#2 Use real Z80 instead of soft core...

[Anonymous]

By using a real external Z80 instead of a soft core, the gate count of the FPGA shall decrease, allowing use of smaller, cheaper, easier to find FPGAs.
Isn´t the "Goal to be easily buildable."?
Just hope the pin count will be enough...

[Andrew McMeikan]

trouble with a real Z80 is you then have a lot of connections between it and the fpga, given the dramatic growth of fpga's sticking it all in one chip is a lot simpler.

From a re-using old small fpga point of view, yes sounds good I have heaps of suitable chips lying around but can no longer get design software to develop for them. I literally have bags full of XC3064 and XC3090 chips. So yeah it could be done, please send me a really old version of xilinx tools so I can generate bit streams for them.