Z88 Developers' Notes
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27. Developing software for the Z88
 

Although it is possible to use the BBC BASIC as a development environment for Z88 applications, the limited memory capacity of BASIC make this task somewhat arduous. Moreover during development the Z88 is likely to crash fairly often, so much time would be spent in backing up source files to EPROM or another computer. The Z88 however, is not easy to break down. We've managed to work for several months on software (using both a native Z80 assembler and a cross assembler) with plenty of soft resets and without loss of files. It depends on the type of crash. Software should always be developed on the original computer - this is our philosophy!

Finally, it is needed to have a unique application card id, if you are going to produce EPROM card application software. When Cambridge Computer still were manufactoring the Z88, they administrated the card id's. Since they moved their office to Scotland (and have stopped production and interest of Z88), the card id registrations were lost.

The Z88 development project at http://z88.linux.dk have made a substantial effort to produce a fully featured Z80 Assembler toolchain containing a Z80 cross assembler written in ANSI C, linker and library manager to compile large assembler application projects (including the next generation OZ operating system). The cross assembler can been compiled for Windows, Linux and other Unix operating systems, including Mac OSX. Further, a new Z88 emulator and debugging environment has been implemented that supports tracing, breakpoints and many other features to analyse your applications both on EPROM or in RAM. Finally, an application EPROM programming utility has been implemented to produce your own application cards. If you have ideas, bug reports, suggestions for new applications or features of the Z88 operating system, or have an itch to develop software, dont't hesitate to join us at: http:/z88.linux.dk.


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Z88 Motherboard Hardware Developing software for the Z88 Glossary