RC2014 Pro - Homebrew Z80 Computer Kit

Name: RC2014 Pro - Homebrew Z80 Computer Kit
SKU: 10627
Price: 212.00 USD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.42 (40 reviews)

(40 Reviews)

Z80 based modular homebrew CP/M computer kit.

Designed by RFC2795 Ltd in United Kingdom

RC2014 Pro - Homebrew Z80 Computer Kit 1

RC2014 Pro - Homebrew Z80 Computer Kit 2

RC2014 Pro - Homebrew Z80 Computer Kit 3

RC2014 Pro - Homebrew Z80 Computer Kit 4

RC2014 Pro - Homebrew Z80 Computer Kit 5

RC2014 Pro - Homebrew Z80 Computer Kit 6

RC2014 Pro - Homebrew Z80 Computer Kit 7

2017-10-05T14:05:25.241Z-RC2014 Pro (1).JPG

2017-10-05T13:29:27.884Z-RC2014 Pro (3).JPG

2017-10-05T14:05:25.241Z-RC2014 Pro (5).JPG

2017-10-05T13:29:27.884Z-RC2014 Pro (9).jpg

2017-10-05T13:29:27.884Z-RC2014 Pro (6).JPG

2017-10-05T13:29:27.884Z-RC2014 Pro (8).JPG

2018-10-05T10:23:42.290Z-Which RC2014.PNG

Buy with confidence.

Our Tindie Guarantee protects your purchase from fraud. Learn More

Z80 based modular homebrew CP/M computer kit.

RC2014 is a range of homebrew computer kits reminiscent of what was available in the late 70s / early 80s. They are not a clone of anything specific, but there are suggestions of the ZX81, UK101, S1…

What is included

The RC2014 Pro Kit includes all PCBs, sockets & headers, ICs, pre-programmed ROM, pre-programmed compact flash card, passive components and USB power lead. Simple assembly guide is included, and more detailed info available on the RC2014 website. See Bill of Material link for exact list

It is assumed that you have your own soldering equipment (entry level soldering kit is sufficient), and have at least beginners experience.

You will need to supply your own USB power adapter (500ma or higher) and an FTDI cable or CDC serial adapter connected to your PC/laptop

Optional Extras

If ordering a RC2014 Pro Kit, you may wish to add extra modules. The 3 most popular options will work out cheaper if ordering from this page, as well as saving you postage. (Of course, more modules are available. Please see my Other Products for the full list)

Digital I/O Module Let the RC2014 interact with the real workload through it's 8 switch inputs and 8 LED outputs. For further info see here

USB CDC Serial Adapter (5v) The RC2014 is designed to work with a standard 5v FTDI cable. Most USB to Serial adapters will work just fine too, but if you don't already have one, why not add this USB CDC Serial Adapter by 8086 Consultancy to your order Or buy direct from the creator here .

SCM is Small Computer Monitor written for the RC2014 by Steve Cousins

RC2014 is a trademark of RFC2795 Ltd

No country selected, please select your country to see shipping options.

Change Destination Country:

RFC2795 Ltd Shipping Policy:

Products are normally shipped next working day, however during busy periods this may extend slightly.

Tracked or Tracked & Signed options are available to most locations. This may not get your kit to you any quicker, but it adds peace of mind that you know where it has got to.

It is your responsibility to pay any import duty or other taxes where appropriate.

Important note for European Union customers Tindie is unable to comply with new EU tax regulations, so unfortunately I am no longer shipping to the EU via Tindie, but do sell them through a website which is does handle the VAT and tax payments.

Review Breakdown

Average Ratings

Product: (4.72)

Documentation: (3.38)

Shipping: (4.95)

Communication: (4.62)

Andrew | Nov. 3, 2021

An excellent Z-80 starter kit

A great bundle of the cards needed to build a respectable Z-80 computer system. This is NOT a Heathkit style kit with instructions to walk you through the soldering of every resistor. You'll need to look at online web pages and apply a little thought as you put it together--for me, that was part of the fun!

Once assembled, old timers will recognize it as a spiritual successor to an S100 system. It's an open bus, and I'm already pondering what cards I can add to its open slots. Maybe an ESP32 one to provide Ethernet and Wifi? We'll see.

Shawn | Oct. 19, 2021

I have been having a blast with the kit!

I love the idea of this hobby kit and it has been an absolute blast learning about it and building it. Writing code for it has brought back so many wonderful memories.

Thank you for putting the kit together.

Peter | Oct. 5, 2021

Very pleased with my Homebrew Z80 computer kit

I bought the RC2014 Pro computer kit with a view to running CP/M in order to understand how a minimalist operating system is implemented and to see what it could do in practice. The kit arrived very promptly. Circuit boards were of excellent quality and all components were supplied. Soldering the board together was quite enjoyable, though I did find documentation (provided on the Internet) was a little less comprehensive that I would have liked. For example, I had to explore the Compact Flash storage module with a multimeter to decide which way around to fit the LED. This meant relying on the photographs of the completed boards to solve some of the issues of assembly.

The computer kit worked first time, and was happy to run BASIC. However I couldn't get it to load CP/M, despite best efforts of Google, and because of this I have not given the product five stars. Eventually, I replaced the included RAM and ROM boards with the single '512kROM 512kRam' module board and this solved all problems. I have had to computer kit running permanently for about a week and not discovered any faults or issues. There is plenty of Z80 software available on the net of good quality (e.g. for tracking household expenses I find SuperCalc less 'faff' to use than Excel).

I now have a platform to learn Z80 assembler and hopefully can go on to explore CP/M itself.

Dylan | Sept. 26, 2021

Nice kit, worked first time!

The RC2014 Pro is a nice kit. It took me a while going through all the permutations of kits (Mini, CP/M, etc) to settle on this version.
A couple of minor niggles, the LEDs on the backplane and CF module are very bright. I ended up going through a number of different resistor values to dim them before settling on 22k (yes, a big step up on the 330's that come with the kit). The process of soldering, then removing the resistors is a little tricky and I ended up damaging one of the pads. I'd recommend trying a couple different resistor values before soldering them in place.
It would also be nice if the kit came with a couple extra 20 pin sockets so more of the slots can be the extended version from day one.

David | July 11, 2021

Yup. It’s an RC2014 Pro.

Having experienced the original kit, I knew what I was in store for. Despite this fact, the expanded capabilities of the pro’s extended bus and additional included modules has blown me away.

