This machine is an excellently conceived Z80 compute platform. It is a high-quality hardware product as well as having a great array of OS options: CP/M 2.?, CP/M 3.?, Basic, Forth - Selectable from a Boot menu. <br /> <br /> The machine has an SD card loaded with a wonderful array of software and although the SD card content isn’t directly accessible on a Windows PC, a management tool is freely available that allows disk images, mapped to MBC2 accessible ‘drives’, to be maintained. It’s possible to place files created on your PC on to such images, too.<br /> <br /> Also included is a Real Time Clock module (use the Boot menu to set/change) that’s accessible in BASIC or your own-written CP/M programs.<br /> <br /> The machine includes 20 GPIO pins which allows a means to detect switches, drive relays, LEDs and LCD/LED Displays. Note, though, accessing GPIO functionality is ’clunky’ so don’t expect to drive anything that needs medium to high speed signalling.<br /> <br /> A really interesting feature is the ‘transparent FTDI’ serial comms that allows you to link the MBC2 to your PC using a FTDI to USB adapter even if you are using uTerm. <br /> <br /> Overall, it’s a great machine and I’d recommend anyone interested in the Z80 retro computing to get one. One feature I’d like to see in any emerging MBC3 would be to allow Z80 IO addresses greater than 127 to be directly accessible by the CPU and include a couple of 0.1” pitch rows of signal lines for address, data, IORQ, MEMRQ, WAIT, RD, WR, M1 etc to allow expansion/interfacing flexibility.<br /> <br /> Finally, I’d like to acknowledge McJohn.it as my supplier for this machine. Their business process as well as care and attention for packaging, dispatch, posting and order status is highly commendable.<br /> <br /> Ged Tonkin