
The Chloe 280SE, a New Z80 Microcomputer - pgarcia
https://vintageisthenewold.com/introducing-the-chloe-280se-a-new-z80-microcomputer/
======
abraxas
At the risk of hijacking the thread... but in case you haven't heard there is
a scrappy band of hackers who have put together a modern ZX Spectrum clone
that is fully compatible with the original machines and has an open
architecture. They are currently conducting a poll to find out if there is
demand for a second Kickstarter run (they are currently shipping the computers
to the original backers). If you have some ZX nostalgia in you and want to
support the cause please visit their site and vote in the survey.

site link:

[https://www.specnext.com/](https://www.specnext.com/)

survey link:

[https://www.specnext.com/kickstarter-2-poll/](https://www.specnext.com/kickstarter-2-poll/)

~~~
lproven
Yeah, I think virtually everyone still interested in the Spectrum in 2017
onwards knows about that.

The thing is, it's an at-least-partially closed design, the only way to get it
to subscribe to the kickstarter, and it doesn't comply with the modern
enhanced-Spectrum-graphics standard ULA Plus, because some of the team had an
argument with some of the ULA Plus team.

The Chloe has been around for longer, it's 100% FOSS, and it runs on the €35
ZX UNO FPGA board.

They're both interesting but IMHO the Chloe is more interesting.

BTW, I have no connection with anyone involved in either bar talking to them
on Twitter & FB. E&OE, as they say.

~~~
lproven
Update: apparently, now, the SpecNext has added ULA Plus compatibility, but
not licensed the trademark so they don't say so.

Still, this is good news. There are already enhanced games that use it,
originally for emulators and later for machines upgraded with a physical ULA
Plus chip...

[https://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/details/slam-ula-plus-
repl...](https://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/details/slam-ula-plus-replacement-
ula-for-sinclair-zx-spectrum%2B128-~~-spectrum%2B2-30338)

... and now you'll be able to play them on actual hardware.

Examples of such games and how they look:
[https://sites.google.com/site/ulaplus/](https://sites.google.com/site/ulaplus/)

------
kazinator
Just get a TI-84 calculator: it runs this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_eZ80](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_eZ80)

Here is the TLDR:

\- 24 bit processor

\- backward compatible with Z80

\- resets into Z80 mode

\- Z80 mode has 16 bit addresses and 8 bit registers that can be used as 16
bit pairs.

\- ADL mode (address and data long mode) has 8 bit registers that can be used
as 16 bit pairs or as 24 bit extended pairs.

\- A 8 bit MBASE register controls which bank of address space is seen by Z80
mode.

\- ADL mode has two banks of registers: main B, C, D, E, H, L and alternate
B', C', D', E', H', L', with some support for fast switching between them.

~~~
RandomGuyDTB
It's not the same!

I've done a handful of programming on my monochrome 84+ (kiddie scripts,
really) ~~ _and the screen isn 't very good for actual games. Blur is a big
issue but it's just a symptom of the fact that the 84+ uses a black-and-white
LCD. None of the later versions in the series (with their "hi-res" and
color[1]) have that eZ80._~~ Yes they do! Thanks souprock. Guess this point is
pretty moot. An 88-key keyboard is still much better than you can get on an 84
though, the 84 seems more like a handheld game console than a real computer
when actually working with it.

The Chloe 280SE would be a very sexy option for a Z80 hacker with that VGA-
out, provided it's at a reasonable cost.

[1] after working with an 84+ for a year or so in my spare time, it really did
seem like the +C was high resolution. I don't have one myself but a friend
does and it feels like the Rolls Royce of calculators... not much power
compared to regular cars, but it sure looks nice.

~~~
souprock
You need the TI-84 Plus CE. It has the eZ80 with a 320x240 color screen.

There is a C compiler for it. You get sizeof(int)==3 and sizeof(void*)==3 with
that compiler.

~~~
raverbashing
Those sizes are very peculiar. Seems it's the first processor where memory
alignment is not only not an issue but it doesn't happen

------
HoustonRefugee
I really question the really unrealistic prices of these retro systems, both
on auction sites and the "new" retro stuff.

They are asking $200 for the commander x16 keyboard not to mention vaporware
like the Mega65 that never might be released but seem to get lots of donations
and endorsement from PC magazines (endorsements are free?)

I have seen broken VIC20s and ZX81s go for $300+ on eBay. Why?

I am not saying people should not buy this stuff and if they is what their
hobby is...cool. My wife cannot understand why I buy the things I like. But
those prices are only going to have the choir as the customers. They should be
eating the cost of that keyboards and new gear to grow new customers.

~~~
onemoresoop
Some've become collectibles. The market will speak up. If people are hoarding
on them and demand is high price will go up. If more people are willing to
part with them and the demand is low the price will drop. Also there's the
nostalgia factor, the fact that these things are still cool after all these
years, that they're still functioning, that they were pretty well built, lots
of reasons.

