Hacking the last Z80 computer ever made

The Z80 CPU has been extremely popular in home computers of the eighties, but as 16-bit and 32-bit processors became more popular, the only new computers built using the Z80 were continuations of some legacy lines (like the Amstrad PCW).

And yet, in 1999 a company named Cidco unveiled a completely new computer line named the MailStation. with a Z80 CPU clocked at 12 MHz and 128 kB of RAM. It was a specialized machine for sending and receiving emails, addressed at people for whom configuring Web access on a PC was too complicated. Yet it was still a computer, with a screen, keyboard, means of communicating with the outside world and possibility of running user apps. Most likely the last new Z80 computer ever designed.

In my talk I would like to present this machine, show how it can be hacked to run custom software, and encourage the audience to join me in documenting the machine and writing custom firmware for it.

MailStation emulator: https://github.com/MichalPleban/mailstation-msemu

Host appliation to transfer software to the MailStation: https://github.com/MichalPleban/mailstation-mailtransfer

MailStation hardware documentation: https://github.com/MichalPleban/mailstation-hardware