Yes, it needs the extended bus, and there is no point in using my Z80/RAM board without the z80ctrl. It won't work because it has no ROM, and it doesn't support sharing the memory address space with a ROM. Or are you talking about the stock RC2014 boards?

@@jblangston3 Thank you. I have the backplane pro and all of the rc2014 components to run CP/M. However, my current components do not need the extended bus. If I get z80ctrl to replace ROM, CF etc,, do I also need your z80/RAM board, or can I use my existing z80 board (non-extended bus) and 64K RAM board (also non-extended bus)?

@@8bitBunker The backplane pro has the extended bus and so do the CPU and RAM modules that come with it in the kit. These modules are compatible with z80ctrl. The requirement for the extended bus is that Z80 and z80ctrl need connections to the BUSRQ, BUSACK, and WAIT signals, which are on the second row, to share control of the bus. I guess your confusion may lie in what extended means. There are 3 levels of bus compatibility in the RC2014 ecosystem. The original bus is only the single row 40 pin header with 16-bit address, 8-bit data, and the most important control signals. This is not compatible with z80ctrl because it doesn't have the BUSRQ, BUSACK, and WAIT signals. The official RC2014 extended bus adds another 23 pins on the second row with some additional control signals including BUSRQ, BUSACK, and WAIT signals that z80ctrl needs, as well as another 8 bits of data bus that are unused. This is what the RC2014 Pro backplane, CPU, and RAM boards use. Finally there is the unofficial BP80 bus which uses the full 40 pins of both rows for a total of 80. This adds another 16 bits of address bus, intended for CPUs that natively support more than 64KB of RAM. The z80ctrl does not use the extended address or extended data bus pins and therefore does not require the BP80 bus.

@@jblangston3 This is very enlightening, thank you J.B. for crafting such a thorough response!

No, it only works on Z80 based systems, not Z180. I am working (slowly) on a new revision that should work with it in theory but I do not have an ETA.

Thank you, I look forward to the addition.

Oh nevermind you're doing something else.

The only thing it emulates is the MSX keyboard. The sound and video chips are the real chips used in the MSX1. If you got the video chip from the MSX2 it might be possible to use z80ctrl with it to emulate the keyboard for use with that too but I don't have a board using that chip.

@@jblangston3 thank you. does it emulate the MSX1 memory map too?

@@over2seeyer it has a flat 64k that is all ram. It is possible to load in msx-basic and it works. However it doesn’t support the slot mechanism so any functions that depend on this won’t work

@@jblangston3 That sounds great, can it work as standalone or do you need a computer to sideload programs in it?

@@over2seeyer it loads programs from an sd card. Currently it emulates the msx keyboard using a serial connection from another computer. It should be possible to replace the second serial port with a ps/2 keyboard interface that also emulates msx keyboard scan codes but I never got around to doing that.

Pedant, table for one! I'm pretty sure everyone knows what I mean, and it's easier to say.

Hex 100, just like you'd read 0xC000 as "hex C thousand"