I have been able to confirm that the AT28 series works fine in the RAM module. Just pull the write enable line high for your chip using the included jumpers.

I was able to burn stock CollapseOS onto free space in the supplied ROM and boot into it with 56k of RAM simply by adjusting supplied jumpers. The system’s design makes it exceedingly easy to use your own firmware.

It’s a long build. Take your time and take breaks. The included header pins only cover enabling portions of the extended bus. If you want access to the full extended bus on every slot, have your own headers on hand.

David | March 18, 2021

My First Retro Z80 RC2014 Pro

This has certainly rekindled my love of this technology. I have thoroughly enjoyed building this kit. I must say that the soldering is extremely easy if you use Multicomp 0.7mm Low Activation No-Clean 60/40 solder. All the holes are through plated which is nice. I started by scanning each of the PCB's first so I had a copy of all the PCB tracks just in case I had to do some trouble-shooting. Once I had soldered all of the sockets onto the PCB's I clean them using Isopropyl alcohol. I took all the precautions to static and used an antistatic wrist strap. Then I checked the boards for any missing joints before inserting the chips.
I started testing the clock board first just to see if I had a clock signal and voltages were correct across the backplane. Then I mounted the boards as suggested in the assembly guide.
The instructions. This was just a little confusing as there are many pictures of each board and each one had slightly different jumper arrangements. However, the clue is in the title - 'Z80 Pro CP/M'. I printed off the guide for this set up and set the jumpers accordingly. Now assembled I powered up and used the serial adaptor that I ordered with the kit and it worked. :-)
I do think an instruction booklet my be of some benefit as I could have quite easily wasted time looking for the faults. The first screen greeting is so important to give you a smile once you know you have success in you soldering.
I salute the designer for this excellent kit.

Dieter | Dec. 15, 2020

I am very satisfied with the RC2014, a great device!

Construction and the RC2014 was very easy. I learned a lot from it.
The quality of the circuit boards is excellent.

Mitchell | Nov. 16, 2020

What they said

Mirroring what others have said.

The quality of the PCB's is excellent. Everything was organized and well packed. Documentation is available per module on the rc2014 site. It's a bit skimpy in areas but good overall.

Building it was a lot of fun. I'm decent with a soldering iron but don't have any significant understanding of the inner workings of the Z80. I would say I still don't but I certainly know a lot more now than I did a few weeks ago! I had a couple of little hiccups but I was able to iron (pun intended) those out. Point being is it's absolutely something a beginner to the hobby can attempt.

Alexander | Oct. 13, 2020

Very Nice Kit

Very nice kit, build quality is very good. Being new to electronics I found the documentation lacking and not very clear but again that's probably down to me not being an experienced builder more than anything. Took me a few months to get round to assembly but once I did it came together pretty quick I even enjoyed putting on all the headers. I've now got the challenge of getting it to work. I've managed to power it on with no pops, bangs or smoke so I'm winning I think.

Hendrik-Jan | Oct. 11, 2020

RC2014 Pro - outstanding kit from a wonderful seller

I was looking for a 'retro-kit' that would allow me to delve in to computer architecture basics. The RC2014 fit that requirement and more. It is a fantastic machine that invites me to explore many different aspects of computer architecture, computer history, and electronics in general.

Just the layout is fantastic - the RC2014 is designed to have all major components of a computer - CPU, RAM, ROM, clock, I/O (and, for CP/M, also storage) in a modular fashion. Especially since in this kit you can have low clock speeds, this really invites to discover foundations of how a CPU works, e.g. by applying a cheap logic analyzer.

You have several tools to your disposal to interact with the system from ROM. Of course there is BASIC, but also a computer monitor (essential for delving into machine code) but there's also CP/M. This allows you to experience a bunch of 70s and early 80s software. One of my interests is history of programming languages. I have recently made my very first FORTRAN program on the RC2014, a full 63 years after it was invented. And next up is a walk down memory lane with Pascal, which was my 2nd computer language, and the first I learned in school, now 32 years ago. I also want to do machine coding/assembler, something I've done on my Commodore 64 for the 6502, but never so far for Z80. I recommend having a look at Oscar Vermeulen's Demodisk for software that you can use with the RC2014 CP/M (https://obsolescence.wixsite.com/obsolescence/multicomp-fpga-cpm-demo-disk).

This was not an easy build for me, I must admit. I consider myself a little beyond novice, but I'm certainly not highly skilled in soldering or electronics. The build instructions in itself are clear. There's loads of soldering involved though, and you really should be careful not to rush. The documentation is certainly more than adequate, but that doesn't mean that every single thing that you can do wrong is pointed out in detail. I had a few issues getting the machine going at first, which I now attribute to some ICs probably not being seated well. Seating especially the large ones (SIO and CPU) does require a bit of care, I've bent a few pins of my SIO chip, but fortunately I could get it out right, straighten the legs, and seat it right in the end.

Then, there's a bit of fiddling around with different jumpers to get the ROM options right, which also need to correctly align with the RAM jumpers. Factor in various clock settings, and you get a nice number of variables that you can mess up. Of course, as you discover how to do this right, you also get the understanding of the architecture of the thing at it's most basic level, which was in fact one of my goals for getting one.

In the end there's very little you can destroy... well, kind of. I had a major screw-up, when I wanted to power up the RC2014. I was working with my laptop as terminal device. That laptop happens to have a similar power jack.... but is not 5V of course, but 19V. I accidentally took that jack, stuck it in my RC2014 - the moment it happened I realized what I did but of course, 1 second is already too much. Fortunately Spencer was very helpful in helping out - in the end it took a considerable chip-transplant (and CF card too) to get my machine working again, but it worked out fortunately. Applying the wrong voltage is probably one of very few ways in which you can harm your machine, btw.

Finally, I want to highlight that Spencer Owen has been wonderful in his responses to my questions early on when I was investigating the RC2014 - as well as helping me out reviving my fried RC2014 by supplying spare parts and providing pointers where to troubleshoot. This kind of open and helpful atmosphere is something I have experienced many times from people that have an interest in the RC2014 - there's really a very nice RC2014 community out there. I really like these communities - similar to e.g. Raspberry Pi, although that one's bigger of course - where you can get (or provide) input and support, from novice to expert.

