On the one hand, the Z80 was indeed a CPU you could easily wrap your mind around, on the other hand, similar sheets exist for Intel chips (from the same author: https://vtda.org/docs/computing/MicroLogic/MicroLogic8086&80...), so maybe the differences between architectures aren't as stark as we like to think?
Having said that, I'm not sure how actually-useful this particular reference card is: huge hex conversion table, but no instruction timing chart?
Anyway... pure nostalgia caused me to go through an old Z80 assembly book just now ("Advanced Spectrum Machine Language"), and I found some code I wrote a good 35 years or so ago: https://ibb.co/fvqtwkQ
This was printed on thermal paper (not sure about the printer model: I don't think it was the original ZX Printer, as that used differently-sized paper), so sort-of impressed it survived that long (most printouts I had from that time long faded). As to why I wrote the code or what it does: I think it was to create an animated tape loading screen, but...
Instruction timings are in the pink table on the left-hand side. For example, `ADC HL, BC; ED4A; H15` means that the instruction affects the flags as in row H and takes 15 cycles to execute.
> so maybe the differences between architectures aren't as stark as we like to think?
The Z80 (designed by Federico Faggin and Masatoshi Shima - two of the 8080 designers) was designed to be binary compatible with the 8080 but more capable - so the architectures would have atleast started out very close.
> The Z80 CPU can execute 158 different instruction types including all 78 of the 8080A CPU
For me, programming mostly involved typing in decimal opcodes using that as a reference. I did own an assembler at some point, but loading it from cassette got old quickly, especially as running my code would usually crash and reset the machine.
Hmm, I recently found my old official “Zilog Z80 CPU Programmer’s Reference Guide” from October 1982. I thought I’d lost it. It was very much loved by my teenage self!
Nice and compact! When I was writing a Z80 emulator I made heavy use of the tables in Sean Young's "The Undocumented Z80 Documented" [0] (chapters 8, 9 & 10). This 2-page reference card seems to contain just about everything in the document's 22 pages.
I have a small collection of programming cards from the 70s & 80s. The most amusing one is the VAX-11, which is actually a booklet with 6 pages of instructions plus another whole page of addressing modes. Thankfully I never had to do any VAX assembly programming.
How so? These are reference cards, so frequent use would be expected. I would also imagine that a great many of them would be carried around by their owners to review in their spare time. (I certainly did so in my younger days.) Their owners would expect them to be durable, to avoid things like the worn and splitting edges that are ever so common on paper products that see a lot of handling.
Keep in mind that these are things that people would set out to buy on their own. Plastic, or at least durability, is something the consumer would look for. They aren't something thrown into the box with an IC, where the vendor would do everything they could to reduce the cost.
Having said that, I'm not sure how actually-useful this particular reference card is: huge hex conversion table, but no instruction timing chart?
Anyway... pure nostalgia caused me to go through an old Z80 assembly book just now ("Advanced Spectrum Machine Language"), and I found some code I wrote a good 35 years or so ago: https://ibb.co/fvqtwkQ
This was printed on thermal paper (not sure about the printer model: I don't think it was the original ZX Printer, as that used differently-sized paper), so sort-of impressed it survived that long (most printouts I had from that time long faded). As to why I wrote the code or what it does: I think it was to create an animated tape loading screen, but...