I'm currently firming-up an ultra-low-power minimalistic Z80 SBC.
128Kb of static ram, some of it configured as ROM, and a real-time clock - and only 3 chips so far .....
Ok - the time has come to consider I/O, and the obvious choice would be to use a single PIC - say a 18F4520 or similar, so that I could use the Slave Port (maybe ?) and gain access to the impresssive range of peripherals that the PIC offers.
I've had a look at the Parallel Slave Port, and can see that it would need an extra interrupt/ handshaking line for efficient bi-directional communication - but before taking this any further, thought I'd check with you guys first: if you were tackling this job - what form of Z80 to PIC communication would you choose ? Simplicity and reliability being more important here than speed.
Thanks
128Kb of static ram, some of it configured as ROM, and a real-time clock - and only 3 chips so far .....
Ok - the time has come to consider I/O, and the obvious choice would be to use a single PIC - say a 18F4520 or similar, so that I could use the Slave Port (maybe ?) and gain access to the impresssive range of peripherals that the PIC offers.
I've had a look at the Parallel Slave Port, and can see that it would need an extra interrupt/ handshaking line for efficient bi-directional communication - but before taking this any further, thought I'd check with you guys first: if you were tackling this job - what form of Z80 to PIC communication would you choose ? Simplicity and reliability being more important here than speed.
Thanks