In all, if you have an interest in retrocomputing, or maybe more generally in computer architecture, then the RC2014 Pro is a fantastic kit to consider. In retrospect, given my limited experience, I perhaps *should* have started with a somewhat smaller build, but I did persevere, and with some help of Spencer and RC2014 community (Google Groups, Facebook etc) managed to get it going fairly easily, while learning tons of stuff along the way. There's tons more of things still to discover so I'm expecting I'm going to use (and expand) my RC2014 Pro for some years to come.

Andrew | Sept. 19, 2020

Enjoyable kit - retrotastic childhood Basic experience

Relatively easy to build ( I'm an experienced electronic engineer ) although it does require a little hunting for details , and a couple of items may have you scratching your head for a short while ( the unmarked resistor values on the SIO card , the dual row headers which need pins extracting , the uncertainty about splitting the single row pins , the lack of a 7805 and associated capacitors on the motherboard , need to install 5v link on SIO board to power Usb serial adapter, a few concerns about plated holes under a couple of IC sockets which looked like they may have needed links , they don't ). Took me about 3 hours to build - worked first time. The issues are mostly just due to having to skip between the various pages and the build guides don't appear to be quite uptodate for the latest version.

Ettore | Aug. 19, 2020

Sufficente

Buongiorno, manca documentazioni sull'assemblaggio componenti su le schede e scheda madre, ma spero di trovarle sul Vs. sito.
Saluti Ettore Frigo

Brian | Aug. 11, 2020

Excellent Kit

The RC2014 has evolved from it's original design to be quite elegant. I purchased the Pro kit and read all of the online information I could find several times before beginning construction. The kit went together smoothly with no issues but when I powered up the first time I got nothing. I backed off and probed with the scope and everything checked out so I plugged it all back together and this time it booted! Turns out it probably worked the first time — I even had all of the jumpers set correctly! What I didn't have was a reliable USB serial adapter. I recommend using a tried and known good cable to start or, if you don't have one, get a genuine FTDI cable from a distributor like Mouser. Avoid the crap on Amazon like I got. Shipping was prompt but, due to the current current global status, took over three weeks to arrive. The kit is beautifully packed but mine suffered a mild gash in the top which resulted in one of the TTL chips requiring "surgery" to straighten its pins. No other damage. The ROM comes with several boot images but, for the Pro kit, only the CP/M boot monitor really works. Not a problem, though, and it invites you to get involved and write your own custom boot image. The only thing I would have liked to see in the kit is a complete and detailed assembly manual. There's an opportunity there for someone. Over all, a great kit and a blast to use. I'm now kicking myself for not keeping any of the many CP/M software disks I got back in the day...

John | June 13, 2020

Founder of a Community

Spencer has founded quite a thriving community around the RC2014--possibly the most active Z80 retrocomputing community currently in existence. For the advanced user, he doesn't offer the most advanced hardware available, but what he does offer is a solid foundation to build on. I've designed a few boards for the RC2014 myself and I know how much effort it takes. I appreciate his desire to keep his kits accessible to the beginner, and his willingness to welcome other hardware designers into the community he's built. He's always there to answer questions on his RC2014-Z80 mailing list and he's a great ambassador for the retrocomputing hobby.

Olev | March 21, 2020

Where have my eyes been???

Back in 1983, we in a small Estonian town Tartu (this time behind the Iron Curtain, of course) built a 8-bit PC, based on 8080 (or, to be precise, it's illegal Soviet clone K580VM80). It was a great time...
Thus, when I found the RC2014 on Internet, I got excited. Yes, we have many emulators running on PCs, Macs, Pis -- but they are not the right thing.
And I, a former programmer, am a bit scared about the thought building all the hardware...
However, I know from which end to grasp the soldering iron...
So I read the descriptions of the RC2014 versions, and decided to order the "Full Monty". Why?
Because it runs CP/M. This was _the_ operating system of the early eighties, and it can do almost everything.
....
In addition to the RC2014 Pro kit I ordered the "Raspberry Pi terminal" because this lets run the RC2014 without PC.

Enter Mr Spencer Owen, the "Mr RC2014".
He posted the package almost immediately, and it arrived quickly. Very well packed, all parts present and intact.
However, I would recommend to have a multimeter or, better, some Chinese component-multitester, at hand. Then you can be sure you'll solder all resistors and capacitors in right places.
I also think that the soldering equipment must be a bit better than entry level. I have a soldering station with temperature control, and the iron has some medium-size tip. As all pads are at least 0.1" apart, this is sufficient. In a other review a 0.7 mm solder s recommended. My shop hadn't this at the moment, so I got 0.5 mm one, and it worked very well. Maybe the soldering time is a bit longer than with 0.7, but I can control the process better.
For old people like me, the headset with magnifying glasses (something like https://www.oomipood.ee/product/vtmg13_suurendusprillid_led_lambiga_1_5_10dioptriat_1_375_2_5x) is recommended although not absolutely necessary.
I started at the backplane. Not liking the idea have "regular" and "enhanced" slots on it, I bought additional 1x20 sockets and made all slots enhanced. This means 720 solder pads for slots only, so it's no wonder it took me three evenings to sold all things together.
There's a recommendation on 'net how to hold the slots in vertical position while soldering: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rc2014-z80/pA9cCaR9568 , but there's a small problem: just _every other_ slot matches with the connector's pins. So I soldered first every other slot. Then I sacrificed two connectors (of my own spares), cutting two pins where the "wrong parity" slots would be, and using them, soldered the remaining slots.
The backplane soldered, I connected the power and threw the switch. And the green light was given :)
Then I soldered all modules. When next one was ready, I inserted it into backplane and made sure the green LED still lit up. (Didn't insert any IC-s yet).
All modules ready, I inserted the IC-s, put modules onto backplane and threw the power switch.
The "Pi terminal" started to work, but the Z80 machine didn't.
Mr Spencer reacted promptly on my complaints. It turned out that I had soldered the "regular" pins on the RAM module, but there should be 2-row "enhanced" connector. Luckily, as Mr Spencer indicated, there's only one pin in use from enhanced row, so the error was corrected with a jumper wire.
Then it turned out that by mistake I had got wrong ROM. Again, Mr Spencer was very helpful and posted the right one at once. So I could 3 days learn the commands of the "Simple Monitor", which was not useless :).
The weakest point of this configuration (Pro kit + Pi terminal) is the software of the Pi terminal. It has poor character quality on screen and is not configurable (screen size, etc.). Unfortunately, the software is not written by Mr Spencer, and the creator seems have lost interest.
This is a point I will investigate... after all, the code (PiGfx) is available, and one Mr Pierot seems having done some improvements...
Meanwhile I decided to continue with PC terminal, and -- as recommended -- the TeraTerm program.
I messed around a whole day, having very erratic connection between RC2014 and PC... until I got another USB-serial converter. Then all started to work.
So when the right ROM arrived, I just had to plug it in, and CP/M was airborne... Great feeling.
There is a lot of CP/M software on the 'net, so the only problem is: how to transfer it on the RC2014?
Fortunately, other people had this problem earlier ;) See Mr Grant Searle's page http://searle.x10host.com/cpm/index.html
And, with the help of the DOWNLOAD program, transfer the XMODEM program as the first thing. (I saw that DOWNLOAD will hang sometimes).
And then... I have been playing with WordStar, MBasic, dBase II, etc., etc. for more than a week. And with Turbo Pascal. Especially with Turbo Pascal. What a fun to write-compile-run...

