Re: Flakey ZipChip 8000

[mdj <mdj.mdj@gmail.com>]

On Feb 18, 8:38 am, Alex Freed <alex_n...@mirrow.com> wrote:
> Steven Hirsch wrote:
>
> > Who currently owns the design and manufacturing rights for the ZipChip?  
> > I'm wondering if they would be interested in disclosing the RTL
> > description so it could be cloned into an FPGA.
>
> Just like with the z180 card we don't really need the RTL to make a
> clone. If I remember correctly there is a patent covering the design
> that has enough info for us "reasonably skilled in the kraft".
>
> The upcoming Carte Blanche will be a nice platform to implement it
> inside a real Apple 2.
>
> BTW as an experiment I did build a complete Apple 2 on FPGA clocked at
> 28 MHz and that was not a real limit.

Ideally it would a system-in-chip design. It should be possible to fit
it within the confines of a ZipChip sized board, if one used an
external CPU and SRAM and the logic in a CPLD, all using QFP's...
Heck, one of the freely available 6502 cores might even fit in a small
CPLD!

Matt