Friday 19 August 2011

1101. Retail Therapy.

I bought some goodies from Cool Components.

The Arduino Mega 2560 and the XMega XProtolab Oscilloscope.

The bigger Arduino gives me more connections for communicating with the Z80, the SRAM and the EEPROM. The oscilloscope means I can test and check my circuits are working such as a clock circuit running at 1MHz.

Its like Christmas :)

4 comments:

  1. Hi Dave, just wondering how you used the xprotolab with the 5v logic of the Z80 if that is what you used it for?

    Ashley

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    1. Well in reality the xprotolab can't measure frequencies much beyond 250KHz. However, the Z80 doesn't have to be clocked that fast to learn how it works. What is useful is that the xprotolab has 8 digital inputs which can be connected to the output control lines of the Z80 to see whats going on, although I haven't tried that yet.

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  2. I was wondering about the xprotolab not being 5v tolerant on its inputs. As you guessed I'd like to see what is going on with the Z80 address lines.

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  3. I just looked at the specs, and you're right, they're only 3.3V. I've never tried the logic inputs, so this has passed me by. A good excuse to buy something better :)

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