So, to resume:
1. Superb kit. Very well manufactured, errorless, capable.
2. Very good service (prompt posting, excellent support).
3. Satisfactory documentation. Not for the beginners, but it suited for me who has some bits of information from both hardware and software sides.
4. The best property -- when you have the machine up and running, then the fun does not end, but just begin.
5. The only thing that has to be changed -- the Raspberry Pi terminal software.

Thank, you, Mr Spencer!

Edit on 20200331: I found M. Pierot' software for Pi terminal at
https://github.com/fbergama/pigfx/blob/master/bin/kernel.img
It is considerably better, especially the 8*16 font. The downside is that it is not exactly VT100 nor exactly ANSI, so one has to readjust Turbo Pascal, WordStar, dBase etc. Taht is not a great problem, but the ESC sequences for color controls are veeeeeeeeeeeery long and do not fit into dBase places, for example. Still, you can live with monochrome picture...

Michael | Jan. 29, 2020

Hours of fun!

Quick delivery, no missing parts, good quality components. I enjoyed building it, I did have to scratch around in various locations for documentation, but probably in the process I picked up a better understanding of the design. The system worked first time. The RC2014 forum on Google Groups is a good place to find information and advice. If you want a modular system with lots of options and add-on modules, this is a good choice. Being able to run CP/M makes it possible to run a lot of different software. This kit has already proved to be the basis for a lot of tinkering and experimentation with hardware and software, which makes its price tag feel more reasonable. Recommended.

Andy | Nov. 15, 2019

Great product. Fun to build and use.

It's a great product, I put it together in a couple of soldering sessions using lead-free 96SC and a No 8 Weller tip. 1mm is the max solder dia you will be able to use, 0.7mm would be better. It burst into life after I found and removed a couple of solder bridges. If you haven't soldered before, leaded solder may be easier; also get a temperature-controlled iron and a solder pump.

The assembly instructions aren't all in one place. Here are my notes:
1. None of the three jumpers on the SIO/2 board should be fitted.
2. On the serial board use port A (on the 45 degree angle) to boot CP/M.
3. Only Gnd, Rx and Tx are needed for SIO to work, that's pins 1, 3, 4. Crossed over of course!
4. I bought a USB to TTL module with 3V/5V jumper set to 3V3; the tx/rx LEDs on this module are really useful.
5. On the RAM board, use the double row edge connector and don't fit "link".
6. To boot CP/M, set jumpers on ROM board to A13, A14 = 0 and A15 = 1
7. You will need the 5V Direct link on the motherboard to use the supplied USB power cable.

Also join the Google group email list (details on RC2014 website) for more info and help.
There are some great tips on the Google group, including ways to get info on and off the CF card.

Gerald | Oct. 8, 2019

Superb product

This self-build kit is a superb way to get involved at some fundamental computer engineering.

The Z80 is an excellent choice for a ‘home-brew’ computer: single 5v supply, all the control/state inputs/outputs you’d need to distinguish instruction from data accesses, separate IO addressing, great interrupt options and even dynamic memory refresh capabilities.

The modular design approach adopted in the RC2014 design is well delivered. Separate CPU, system clock generator, ROM (with MS BASIC abs monitor), RAM and Serial IO modules gives you an excellent base system, which with a suitable interface to a PC or a MAC (either used as a terminal display) gets you up-and-running pretty quickly, once you’ve completed building the motherboard and modules.

What I really like about the RC2014 is that it’s open: anyone can devise and build a new module - that flexibility is really welcome as it allows the RC2014 to be used in a myriad of applications.

Given this kit has a reasonable, not full, level of documentation, ‘newbies’ to electronics, the soldering iron etc may be put off but there is some excellent unofficial support available, driven by friendly, enthusiastic and knowledgeable interest group/forum members.

Greg | Oct. 4, 2019

A fun project, but not ready for newbies yet.

Adventures in RC2014 kit assembly
10/4/2019 – Rev 1.0
Greg Peterson

I recently stumbled across the RC2014 retro computer based on the Z80 microprocessor on the Tindie website. Having grown up in the early days of personal computing, this inexpensive computer system looked like a fun project, so I ordered one.

Potential purchasers should know a few things I rapidly learned about this kit. I ordered the “Pro” version of the kit. Documentation exists, but is scattered across the web necessitating some hunting. Print out the pictures for your kit as you find them on the web, as well as the schematics, you will need them. There appears to be at least 3 versions of this kit available, and the boards differ, so your boards may or may not match the web pics you find, or the boards I received.

I would not call this kit suitable for a beginner. The documentation is scattered and presumes a fair knowledge of eight bit retro computer system design. The actually assembly in not overly arduous, though the boards are small. My system went together in three nights, which included correcting my pin installation mistake on my CPU board.

You will need a quality, fine tip soldering iron, preferably with temperature control. I purchased mine from Circuit Specialists on the web. Don’t you dare try to assemble the kit with a soldering gun. You will also need a small pair of edge cutters and a small pair of needle nose pliers. You will also need some very small diameter rosin core solder (try EBAY). If you have a PCB tool to hold the board, it will make assembly easier, but is not required. You might also like to buy a small quantity of single and double row right angle pin headers on EBAY. As I age, my eyesight is declining. There was a time I could read the part number on a tunnel diode, but no longer. I have purchased a small Chinese video microscope on EBAY. No eyepieces to look through, the image is displayed on an LCD screen. This has greatly helped me with the close work, especially looking for un-intended solder bridges. One final helpful tool is an IC pin straightener. This little double-sided plastic tool will drastically reduce the number of bent pins encountered when inserting chips into sockets. It will also relieve you from the “bending IC pins against a table edge” trick.

