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Microprocessor from Zilog, wich which is used in the Amstrad CPC Computers. The Z80/Z80A was a very popular microprocessor, used in a great variety of home computers and appliances as far-fetched as satelitessatellites. It was even used in the Commodore C128 as a secondary processor in order to achieve [[CP/M]] compatibility.

The Z80 microprocessor is an 8 bit [[CPU]] with a 16 bit address bus capable of direct access of to 64k of memory space. It has a language of 252 root instructions and with the reserved 4 bytes as prefixes, acceses access to an additional 308 instructions. The Z80 was modeled modelled after the [[8080]] and contains the 78 seventy- eight 8080 opcodes as a subset to it's its language.

Programming features include an accumulator and six eight 8-bit registers that can be paired as 3-three 16 -bit registers. In addition to the general registers, a stack-pointer, program-counter, and two index (memory pointerspointer) registers are provided. While not in the same leauge league as the Intel 80x86 or the [[Motorola 68000]] series, the Z80 is extremely useful for low cost control applications. One of the more useful features of the Z80 is the built-in refresh circuitry for ease of design with DRAMs.

The Z80 comes in a 40 pin DIP package. It has been manufactured in A, B, and C models, differing only in maximum clock speed. It also has been manufactured as a stand-alone microcontroler microcontroller with various configurations of on-chip RAM and EPROM.