There are still new Z80 based kits being made for hobbyists and enthusiasts to build and learn about microprocessors. Build a MicroBeast or RC2014 and you can play Zork or run CP/M, write your own operating system or just enjoy the blinkenlights. Though the chips appear to be reaching end of life, it's expected they will be available (and useful for simple computer projects) for some time yet.

There will be clones once stocks get low and Zilog's own eZ80 is binary compatible with Z80 code.

Maybe some adaptor board can be made to convert a DIL socket to a square socket for a Z180 or Z280.

Sadly the still in production Zilog chips (eZ80, Z180 etc.) are not hardware compatible with the original microprocessor.

They'll be around for a long time yet, I must have several dozen just stashed in the various "it'll be useful" or "too good to throw out" collections of stuff I've got and I was never really a Z80 fan, much preferred the 6502 for no real reason other than it was the CPU in my first computer.

Back in the day, some were fans of the Z80, while others swore by the 6502. The latter pointed to how their favourite chip could do so many things in a single clock cycle, that the Z80 took several cycles to match.

What they neglected to mention was that the 6502 was doing these single-cycle operations on strictly 8-bit quantities, where the Z80 was trying to support full 16-bit arithmetic in all its addressing. For example, the 6502 was limited to a 256-byte stack that had to reside in page 1, while the Z80 had a full 16-bit stack pointer, the same size as all its other address registers.

The Z80 also had an alternate register bank, for interrupt handling swapping to that was far faster than pushing the registers on to the stack and popping off after the ISR had run.

Kind of an early RISC vs CISC battle. The Z80 had some pretty complex instructions, while the 6502 kept it simple.

" while the 6502 kept it simple "

and was therefore the ideal first introduction to machine code -- maybe slower at math than the Z80 but quite fast enough for many purposes. In my day I built several sophisticated data logging and control systems using the 6502.

The real difference in the 8 bit wars came from the accessories around the CPU rather than the CPU itself. VIC-II and SID were very potent tools for the jobs they did. Doing those jobs in CPU would be both wasteful and poor performing.

I've lightly dabbled in assemblers for both systems. While architectural knowledge will send you different directions to problem solve, the capabilities are roughly par. Software racing scenarios are a thing. Pick a problem that one CPU is better at than the other and you win that race - rather predictably!

Group B rally car in the mud? Or Formula 1 car on tarmac?

I had both a C64 and a ZX Spectrum in the 1980's. One failed due to a badly placed glass of lemonade and we got the 64 the year after. There was no question for me whatsoever which was the better gaming system. But for tinkering, the accessibility of the Spectrum definitely won. All those peeks and pokes to do fun stuff on C64 condensed down to a few trivial commands on Spectrum. Middle-aged me knows the 64 is more potent but the instant gratification of programming the Speccy set me on a career path that obscure pokes could never have done.

RasPi started out with some bold ideas about opening up accessibility to Cambridge Uni prospectives; and then we get things like Scratch coming out. I was video called by my 8yr old godson the other day who had just wrote his first program in scratch with sprites responding to his whims. If it has created that spark, then it has done well. Z80 did it for me (with some help from Sir Clive and his team).

The C64 had better sound & graphics, but I recall it struggled with 3D. The game "Driller" (an early 3D first person game) apparently struggled on the C64.

Tinkering on the Spectrum was very helpfully enabled by the manual which went into great detail about the innards of the system. It probably drove me into computing the same as yourself.

The Freescape engine (Driller, Total Eclipse, Castle Master. Maybe a few other titles?) required a ton of patience on any of the 8 bits. Played most of them, but sub 1-FPS was not unusual while moving.

The Sentinel demonstrated somewhat smooth rotation, but movement by transferring from one robot to another could take quite some time to carry out. Can you hear that jingle playing with the blue screen for several seconds?

F16 Combat Pilot was decently smooth, with the 3D objects moving relatively smoothly even if they weren't on screen that often. Sprites were king really. 3D needed the extra bandwidth and megahertz of the 68000 or similar to really make an impact.

Although I believe the Z80s internal ALU was 4-bit, which just goes to show the tradeoffs that were made in those early days. That doesn't invalidate your point, to be clear. As a long-time 6502 developer there were times I would have killed for 16-bit registers and a stack that wasn't limited to 256 bytes. Or more than three on-chip registers. Or an increment instruction for A that didn't require you to clear the carry flag first (and so on).

It all prefigures the CISC/RISC architecture wars. Z80 was closer to the CISC camp, and some aspects of 6502 were quite RISC-y. (And before the purists peck my eyes out, I'm not saying that 6502=RISC in a strict sense).

The processor I really enjoyed writing code for was the 6809, but I didn't have many opportunities to do so. Oh, nice addressing modes and a consistent design!

It’s good to see the Zilog name is still out there. It’s been through a few different owners by acquisitions a management buy back and a chapter 11. Now owned by Littlefuse.

I was recently given to understand - I haven't been able to check so take this with a grain of salt - that Rochester are able to supply so many EOL parts because they buy the masks for those parts and remake. If this is indeed the case, it's possible they may end up with z80 parts available in proper 40-pin DIP packages...