My kit arrived quite rapidly, considering it shipped from England. It comes in a remarkably small package. The PC boards are all of high quality, as are the components.

I suggest you unpack your kit by board type. My kit contained boards for a backplane, Clock generator, Z80 CPU, ROM, RAM, Serial and Compact flash with CP/M loaded. Also in ROM is Microsoft BASIC, RomWBW, and SCM (Small Computer Monitor). My kit came with a loose collection of parts, and several individually packaged boards with parts. Many of the web pictures show a board with its associated parts arrayed around it. I suggest you try to emulate the pictures with the parts you have.

The female pin connector on the backplane has 40 receptacles for pins. The right angle edge connectors on the board have 40 pins, but only 39 matching mounting holes on the board. So you wind up with one pin hanging off the end of the board. I left this pin on my boards to minimize the possibility of inserting a board one pin off.

Nobody seems to want to tell you what a minimal system consists of. I assume the Compact flash with CP/M is not needed initially. You will need a CPU, Clock generator, Serial board, ROM and RAM.

Nobody seems to want to tell you how to jumper your boards. The pictures will come in very handy. Being able to read a schematic will be an asset as well. I am assuming the shown jumper positions in the board pictures will result in a properly running system, but I don’t know this (yet).

A quick inspection of the boards reveals some have holes for a double row of edge connector pins for the extended RC2014 bus, and some have only a single row of pins. This resulted in my first mistake assembling the kit. Do not mix single row and double row edge connector pins. The proper assembly method for boards with double rows of edge connector pins is to to use the double row pin strips and to remove un-needed pins. A pin is un-needed if there is no corresponding mounting hole in the board. A small pair of needle nose pliers will allow you to grasp pins and, giving a small twist to the pin, pull it free from the black plastic strip. Exercise due care when pulling the pin lest you break the black plastic holder. The pictures do not show this very well. If you do this wrong, you will get to un-solder the mis-installed pins and remove them, possibly damaging your board(s), depending upon your soldering skills.

A hint here, if you assemble the motherboard after installing the edge connector pins on the boards, you can use a female backplane connector to help hold the flexible pin strip straight during board assembly.

Another hint, when installing IC sockets, tack diagonal opposite corners of the socket down with solder. Then, while pressing gently on the socket, reflow the solder on the tacked pins to insure the socket seats directly against the board.

The person that did the PCB layout left little room to bend resistor leads down to fit the PCB holes. You will pretty much have to bend the resistor leads directly down with no radius. So how hard would it have been to leave 1/8 inch on each end of the resistors? Other than this tight spacing, I have nothing to quibble about with the boards. Speaking to quality workmanship, do orient your resistors the same. I prefer to read the color code left to right or top to bottom. It just looks sloppy otherwise.

Some serial board documentation mentions a 68B50 UART. Matching a Motorola serial chip to an Intel/Zilog chip bus seems strange to me. My kit came with a Zilog SIO/2 UART, not the 68B50. While using the RS-232 serial protocol, my board came with no level translator to match the +/- voltage levels of the spec. Something like a MAX232 interface chip is what I expected, but there is no provision for this. Instead an FTDI TTL to USB cable is suggested. Of course, the pictures do not show this cable installed on a serial board. The cable can be installed on the pins with two orientations. Close inspection of the board clearly shows pin 1 labeled ground. My cable has a blue wire in this position on the cable connector, or, flipping the connector over, a red wire. I have no key or marking to ID pin one on the connector, but I have developed a natural aversion to hooking red wires to ground, and have not resolved this yet.

Then too, there is the 5 volt 3 Volt controversy. My serial board will be putting out 5 Volts, retro parts run at 5 Volts. I have no idea what my FTDI cable expects, but if it wants 3 Volts, nothing good will result from connecting the two together. A bit of multimeter sleuthing should shed some light on things.

There is an FTDI cable spec on the web, but the cable seems to be loosely defined to me. My spec has no green wire, but my cable does, so I really don’t know what signal this wire supports. My cable has six positions, and my header on the board has six pins, but some connector diagrams support more connections.

The Pageable ROM card has a set of pads underneath IC U2, a 74HCT138. This chip is a decoder, so it would seem logical that these pads set the I/O address of the card. Of course, nobody tells you what that address should be, or how to jumper the pads to achieve it. I am sure that the software has some definite assumptions about where things are located. So the exploratory path is to consult the schematic and perhaps chase the software assumptions back through the source listings, which are available on the web. Of course, you do have to find the listing that corresponds to the contents of the ROM you have.

I would like to figure out how to duplicate the compact flash module. I would feel much safer if I had a duplicate, lest I damage it. I tried plugging it in to a Compact Flash adapter on my PC, but no dice. Windows 7 does not speak CP/M File structures.

My RC2014 adventure continues. I have serial interface issues, and jumper issues to work through, but problem solving is part of the fun, isn't it.

Addendum: Additional things I have learned that you might like to know:

The FTDI cable sources listed in the SCM manual - the Amazon product listed does not exist, the other source does exist though, with 2-3 days delivery. As I look at the FTDI cables, the pinout seems to be inconsistent, I have cables that do not work, so I suggest not substituting the cable.

There are some steps to getting a cable working: Plug the usb end into your computer, leave the other end unconnected for now. If windows recognizes the cable, allow windows to download and install the driver, which may take some time. If windows does not recognize it and there was no software disc supplied, the cable will not work. On my system, the cable comes up as com24, your system may assign a different Com number. Com1 will also probably be offered as an option, with possibly other Com options. I am running TeraTerm to talk to the system. Run TeraTerm without and with the cable inserted into your computer. The Com option that comes up when you insert the cable is the one you want to select, it is the Com number for the cable. Re-launch TeraTerm between cable connections to let windows discover it. Note that the cable must be plugged in for windows to recognize it and present the option of selecting it in the TeraTerm dialog. If windows can see the cable, select it in the serial dialog. Then select "setup - serial port" and set the baud rate to 115200 baud. Now press reset on the RC2014 and the program selected on the Pageable ROM board should sign on.

TeraTerm is prone to getting confused. Every time you power down the RC2014 Pro system or make changes, you should go through the steps of re-launching TeraTerm, selecting Serial protocol, the correct serial channel, and setting the baud rate. Setting it up once and forgetting about it does not work.

