Hacking the last Z80 computer – FOSDEM 2026 [video]
fosdem.orgI really enjoyed your talk, Michal -- it was not only fascinating but the funniest I saw at FOSDEM, too.
I wrote up my impressions for the Register:
Thank you!
This was hilarious and informative; those are the kinds of talks I love.
---
First audience question: "how many did you brick?"
Answer: "...three."
follow-up: "you broke three and you have two to give away?"
Answer: "I have eight more at home."
In the end I gave four away, so I bought five more ;)
There were the TI calculators produced through the 2000s, still powered by Z80, just not a "computer".
That's the first thing mentioned in the video.
Really enjoyed this short and fun talk :)
At the end you mentioned it's possible to re-flash the fw, would you really need to de-solder the chip though? I imagine you could just clamp it.
It's a TSOP48 package, I guess you could clamp it but not that easily. The bigger problem I see is that if you try to program it in-system, you need to apply power to it, and since the power rail is shared with the CPU, the CPU will wake up and try to read the chip, messing with the programming.