The design and application of a microprocessor development system

The material presented in this Thesis concerns two topics: the first is the design of a Microprocessor Development System and the second is the application of this system for developing a rather extensive programming example. The Microprocessor Development System was designed around a Z-80 microprocessor. The system contains 8K of RAM, 12K of ROM, serial I/O ports and room for 3 additional cards, A 2K monitor was implemented in ROM and a cross assembler was set up on a large mainframe HOST system. An I/O routine was written to allow the microprocessor system to converse directly with the HOST system. Programs could then be developed on the HOST system, assembled with the cross assembler and loaded directly into the microprocessor for debugging. The programming example discussed is a program to emulate a multi-terminal network processor, a device which is used to multiplex several terminals on a timesharing system via a single modem line. Excellent results were obtained when using the HOST/Microprocessor combination for developing and testing programs for the microprocessor system