What Happened to the Zilog Z80? Why the Zilog Z80 Disappeared

Zilog's Z80 processor ran the Kaypro, the Osborne and the TRS-80, and by 1982 it sat inside most first-generation microcomputers. Then the office desk moved to Intel, and in 2024 the chip itself reached its last order date. Federico Faggin, Masatoshi Shima and Ralph Ungermann left Intel to build it. The first working Z80 answered a teletype prompt in March 1976, after about 400,000 dollars of Exxon money. It ran Intel 8080 software faster than the 8080 did, and that compatibility was its whole appeal. It was also the weakness. When IBM needed more than 64 kilobytes in 1981, the 8080 software family moved to Intel's 8088, while Zilog's Z8000 could not run Z80 code. In 1997, Z80 products still earned Zilog about 75 million dollars. In this documentary: 1976: the first working chip in Los Altos 1981: Exxon's full ownership and the IBM PC decision 1983: the Kaypro peak and the Osborne bankruptcy 2002: Zilog's prearranged Chapter 11 filing 2024: the last order date for the Z80 What remains is the eZ80, still on sale, and the Z80 inside the TI-83 Plus calculator. If you typed commands at a CP/M prompt, tell us which machine sat on your desk. Subscribe for more careful histories of the processors inside the box.