I bet a lot of us got our start doing low-level programming for the Z80. I remember learning to program assembly from the manual for a TI calculator. I'm pretty sure those things are still ubiquitous. It's probably the easiest way to learn assembly programming on real hardware anymore.
"Well Johnny, the first thing to understand is how time travel works. You see, our CPUs guess at what you wanted to do next and start executing the pipeline before they know for sure, and sometimes it's wrong, and..."
Received my first home computer, a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, in 1982 or so. No working cassette drive in the house, so of course I started reading the manual. That taught me BASIC. Later I learned assembly language programming, partly via the manuals, and partly via some books at the local library.
I'll always have a soft-spot for Z80 assembly, and have started to work on raw Z80 processors myself now - after spending the past year or two playing with Arduino and ESP8266 devices.
Sound a lot like me in the 80s. Hard to find information. Came across random books in the library.
My latest experience is with AVR assembly. What is it about Z80 that makes you prefer it? Wider variety of practical instructions? Cleaner design?
This blog got me curious about looking into Z80. Not a chip I ever learned anything about. I started out as an Amiga guy and I would occasionally come across books and stuff about 6502. Z80 is just a name I heard from time to time.
The instruction set is simple, and clean. The fact that you don't need much supporting circuitry to drive it is a nice bonus, but mostly I remember coding the thing when I was 12 or so, and now I know what I'm doing for real :)