I had originally thought I did not want to mess with FTDI, I knew RS-232, and better the devil you know than the one you don't. So I looked at building a little MAX232 driver board for RS-232. Looking up the specs, the MAX part has maximum throughput limitations, which do not include 115200 baud. Looking further, there are slew rate limitations in the RS-232 spec. At 115200 baud, you are pushing north of 1 Mega bit / second through the link. 1488 / 1489 chips in standard and cmos versions do not meet this limitation. So I gave up, 115200 baud is just too fast for more traditional interfaces. I am not convinced that 115200 baud can be attained within RS-232 specs. FTDI, once figured out, does seem to work quite well.

I had a question about mystery pads under some chips on some boards, their purpose and how to use them. There are signals on some chips that currently are not used. These pads are broken out for possible future use and can be safely ignored. So - Ignore pads under chips.

I have had some difficulty figuring out the bus and connector pinouts, but I think I have finally got a handle on it. I think the problem revolves around standard and enhanced backplanes. The Pro kit, which I assembled, comes with a backplane that supports the enhanced bus. This means there is a second row of female connectors on the backplane to support additional signals (the "enhanced" bus). Not all backplanes support the enhanced bus and not all modules do either. The Pageable ROM and 64K Ram boards need a signal to disable lower Ram when it is desired to have the ROM appear there. This signal appears on pin 4 of the pins above the male bus pins on the module. Unfortunately, the boards supplied with the Pro kit (Pageable ROM and 64k RAM) are not supplied with dual row pins to allow the signal to be passed over the enhanced bus. These boards are supplied with single row male bus pins and a jumper strip of pins. If you assemble them with the parts supplied, you will be assembling the boards for a non-enhanced bus. This requires a jumper wire between the ROM and RAM boards on pin 4 of the jumper pins of each board to pass the RAM disable signal. You can see this jumper wire in some of the pictures available on the internet. This jumper wire is not supplied. The boards with the jumper wire can plug into and work with either standard or enhanced backplanes. You can procure dual row male pins and use them on the modules instead of a jumper wire, passing the signal over the enhanced bus. Then the boards will be properly set up for an enhanced bus (which you have with the Pro kit), but the boards will not be backwards compatible with a non-enhanced bus backplane (which you may not have). Note that if you do install dual row male pins on the modules, you will not have pins to connect a jumper wire to.

You might think that if you assemble the boards with the parts supplied, all will work together as intended. This is not the case for the Pro kit. You will either need to procure a jumper wire or a couple of strips of dual row male pins (try Ebay), it is your choice, but assembling modules as supplied will not work.

more to come....

Randall | May 8, 2019

RC2014 Pro.... Awesome.

Just a great kit.

It took me about 7 Hours all up over three evening to get it built. No major issues with the build quality or construction and the online documentation was. I also got the Digital IO Board with the Pro kit and it works great as well.

Its a great project to dive into with lots of references available all over the net from a great series of videos from a good number of people explaining everything from basic construction and design through to expanding and upgrading the RC2014.

I plan on building a few of the 3rd party modules that are available here on tindie as weel as a number of the community designed modules as well.

As for the community, there are some great forums and quite a few other resources you can fall back on if you need help or just want to compare notes.

I would recommend this kit to anyone.

Russell | Feb. 17, 2019

Thoroughly recommended piece of kit.

I bought the more expensive pro version which initially seems a bit expensive, however I wanted that over the cheaper versions for the following reasons. 1) Many people seem to want the easier to build versions so there is less soldering, but I actually wanted a fairly serious soldering project so I could play with a new iron I had recently bought, so the more bits to solder on the more enjoyment for me. 2) I can see the appeal of having a cheaper version that can run BASIC, but I figured I wouldn't be satisfied unless I could run a full-on OS. Sure enough this project provides hours of fun because not only do I get the enjoyment of building it and seeing it work, it is also simple enough that you can understand what is happening in your computer. I can see and understand how the serial ports are working and the data is being addressed and moved about, which I find fascinating. Additionally being able to run CP/M means I can do a sort of archaeology involving learning and understanding this old OS, and also see the lineage that pokes through to modern systems. I can also play and enjoy old Infocom games, and I have the option of bolting more things on in the future. One slight problem is that there isn't complete hand-holding step-by-step build instructions, so you do need to think a bit about what you're doing, but a bit of problem solving just added to the enjoyment for me, others may get a bit frustrated. Thoroughly recommended piece of kit.

Rémy | Feb. 4, 2019

Congratulation, a real good and interesting product.

I found everything excellent in all aspects. Documentation is a bit messy, in pieces it is to be worked out like a puzzle ! It reveals to be adequate at the end.

David | Jan. 31, 2019

My review of RC2014

The kit arrived in short order and was packaged very well. I ordered the RC2014 Pro and added the I/O, twin joystick and Pi zero boards. The boards were nicely laid out and easy to solder. I am a PCB Designer and Electronics Engineer so I had very little assembling everything. I got things working first time although it was a struggle to find and collate the documentation on line. I would like to offer my thoughts regarding the kit.

As an exercise in soldering it was easy but tedious. I swapped all the IC sockets for machined pin ones. The pageable Rom board has provision for a zif socket but if fitted per the silkscreen, the handle will hit a couple of IC’s due to their height in their sockets. I ended up turning it 180 degrees so the handle is pointing out from the board. This of course works but you have to remember to put the rom chip in the same direction (which is 180 degrees on the zif socket). Also, the holes for this socket on the board could be bigger. I had some zif sockets that had much wider pins and would not fit. I ended up canaballizing a couple of other sockets to get it to fit. Having the handle stick out from the board is also not ideal as it is too easy to flip it and unseat the rom. I completed the extended slots by adding a 20 pin header to every slot. That way I can put things just where I need them. The cards with a single row connector should still be using a double row connector.
The reason is that mixing single and double row connectors results in uneven height and the holes by the chamfer on each board don’t line up. Also, the double row is much more stable and the boards don’t tend to lean over and touch each other. I added a 7805 with a heatsink but it would be nice to be able to switch between it and the USB. Replace all the jumpers with dip switches on the edge of the boards so I don’t have to keep removing them to reconfigure. I could see this project as a SBC that, instead of a backplane, was a single board that had individual sections that could be populated according to whatever you need. Some other boards that I think would be useful (and I see they were available at some tme) would be an IDE interface, 4X20 LCD or small graphic display, I2C expander, sound card.
Anyway, good job Spencer.

