About

Hello and welcome to my blog !

My name is Michał Cierniak and I`m from Poland. I`m an electric engineer, and I`m working at Zyxel Networks as a technical support engineer. I was born in 1981 and during my early days I could witness the explosion of home computing in my country. I owned few 8 bit machines back in the day, including ZX81, ZX Spectrum 48K and Atari 65XE. I was always curious of the inner workings of a personal computer, but due to lack of information and not knowing anyone competent in this area, I had to tame my curiosty for many years. Now I have the oportunity to not only understand how computers work, but to build one (or more !) by my own hands! This blog helps me documenting my work and sharing technical knowledge with other enthusiasts. Currently, the page is divided in categories related to particular projects:

C- Z80 Computer:

A bigger project of a Z80 based computer with modular design. The computer has 64Kb RAM, 32KB ROM, custom made video card interfacing a VGA monitor, MDA/Hercules compatible PC 8-bit ISA card for 80 column display and lots of I/O: alphanumeric keyboard, serial port, timer, UART, sound, parralel I/O, Compact Flash. Computer can run it`s own ROM monitor and also CP/M 2.2 operating system.

6507 SBC Computer:

A smaller but very versatile single board computer based on 6507 CPU. The board includes: 4KB RAM, 2KB ROM with monitor program, 2×16 character display (HD44780 compatible), UART, parrallel I/O, hex keypad and an expansion bus. I`ve recently added an expansion board with TMS9118 VDP for color display, and SAA1099 sound generator for sounds and music.

CDP1802 Project:

Currently ongoing effort to build a strongly expandable COSMAC ELF compatible computer with rich front panel interface.

 

In future I also plan to include my other electronic projects, mainly based on AVR microcontrollers.