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Retro the legendary Z80 processor, used in countless arcade boards and consoles. is no longer being manufactured.

Krvavi Abadas

Krvavi Abadas

Mr. Archivist
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1280px-Z80_pinout.svg.png

Dear Customer and/or Distributor,

Please be advised that our Wafer Foundry Manufacturer will be discontinuing support for the Z80 product and other product lines.

Last Time Buy (LTB) Orders will be accepted until June 14", 2024.

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) orders will not be accepted, and orders must be submitted manually.

LTB orders will be booked and scheduled after Zilog has had the opportunity to review/consolidate the demand and received delivery dates from the Wafer Foundry Manufacture.

Depending on the overall LTB demand minimum/maximum order quantities maybe implemented.

LTB Orders are non-cancelable, non-returnable (NCNR). Once Sales Order Acknowledged, no customer requested push outs will be accepted.

Current scheduled orders will not be impacted
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(direct link to the PDF)

some notable uses of the processor include the ZX Spectrum, numerous arcade boards including the original Pac-Man, and the SEGA Master System.

this is far from the first loss of support for an ancient part in the past several months either, as the Linux Kernel dropped support for Voodoo GPUs last April.
 
em said:
The Z80 is almost 50 years old. Let it rest.
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For what it's worth, stuff like this often tends to be used for replacement parts, as well as customized boards that use the processer for building older game machines, so it's definitely a downer to see happen.

Emulation is important, but having to maintain parts is also important.

Shame...
 
julian said:
They were still being made?!
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Yeah! They're super cheap, very mature - no one is writing hardware errata for the Z80 - and run a metric ton of legacy software. Useful as a microcontroller in lots of places, and 8080 has great tooling. The last Z80182, the final micro-update to the Z80, was also called the ZIP - Zilog Intelligent Peripheral Controller. Raspberry pi costs 15 dollars, and is overkill for something like "the button panel on a standing desk". ZIP cost 4 if you bought them in bulk

ARM hardware is often used for those reasons now, and ARM's micro-controller core is more power efficient and smaller. But it's also much more expensive. What really killed the Z80, probably, is the eZ80. It's not pin-compatible with the Z80, but it's much smaller and cooler. I know the current Texas Instruments calculator switched from the Z80 to the eZ80, IIRC
 
Mer.Saloon said:
No one else can legally make the board can they?
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I don't see why not. Patents only last 20 years and IC mask rights only last 10 years.

Note that there are also other, newer ICs that have Z80 backwards compatibility/hardware emulation, such as the eZ80 (although it's not pin compatible).
 
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oldpuck said:
Yeah! They're super cheap, very mature - no one is writing hardware errata for the Z80 - and run a metric ton of legacy software. Useful as a microcontroller in lots of places, and 8080 has great tooling. The last Z80182, the final micro-update to the Z80, was also called the ZIP - Zilog Intelligent Peripheral Controller. Raspberry pi costs 15 dollars, and is overkill for something like "the button panel on a standing desk". ZIP cost 4 if you bought them in bulk

ARM hardware is often used for those reasons now, and ARM's micro-controller core is more power efficient and smaller. But it's also much more expensive. What really killed the Z80, probably, is the eZ80. It's not pin-compatible with the Z80, but it's much smaller and cooler. I know the current Texas Instruments calculator switched from the Z80 to the eZ80, IIRC
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i get that its mature, but isn't it just one of a bazillion micro controllers that are cheap and you can use for many applications?


To the topic: well.. long enough. There are just to many distinct parts made ever the decade, and its neither feasible nor reasonable to keep them a) in production, and b) in storage. There comes a time, when we have to let stuff go, and if its something that can be so easily pretty much 1:1 emulated on modern hardware that you can find anywhere, then im more then okay to let it rest. The important thing is not the chips that nobody sees with games, its the experience.The form factor does play into that (arcade cabinet instead of smartphone for example), but that is independent from the actual chips its running on, the visual and physical interfaces are what colors the perception.
 
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Between the continued availability of 6502 CPUs (specifically 65C02) and the existence and continued support of the eZ80, this isn't a huge shake-up, just the quiet end to a very long era.
 
I remember writing code that is flashed into a microchip many years ago, if I'm not mistaken it was the 8080.

Didn't realize those were still being made either.
 
Fantastic processor to code for at the time, even though the overall speed wasn't that good. Much more similar to the upcoming x86 processors than the 6502 was.
 
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