HPR4059: the southern cross

intro

trying to keep hpr going
encourage people not to be content is better than quality
last show audio

southern cross brief history

talking electronics TEC-1, 1983, i think it was influenced by
kim-1 although the kim-1 was released by MOS the 6502 designers in 1976
as a way to get people using the 6502 processor. TEC-1 was designed
specifically to get the ordinary bloke involved with computers.

Cris Jones

https://github.com/crsjones/Southern-Cross-Computer-z80

https://youtu.be/AK2FOw1ilg0?si=KX0ocEpk_fV6x-ry

I developed the Z80 Southern Cross Computer for Hong Kong based Kitsrus
in 1992/93. The kit was based on the TEC-1 Computer that was designed by
John Hardy and Ken Stone in 1983 and appeared in Australia's Talking
Electronics Magazine Issue 10 March 1983.

Kitsrus distributed the kit into the US and the UK and was sold
online from Hong Kong.

The Southern Cross Computer appeared in Australia's Silicon Chip
Magazine in the August 1993 edition

my southern cross

i found this southern cross on ebay. its revision 3, and it came
assembled.
description

this is easier to program, still hand assembled machine code, but
encourages building bit banged serial interface

good documentation at the github page

easy to interface too, plenty of projects out there

outro

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

sturgeons law

"Ninety percent of [science fiction] is crud, but then, ninety percent
of everything is crud."

Southern Cross