(The 6502 - as the WDC65c02 - is still available new, though only from a handful of vendors - Mouser and Jameco are the largest, I think).

Hobby computing is becoming increasingly difficult (at the 'build a system' rather than 'program a system') due to the decreasing availability of easily prototypeable parts - SOIC is perhaps the smallest package that most people would be able to hand-solder; DIP is a lot easier. I've just designed a solderable prototyping board that will accept with DIP or SOIC for many parts, for my own development needs.

SOIC is perhaps the smallest package that most people would be able to hand-solder;

Microscopes and hot air stations are fairly cheap these days. With that, you can even solder BGA chips "by hand".

Long time ago, comments like this discouraged me from even trying like "this is SMT so can't be reworked at home". Turns out it can be and it's fairly easy.

It's actually much easier and quicker to work with surface mount components than THT.

In many ways yes, though I don't trust BGA without an x-ray inspection system which for some reason I don't have at home.

However, it's difficult to prototype circuits or parts thereof; effectively, you need to either make a PCB for the whole circuit or do something like an adaptor from the small-format part to DIP or similar. My most recent adaptor is from a TSSOP-48 ZIP socket to DIP-28 (so a larger but much cheaper flash part can be used to replace an olde-worlde eeprom).

PCB + solder mask + toaster oven seems to work quite well (though I wouldn't recommend it for production!)

I could say "I did not see that one coming", though 48 years has to be some sort of record for any kind of complex IC production. I think only the 555 timer can compete for longevity? I still have hardware with Z80's in connected to my daily driver, namely a Roland SC-88.

Lifetimes and careers have been defined by the Z80 IC. I started out on the Sharp MZ-80 and later ZX Spectrum+. Would definitely not be doing what I am today without what it taught.

I think only the 555 timer can compete for longevity?

NE555 was introduced in 1971, the 741 op amp predates that by 3 years.

The 78nn series of voltage regulators are close being introduced in 1972.

The 70's were interesting times for component development.

Do not forget all the MSX computers in those days - all Z80.

Fond memories :)

And the now 40 year old Amstrad CPC464.....

Ah.....the useful books by Rodney Zaks and Lance Leventhal!

And the fantastic book by David Cortesi ("A Programmer's Notebook").....which had multiple chapters each with the same structure: requirements, design, code....8080 assembler.

These were the resources I used to get started in programming in 1983.....on an Osborne 01......powered by a Z80!

I would not have had a 35year career in IT. Thankyou Zilog

I was running complicated factory machinery using hand-crafted Z80 assembler. It all fitted into about 20K, most of which was screen & keyboard control. Then there was a data table listing all the ports for the components, which the index registers scanned through each cycle. The actual operating code was very small except for the most complex components.

I cut my teeth on Z80 assembly with my ZX81, and I loved it. My fellow geeks (a.k.a. class mates) were all in the 6502 camp. I never understood why, because the Z80 was, in my humble opinion, the dog's whatzits and definitely the best CPU of the era. It was technically an 8 bit CPU, but the BC, DE and HL register pairs could be used for 16-bit operations as if you were running code on a "true" 16-bitter. Then there were nuclear-powered instructions like LDIR and LDDR that could transfer massive amounts of data across your entire memory map in just 4 steps: set source pointer, set target pointer, set block size, and let rip. Compare that to the puny two 8-bit registers X and Y (not counting the 8-bit accumulator register that the Z80 also had) and the fact that the instruction set lacked all the power toys from the Z80, which meant that instead of a few instructions you needed half a page or more.

My 6502-oriented friends saw it differently. I never knew why. They claimed a smaller instruction set was so much more efficient. Uh-huh. This was in the days when we still counted the clock cycles required for each opcode to work out timing and such, but while the Z80 required more clock cycles per opcode than the 6502 did (a fact that was pointed out to me over just about every cup of coffee) the much more powerful instruction set meant that even both CPUs ran at the same crystal-bound Mhz speed, the Z80 consistently won, and then some. But when I pointed that out their argument became that Jobs & Woz never would have chosen the wrong CPU, and the fact that the C64 sold more units than the ZX81, so the 6502 had to be better. Wimps. :-)

And then the peripheral chips! The SIO, PIO and CTC could be added to the Z80 with little more than a few paper clips and some snot, and suddenly you had yourself the makings of a very decent CPU-based microcontroller! And in true Zilog fashion, working with the PIO, SIO and CTC simply meant shoving some data into a bunch of registers and the rest took care of itself. Doing the same with a 6502 required a bucket full of TTL chips. (Of course this was before FPGA came onto the scene; back then you either did things in "dumb" 74xx/4xxx TTL/CMOS logic, or you used a CPU and software.)

I can see why the Z80 remained in production for 48 years. Although, in all fairness, the 6502 is also still in production, so honor where honor's due.

But no matter. With today's kit building a Z80 emulator isn't that complicated. Emulating a 6502 is even simpler.