Processors and chips
The brains and custom chips of the machines we repair: from the Spectrum's Z80 to the 68060 in accelerated Amigas, by way of Agnus, Denise, Paula and the ULA. How they work, where they came from and the stories they left behind.
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Motorola 68000 · 1979
Head to head
Pick two processors and compare them measure by measure. The bars use the same scale for all of them, so swapping a chip only changes what should change.
Z80See the page
68000See the page
- Year
- 19761979
- Top clock speed
- 20 MHz16.67 MHz
- Transistorslogarithmic scale
- 8,50068,000
- Data bus
- 8 bits16 bits
- Addressable memorylogarithmic scale
- 64 KB16 MB
×8That's how many times more transistors the 68000 has than the Z80.
Transistors over time
From the Z80, with 8,500 transistors, to the 68060, with 2,500,000. Each line on the chart is worth ten times the one below.
Only processors with a published transistor count are shown.
Motorola 68000
1979–1994 · 7 chips
The family that gave every Amiga its brain, from the 1979 68000 to the 68060 on accelerator cards.
Zilog Z80
1976–2017 · 2 chips
The 8-bit processor of the ZX machines, the Spectrums and the Timex models, and its FPGA heir in the Spectrum Next.
National Semiconductor
1976 · 1 chips
The simple, cheap processor of the MK14, the kit from Science of Cambridge, Clive Sinclair's company.
Amiga chips
1985–1993 · 4 chips
The custom chips that made an Amiga an Amiga: graphics, sound and memory, working alongside the processor.
Sinclair
1981 · 1 chips
A single custom chip for the screen, keyboard and sound: one of the reasons the ZX machines were so cheap.