Charles | Jan. 27, 2019

A great taste of 70's computing, needs better documentation

I've been in to "retro home computers" for a long time... Lots of experience soldering, trouble-shooting, designing & making my own boards and custom cases, but next to no experience with CP/M.
To my pleasant surprise my daughter has developed an interest in the nuts & bolts of computers, but being 14 has little nostalgia for the 70's and 80's. As as result I thought I'd design a CP/M capable computer for the two of us to build that would be her's to tinker with, based on Grant Searle's design...
...given my total newness to CP/M, and having come across the excellent RC2014 Pro I decided a ready-made kit would be better for the both of us and so bought one. The backplane design isn't just delightfully old school while giving easy expansion potential but allowed my daughter to tackle the project in manageable chunks.

After about a week of on and off effort my daughter has become pretty decent at soldering and has a fully working machine - she's delighted, and I'm pretty darn pleased with her and the results too. She's looking forward to getting to know it and it's operation better, and is already eyeing up further options - I think Colecovision compatibility is on the cards.

So the RC2014 is an excellent little machine with a lot of potential and on that basis I'm very pleased with it. But at this point I would recommend those new to building electronics to avoid it, and even those with a bit of experience to be very careful indeed when putting this kit together.
Why? Well I consider myself to be pretty experienced when it comes to such things but even so the documentation really isn't up to the job for construction, and largely absent when it comes to leading the new user through their first steps.

As we came to the end of the build I found myself on a good few occasions having to desolder and move components about when it became apparent my initial guesses were not always right - the kit comes with no documentation, and while there is a good deal of info on the website it's often hard to track down specifics, the schematics and boards aren't all fully labeled, and there is no build guide.
I'm also somewhat glad I just spent a very frustrating weekend getting to know the absolute basics of CP/M for the first time as I suspect my daughter would have rapidly lost interest if that frustration had been hers. Some first steps advice, especially with regard to the basics of file transfer, would have saved hours of frustrated googling on my part.

If I may be so bold to make some suggestions.
Build:
-An included build manual would be wonderful but a proper on-line one would do just fine and is certainly needed
-Labeled components would, again, be wonderful but a board-by-board BOM list would be fine if included with the above guide
-No urgency, but the next run of boards could do with including component values in all areas to help reduce confusion

Post Build:
While I was fortunate enough to spot and rectify all my mistakes and finished up with a working machine...
-An initial set up, power on, and basic trouble-shooting guide would be very helpful

First Steps:
It would be REALLY helpful if there was also a simple first steps guide...
-Want to run BASIC / CP/M? Here's how you set up the computer for that, here's a link to the documentation for this version of BASIC or CP/M, and most important of all here's a quick run-down (with examples) of some commands and software you will need to start using the machine - saving / loading / file transfer basics comes instantly to mind
-A list of links to appropriate software would also be very helpful - google is fine but if you've never seen a tree before it's hard to tell one from another and the difference is often important.

I hope that helps a bit.

Richard | Jan. 14, 2019

Excellent product but documentation needs improvement

Overall, this is a fun kit but it is definitely for the intermediate to advanced kit builder; mostly for the impressive number of solder points but also for the basic documentation. I wouldn't advise this kit if you can't follow a schematic, for example giving this as a gift to a young relative who only knows the basics of soldering will have a hard time.

There isn't a full-color binder included, documentation is on the developer's website and various places on the web. If building the kit for CP/M it is important to read this document first: https://rc2014.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/RC2014-Pro-Jumper-Settings-CPM.pdf It will explain which cards are to receive double header pins.

Communication is A+. Spencer is awesome and responds very quickly to questions and offers great advice. The kit itself (once it was working) is a joy use. My advice is to please spend a few hours to update and clean up the docs.

Nino | Dec. 25, 2018

Very friendly gentleman, terrible kit.

To be upfront: it all, finally, went up in smoke and down the trash bin, after wasting me many hours. And while I would consider myself an "advanced amateur", not a professional at all, I cannot, in good faith, recommend this kit to others.

Let us start with the documentation: essentially, that is consists of various scraps of information all over this website and the author's, which in some way correlate, in some way contradict, and mostly require you to squint your eyes and try to figure out from the photos of the various components, HOW, just HOW are you supposed to place said various components. (Want a live example? Look at the parts and try to figure out which of them have double pins and which of them have single pins.) The documentation is, essentially, as bad as possible.

Now the kit: now, you might assume, if the documentation is so bad, perhaps the parts are quite obvious to put together. Well: that is NOT the case. There are pin holes where NO components should be soldered, although this is drawn on the PCB. The pins of the components don't quite fit the holes in the motherboard, and you have to be careful where you place the "starting pin". (That defies the VERY POINT of a motherboard! And of the drawing on PCBs! WHY would you draw double pins if single pins are required?)

Furthermore, it contains apparently no such thing as fail-safe mechanisms, if anything "happens" anywhere — which is super likely due to the one million solder points and the terrible documentation and the unclear kit markings. Anything goes wrong — your kit burns, as did mine (burns = the chips start to smoke and make a glistering sound).

And to be frank: you cannot say "there is no handholding" or "this requires experience", just as you cannot sell a heap of scrap.metal and say, "a little refreshment and this is a car". This is supposed to be a KIT, and it is not cheap!

As to the gentleman himself: a brilliant mind, extremely caring and fast in his replies, an absolute pleasure to deal with. — But you understand, legally, this should be a "point-in-time" contract, such is the nature of buying and selling; one should NOT NEED to contact him. His service to his buyers is GREAT. His product is NOT.

I shall buy another kit some day, I like your IDEA. I am only hoping this will motivate you to a better EXECUTION. Do not take this review unkindly, it is not meant so.

Meanwhile, I got that kit that sounds like a Greek letter (the author surely gets the hint), and — guess what — it works flawlessly.

Yours,

Nino

Paul | Dec. 23, 2018

Full Pro Kit and Pi Zero

Everything supplied arrived quickly and well packaged, circuit boards are good quality. - lots of fun to build - had 1 issue (my own fault - put the 74HCT04 in upside down on the ROM card). Boots OK to CPM from the Compact Flash card - Now for more fun - running some programs and learning more about the Z80.

Jeffrey | Sept. 9, 2018

Complete kit!

