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+--- Thread: End of life for the Z80 (/thread-790.html)
End of life for the Z80 - ChickenMan - 20-04-2024
In a Product Change Notification (PCN) published on April 15, Zilog (now owned by Littelfuse) announced the End of Life for a range of Z80 products, specifically virtually all of the Z84C00 range. This also includes the peripherals, such as the Z84C10 range of MPUs. These are currently already marked as EoL on stores like Mouser, with Littelfuse noting that the last orders with them can be placed until June 14th of 2024. After that you’ll have to try your luck with shady EBay sellers and a lucky box of old-new-stock found in the back of a warehouse.
So maybe its a good idea to grab a few spares while they are still available.
End-Of-Life For Z80 CPU And Peripherals Announced | Hackaday
RE: End of life for the Z80 - MbeeTech - 20-04-2024
I'm sure LittelFuse [Zilog] would keep making them if it were not for the foundries wanting to move away from producing old (& more importantly) large geometry parts.
Honestly I'm surprised it has taken this long.
There are still large stock quantities around at proper distributors for the time being.
After that, if you need new parts, it wouldn't rake much to put a z80 core into a small flash based FPGA (such as the Lattice ICE40 or Gowin LittleBee GW1N) and add some level translators
for 5v signalling all in the size of a DIP40 package for less than you can buy a new Z80 currently. Same goes for the peripheral IC's such as the PIO, SIO etc.
RE: End of life for the Z80 - jds - 21-08-2024
Sad. But there is some hope down the track for a drop-in replacement :
GitHub - rejunity/z80-open-silicon: Z80 open-source silicon clone. Goal is to become a silicon proven, pin compatible, open-source replacement for classic Z80.
If I understand correctly, the TinyTapeout proof-of-concept silicon is still being processed. But the stated aim is to eventually have a drop-in part (SMD but with a 40-pin DIP adaptor board). It's scary that this design, based on a 130nm process (way behind the leading edge), takes just 0.064 mm2 of silicon (excluding the bonding pads, which would take up much more than that).
Then there's also the continuing single-cycle eZ80 microcontroller family from Zilog. It's a 3.3V but has 5V-tolerant I/O, and can run off external memory. Maybe that could be made to work, but timing based on instruction loops would be way, way off.
Joe.