MZC1
Issue: 0
Date: October 1988
This "Issue 0" Document is the current issue of a collection of my own notes and designs for an Interak card using the Zilog Z80280.
The document was formerly known as "The Z80280 Dossier", but as the dream approaches reality of Interak continuing in development to become (in its ultimate form) a system with a fast CPU addressing a 15 Megabyte address space, high resolution graphics etc., I thought it was about time I started gathering the information in a form more nearly approaching the form it will take in a final manual.
We are all hoping that the price of the Z80280 will drop, but at the moment it is a fairly expensive chip (i.e half the price of the 2.5 MHz Z80 CPU when we first met it!)
Therefore it is only the few far sighted Interakers who have such a chip - we managed to obtain a small quantity of the very first production chips available, and they are mostly now in Interak experimenters' hands.
This document will be made available to this intrepid band, so that they will know what we are up to. I have organised the information in the same way as I do for my other Interak manuals so if you can find your way round them you can find your way round this.
Needless to say it is all new and unchecked - where I did not know a fact, I simply made it up - so any feedback on the contents of this document and the philosophy of the design would be welcome; particularly practical experience, so that when we get to "Issue 1" we will have something that is well tried and tested.
I have now been involved with Interak since my youth (10 years or more ago) and have the benefit of much experience of what is required in an Interak card design. If you have any bright ideas on enhancements or improvements to this design then I shall be glad to hear them, but please do not be offended if I appear to ignore them. As we at Greenbank carry the ultimate responsibility for my successes and failures we have to do things "our way"; it may look to any Interak individual that we do not listen to him, but we listen to everybody, and the finished product becomes the result of an aggregate opinion from everybody, with myself having the casting vote:
David M. Parkins October 1988