Issue 147 October 2002
Watch Me Pull A Rabbit Out of My Hat

Start • Rabbit 3000 • No-Risk CISC • Peck-O-Periphs • Time Traveler • One-Stop Shopping • Keep Motoring • Sources and PDF

As you’ll see, no one can argue that the new and improved Rabbit 3000 8-bit micro doesn’t live up to the latter expectation.

How new it is, though, is another question. The silicon may be hot off of the assembly line, but the 3000 has roots that go way back.

Flash back to the mid-’70s. Messrs, Faggin, Shima, Mazor, et al of Intel sit down to craft a follow-on to their 4004 calculator chip and 8008 terminal chip. The result—the 8080—is a big hit in spite of management’s skepticism. After all, companies like IBM and the "BUNCH" (Burroughs, Univac, NCR, CDC, and Honeywell—remember them?) don’t sell that many computers, so just how many computer chips can we expect to unload?

Meanwhile, those cowboys in Texas are making hay with their 6800. The 8080 crew goes to their battle stations ready to craft a new version of the 8080 that will send the Motorola horse to the glue factory for good.

But wait, Intel management is starting to get it about these newfangled microchips. From on high, word comes down that it’s 16 bits or bust. Yeah, we’ll let you make a new 8080, which subsequently appeared as the 8085, but it’s just a holding action until we get our 8086/88 act together.

Faggin, Shima, and the others aren’t happy. Be the 16-bit and beyond world as it may, there’s still great untapped potential for better 8-bit chips. A new company, Zilog, and a new chip, the Z80, are born.

In the late ’70s and early ’80s, while Intel and Motorola battled for dominance in the nascent PC business, Zilog was cranking 8-bit Z80s and peripheral chips into embedded applications like there was no tomorrow.

If Zilog had stayed focused, the story might have turned out differently. But instead they repeatedly fell victim to all manner of self-inflicted, ill-conceived product strategies and corporate machinations. The founders left, an oil company took over, the Z8000 choked, and, though sales continued coasting along, Zilog fiddled while the Z80 burned.

The next chapter in the saga comes from overseas where Hitachi, looking for a way out of a messy love-hate relationship with Motorola, came up with the HD64180, a spiffed-up Z80-compatible CPU with handy built-in glue logic and I/O functions. Subsequently, Hitachi moved on with their H8 architecture, and Zilog remains as the source for the Z180 and it’s derivatives along with their own eZ80 next-generation design (Circuit Cellar 139).

I suppose with all of the excitement over the years, it’s no surprise that a long-time Z80/180 customer, the aptly named Z-World, decided to take matters into their own hands. Enter Rabbit Semiconductor, a sister company created to carry forward the 20-plus-year legacy of the 8080/Z80/180.

And lest you think a legacy is more like baggage, just remember that while new players (e.g., the Atmel AVR and aforementioned Hitachi H8) are starting to get traction, the 8-bit market is still well served by long-in-tooth classic architectures.