Buy if you want one. Go for a hunt in thriftstores and fleamarkets, you might
get lucky

~~~
reaperducer
_The market will speak up_

The real problem is greed.

People find these computers in basements and barns and flea markets and think
they've found a treasure. They put it on fleaBay and expect to get instantly
rich. When they don't, they throw the machines in the trash.

I've seen computers worth about $80 listed online for $1,000 or more. I've
seen people win auctions for computers at reasonable prices only to have the
seller ask for more money, then cancel the auction when the winner won't pony
up another $800.

~~~
zokier
> worth about $80

How do you define worth? We are talking about goods that do not have any
intrinsic value here, so their value is whatever people are willing to pay for
them.

~~~
Dylan16807
That comment sure looks to me like a scenario where people are willing to pay
$80!

------
bryanlarsen
Is this a 16 bit or an 8 bit machine? It's "taking Z80 users into the 16-bit
era" but it uses a Z80A, so?

A common fantasy trope amongst grey beards is to speculate how
Commodore/Tandy/Apple/Atari/X could have beaten the IBM PC and its clones.

IMO IBM & clones had 4 big advantages:

\- the IBM name

\- Lotus 1-2-3

\- backwards compatibility

\- open architecture, the clone army

Only the first couldn't be had by others, but they had a big offsetting
advantage: a huge base of existing software. But they all threw it away when
coming out with their 16 or 32 bit successors to their 8 bitters.

They didn't really have a choice, there weren't any CPU's they could use. The
Z8000 wasn't backwards compatible and the 65c816 didn't come out until 1983.

But what if the 65c816 (or a similar chip) came out in 1979 or the z8000 was
backwards compatible, and then the big 8 bit companies came out with backwards
compatible architectures which were successfully cloned like the Laser 128?

Or to put it another way, what if a IIGS like machine was available for all
the 8 bit architectures, and in 1980 or so rather than 1986 after IBM had
already won?

~~~
cmrdporcupine
I used to have this 65c816 fantasy. That Atari or Commodore had put out a
machine in this lineage rather than jumping to the 68000. On paper it looks
appealing -- 6502 compatibility, 24-bit address bus, super fast interrupt
responsiveness, very cycle efficient.

So I wasted some time last year futzing around on the C256 Phoenix project --
wrote an emulator for it (or some aspect of what it looked like on paper)
since I didn't have a board yet, wrote some code for it, had a falling out
with the creator, a bit of a saga. In any case, what I learned in this process
is that I really don't like the '816\. It was a hack bolted onto the side of
the 6502. Bill Mensch couldn't or wouldn't add new addressing modes and
register sets to the instruction set to allow 8-bit and 16-bit to co-exist, so
there's a constant awkward mode switch back and forth in terms of how the
registers are viewed. Even worse, it has a 24-bit address bus but no registers
can deal with 24-bit pointer values, so a constant awkward play with using
indirect addressing or using multiple instructions to modify addresses or
switch pages and so on. And then on top of that the physical chip doesn't
break out all 24 address lines, so interfacing the thing is a pain.

The 816 is still produced 35 years later, and available in PLCC and SMT form
factors. But they've had this 35 years to make a version of the chip that
breaks out all the address lines instead of multiplexing it, which would make
sense with the higher pin count available in SMT. But they haven't done it.
Why? They went through the effort of making a microcontroller version of it
that actually does break out all 24 lines, which nobody really uses. But no
MPU.

In the end the 816 was a bit of a hack done especially for Apple. I understand
why Mensch did it, but they could have done better.

In contrast, the Z80 has continued to evolve. You can get a brand new eZ80
etc. with large address space and higher clock speeds and excellent cycle
efficiency, etc. and not have to muck around with demultiplexing the address
bus, etc.

So all said I now understand why engineers at Atari and Commodore and Apple
said "f it" about the 6502 and switched to the 68000. The real tragedy of the
late 80s/90s era was that Motorola pissed away the excellency of 680x0 by
jumping first to the 88000 (failure) and then the PowerPC (less of a failure
but not a success for Motorola). Meanwhile Intel kept backwards compatibility
and squeezed every ounce it could out of the existing x86, and that's one
reason they did better and Wintel maintained dominance.

~~~
bryanlarsen
A Z800 type design that came out in 1980 probably would have sucked too. A 16
bit 6502 shouldn't have sucked because the 6502 is a nice simple micro, but
Z80 is a lot bigger, and making a 16 bit version of it in 1980 with the
transistor and packaging budget of 1980 probably would have had a whole bunch
of nasty compromises.

But our opinion as engineers doesn't really matter much. x86 beat the 68K even
though the 68K is a nice chip and the 8086 ... isn't.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Also, if you squint right... a "z800" type design was basically the
286/386/486, no? The Z80 was a derivation of the 8080 architecture.
8086/286/386/486/Pentium was, too.

~~~
mark-r
That amount of squinting would wreck your eyesight. The x86 line wasn't even
close to binary compatible. The assembly language wasn't too hard to convert,
but it still required work.

