Retrofan 64

Emboldened by a successful cartridge build, I finally pulled the trigger on an RC2014 kit. I'm going to be highly interested to play with it alongside the Z80 CP/M on the Idun cartridge.

Maybe someday I'll adapt one of the Z80 cores for the Mega65 to convince the Mega to be my RC2014 dev environment?

No matter what, I'm playing with tech again! It has no commercial value so it doesn't have AI and business needs choking the life out of it.

Mar 9 at 3:36amWeb
Show threadarclightMar 9

@retrofan64 I had a great time building my RC2014. The only unresolved issues was when assembling a third-party LED matrix card and not understanding the intended orientation of the LED matrix. I think I eventually sorted some of it out with a multimeter in continuity/diode mode and a probe tied to ground. Ultimately something else was wrong that I couldn't diagnose so I put it aside. The RC2014 itself was an interesting and complex kit; it went together well with the only issues being from my inattention (I had to replace a socket and rebuild a trace). I got to the point of running CP/M and noodling around with Z80 assembly.

I got it around the time Adrian Black was doing a series on resuscitating a Southwest Technical Products machine based on the Motorola 6800, the predecessor to the 6502 (long story...). The machine was built on a backplane/card plan similar to the RC2014 so there was some additional historical interest when building the kit.