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Saw this today, Zilog have finally brought the Z80 line, in dip packages at least, to a halt from 14th June 2024.

https://www.hackster.io/news/zilog-call ... 3594464754

I have a few new CMOS spares for my Z80 machines, but I guess over the years we'll be buying fakes from AliXpress and Ebay, like lots of other legacy ICs.

Edit: seems it's the Z80 in all packaging. The EZ80 remains available.

It is the end of an era, I had a quick look at stocks when I heard that news.

I decided there was no cause for panic, surprisingly, I don't actually have that many Z80 systems.

Thamks to a donation from Les a few years back, the spares work out at 2 CMOS Z80s for each real Z80 system, (MTX, ZX81, Spectrum, Enterprise) I think I'm covered

Still you never know https://www.rocelec.com/ have a habit of buying up old designes there may be hope yet. Although looking at the prices for their authorised version of the MC6800 price might be an issue!

I have two spares and I bought four yesterday- I have three MTXs, an Einstein and an MSX.

Should be covered. But still, I guess the 6502 won out in the end...

gunrock wrote: ↑23 Apr 2024 14:07 I guess the 6502 won out in the end...

If you are talking about the numbers sold for use in micros, then probably, but Z80 was hugely popular in industrial/control applications and I'd argue that it made a bigger contribution to the world

Both the Z80 and the 6502 made a big contribution to the world.

In terms of home/microcomputers, it's very hard to say who and by how much won. Although the Commodore 64 is considered the best selling micro, when considering the sales of Z80 based systems, the various clones of the ZX80, ZX81 and ZX Spectrum are often not counted.

Both the Z80 and the 6502 were designed for embedded systems and industrial, and indeed, both were used in these areas. And there may well still be products that still use the processor cores, it's just that they are now normally part of a larger chip rather than as traditional MPU chip.

Indeed, selling the rights for this kind of thing is the main business of WDC.

Anyway, given the large number of DIL/DIP Z80As sold, there will be plenty on the grey market for many years (even if marked as faster parts).

Mark

In reply to Dave, I was referring to the fact that WDC (as Mark noted above) still sell the 6502 in a couple of variants, so I was asserting that, in terms of lifetime, the 6502 has outlived the Z80 (eZ80 not withstanding).

More generally, I think that they both filled important needs in the market - the Z80 as a cheaper, more capable alternative to the 8080, enabling a boom in CP/M machines for the business and educational markets (and soon after, a raft of home computers), plus the embedded market you mention. The 6502 was so cheap and stripped back it was very easy for it to find it's home in many, many consumer-focused computer and console systems.