------
mmoez
> Imagine an alternative 1987. IBM never bothered to enter the microcomputer
> market. Apple has yet to launch the Macintosh. A new generation of 16-bit
> computers aimed at people who grew up with 8-bit machines is on sale. The
> IIGS from Apple, the Amiga from Atari, the C65 from Commodore. But the MSX
> Turbo-R is still in development. There’s a small window of opportunity for
> another manufacturer to launch a 16-bit, Z80 instruction set compatible
> machine that can run Microsoft BASIC programs. The Chloe Corporation aims to
> take 8080 and Z80 users into the 16-bit era with the new Chloe 280SE.

I'd pay a fortune for living in such a parallel universe...

~~~
bryanlarsen
I wouldn't be so quick. Yes, the 90s probably would have been better, but all
of those are closed architectures.

~~~
jandrese
I'm imagining a world where PCs evolved like Smartphones, with every company
holding onto its stack and only modest amounts of standardization between
them.

There's no good reason smartphones couldn't support booting generic OS images
today, except that all of the manufacturers want to lock you into their
platform. I feel like we're being robbed of the chance to have a "Linux for
Smartphones" that just boots on everything and has drivers for all common
hardware and none of the vendor added garbage. Stuff like LineageOS is kind of
a start, but they're constantly fighting to get a toehold on each new
smartphone generation.

~~~
zozbot234
> Stuff like LineageOS is kind of a start, but they're constantly fighting to
> get a toehold on each new smartphone generation.

That's because the SoC's themselves have almost zero standardization - and
quite unlike the custom platforms of the 1980s and 1990s, they aren't even
documented. They can _barely_ run with their hacked-together 'board support
packages (BSP's)' and factory-installed OS's. Cleaning up the hardware support
for even a single one of these platforms so it passes the standards for
mainline kernel inclusion and support is a _huge_ amount of effort, and then
only gives you long-term support for that one hardware revision. It's a lot
_worse_ of a mess than what we had in the 1990s.

~~~
jandrese
Exactly, and it seems so unnecessary. These problems were solved on PCs in the
90s and the cell phone manufacturers are absolutely refusing to use the
solutions. I can only imagine how many man-years of effort have been wasted
because they're so insistent on keeping everything siloed up. It is madness.

------
rasz
Let me introduce you to a wonderful world of russian Z80 based clone computers
[http://tarjan.uw.hu/zxclones_en.htm](http://tarjan.uw.hu/zxclones_en.htm)

------
pjmlp
Ah references to the Timex Sinclair 2068, my first computer!

Timex had a factory in Portugal, so they were somehow cheaper to get hold of
versus the common 48K.

Naturally most of the time the 48K compatibility cartridge was stucked in,
however in 2068 standard mode the hardware already had a couple of features
that only came later with the 128K models.

------
PaulHoule
Does it run CP/M or ZCPR3?

~~~
Jaruzel
Neither. It boots into some bespoke version of BASIC (that has FAT32 storage
support).

------
tluyben2
Nice. If it ever happens it will be nice to have SymbOS[0] running on it.
Shouldn't be too hard.

[0] [http://www.symbos.de/](http://www.symbos.de/)

------
major505
Well looks cool. Will take a better look when I got home. Anyone used this ZX
uno boards? How copatible are they with the Spectrum software?

~~~
abraxas
I built a clone based on ZX UNO and for the popular titles (Manic Miner,
Knight Lore etc) it seems to work just fine.

------
noderat
Amiga from Atari?

~~~
flohofwoe
In an alternative timeline this would have been likely.

The same engineers who worked on the Atari 8-bit home computer architecture
went on to create the Amiga, which is also visible in the design decisions
(e.g. the 8-bit Atari already had a display-list co-processor similar to the
Amiga's Copper).

AFAIK Atari also tried to buy the Amiga company, but Commodore beat them, so
Atari had to find an alternative 16-bit design that could ideally be launched
ahead of the Amiga. And ironically this 16-bit design (the Atari ST) was
designed by (some of) the same people who worked previously on the C64.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
I believe the consensus is now that the Tramiels and Shivji were already hard
at work on what became the ST ("Rock bottom price" project) before Tramiel
discovered the Amiga IP and went after Commodore over it. I don't think the ST
was an attempt to catch up with the Amiga so much as the lawsuit with
Commodore was an attempt to slow Commodore down. I'm sure they would maybe
have tried to bolt Amiga tech later into the ST project if they could have,
though. (Makes you wonder if the choice to exclude a Blitter from the original
ST has something to do with that...)

As it was the ST beat the Amiga to market by almost a year, and had an initial
sales lead until Commodore introduced the A500 and dropped the price a bunch.
I know the A1000 wasn't even in the running for me when I bought my ST, it was
ridiculously overpriced.

~~~
rjsw
Atari also had a pretty good developer programme for the ST, I don't remember
any discounts being available for an Amiga.

