amstrad-cpc-z80-dart's Introduction

Amstrad CPC Z80 DART

Simple Z80 DART board compatible with the Amstrad CPC and MX4 connector.

Objective

Prototyping board to learn about the Z80 DART, and how to write Z80 assembly using an Amstrad CPC.

Background

Part of a number of modular cards using Z80 associated peripherals and the Amstrad CPC.

Backplane

CPC Amstrad Expansion Backplane by revaldinho

IO Addressing

The IO Address can be selected using two sets of jumpers (CS_HB and CS_LB), supporting the following base address.

F8E0 and F8F0
F9E0 and F9F0
FAE0 and FAF0
FBE0 and FBF0

See CPC Wiki IO Port Summary for a list of known IO ports used on the Amstrad CPC.

Testing

The Z80 DART board has been built and simple testing has been completed on an Amstrad CPC 6128.

Note testing was completed with a Z80 CTC board for the baud clock generation. The Amstrad Clock can be used as a baud clock but this will result in a non standard baud rate.

Note also an FTDI Serial Adapter was used to connect to a putty session.

IEI was tied high (via a 10K resistor) using a jumper to IEIE.

PCBs

PCBs are available from Seeed Studio.

Components

This Digi-Key List contains all components excluding the Z80 DART and FTDI Serial Adapter.

Note the right angled header for the port connections was not available at the time of producing this list but all other components were in stock for shipping immediately.