I just received my RC2014 Pro computer kit. It was well packaged in a box about the size of a book. Everything inside is organized and well protected. It is not just a box of parts. The kit is totally complete. I was surprised that there is even a compact flash memory card included. That is quite an expense part. The kit would have still been a good value without the memory chip. Now it is on to construction.

Mike | Aug. 18, 2018

An amazing little machine (though don't expect handholding)

Ordering and delivery was a dream - despatch was almost instantaneous, and arrived safely in Austria a few days later. I'd say this kit is not for the novice. You need to figure out quite a few component placements and values for yourself with the aid of the mostly comprehensive documentation on the RC2014 website, and definitely aren't walked through construction step by step. Figuring things out is part of the fun anyway, right?

That said, construction is not difficult due to the modular nature of the computer. Some boards are trickier than others and the backplane is an excellent exercise in soldering practice as it involves about 600 joints, but once it's done you have a beautiful little machine that drips with potential for fun Z80-mungous fun. I mean, it runs CP/M and you can play Zork on it. How cool is that?

It would be nice to have a proper addressable video card in order to play with graphics, but other than that pretty much everything you need is right here.

Andrew | July 9, 2018

Excellent - highly recommended

Excellent quality product, arrived very quickly and well packaged.
I would say my soldering skills were beginner level only but the assembly was pretty straight forward - and a great way to improve my skills.
My only criticism would be that I found some of the documentation a little confusing and incomplete in places - but in hindsight, part of the fun was probably figuring it out!
After assembly I got it running pretty quickly - a couple of soldering errors to correct and jumpers to configure correctly, no real dramas.
In the meantime I've been tinkering with CP/M, BBC Basic and some Z80 assembly, all good stuff...takes me back...

Milan | July 6, 2018

100% OK

Very nice kit! Quick delivery.
Not only nostalgic 8bit computer. I think it is de-facto standard and hobby platform already. :-)

Vitaliy | June 5, 2018

Very good extensible home computer circuit.

I bought the RС2014 Pro, which was assembled by me in three days. I used Aiyma T12 Digital Soldering Iron Station + T12-K Tip, wired solder 0.7 mm with 63% tin and 37% lead and 223 flux. There were wery happy days. But start was wery poorly, in all configurations! I check my work many times. In the end, I had to replace the 47 uF capacitor in the reset circuit in the dual clock board by 1 uF and the computer begin work perfectly. Perfectly works both in the basic configuration (SBC CP/M) and with the romWBW card. I am very glad! Thanks to the creators and everyone who helps the beginners in the assembly and configuration!
For those who want to remember the past and learn something new!

Randal | March 28, 2018

This is the Kit to Get!

The RC2014 Pro Kit is a wonderful starting point for anyone interested in Retro Computing. This kit provides a great starting point for newcomers and is a welcome addition to any veteran’s collection.

The design and layout of the RC2104 has been well conceived and expertly executed. All the printed circuit boards are cleanly arranged and well fabricated. Anyone with basic soldering skills will be able to complete the assembly of the kit with ease. Each module is packaged and prepared with the precise components needed to construct them. The silkscreen on the board provides the correct orientation for each part, as well as specifying which part to install. The distinctive white logo and text on the blue boards is consistent throughout and looks professional and artisanal.

The Pro Kit contains the Backplane Pro as well as six modules, each having a clear function needed to bring the computer to life. Three optional modules are also available when ordering the Pro Kit which add some fun expandability. The additional optional modules I ordered were similarly well done and are available elsewhere on Tindie.

Since building my RC2014 kit I have found the support of the creator as well as the community to be outstanding. The RC2014 has provided a wonderful banner for Retro Computing enthusiasts to rally around. The standardization of the backplane and modules along with a forward-thinking design have encouraged others to create modules compatible with the RC2014.

This is not a kit that is built in a day and then hidden away on a shelf, forgotten. With new modules being released, you will return to the RC2014 again and again, tinkering, customizing, and, of course, playing and having fun!

Thierry | Jan. 24, 2018

Super Cool Education Tool

- Reasonably easy to assemble and to Test with quality PCBs. A good intro to soldering. Pieces easy to source
- Cool separation of the functions i.e. simple to understand: cpu, memory, I/Os, logic chips.
- Documentation is not super deep which is a plus. It forces you to understand schematics.
- A platform for loads of do it yourself projects and easy to extend
A very very nice kit for hacker kids and a jump in the past for their parents (CP/M, Turbo Pascal, Assembler).
A few pointers to development tools would be nice to apprehend the base coming in github. One or 2 test points would improve the teaching but this is
a perfect subject for a custom extension with funky LEDs.
Would be cool to have the design files open sourced 😉 at least some of the to boost the ecosystem.

Daniel | Jan. 19, 2018

Good quality of pcb and parts

I was so happy when i got it as Christmas present , i have learn a lot , the computer work perfect after debugging about 2 days i recommend to improve the documentation witch exist online but is confusing and describe all the versions in one article and mix all together and the reader have to figure witch is apply for his item. Will be great to include a serial cable to connect with computer. i didn't finish yet the keyboard since i have limited time for my hobby. All in one is a great idea and i recommend to everyone witch want to better understand how computers work and how different parts is connected and work .

Peter | Jan. 18, 2018

Great Fun! Excellent Quality

The soldering of this project was quite easy even for these old eyes. All through hole components. They mounted the only surface mounted component. I love the fact that it is so easy to build up a quick project that could be mounted to the back plane with simple pin headers. Powering it is as easy as plugging it into a USB port or if you prefer put a commonly available 5v regulator.

The developer Spencer is a treat to talk with on the RC2014-Z80 google group community and on Twitter.

If you are a electronics tinkerer make sure to get the 12 port bus as you will have plenty of room to make and add your own boards.

Per | Dec. 20, 2017

Very nice Z80 kit

Very nice kit. No problems assembling it and works reliably. Quick delivery and good packaging. Active community.

David | Dec. 20, 2017

Can't wait to get started with RC2014!

I ordered everything (Pro kit) and just about everything else. Looking forward to being a contributing member of the RC2014 community. Thank you very much, Spencer!

David | Dec. 18, 2017

The best z80 kit out there!

What a cool kit. There are tons of options for add in cards, software, and 3rd party support. The community is great as well. If you're looking to get a z80 kit, this is one of the best out there. The fact that the bus is provided via headers makes it extremely easy to probe around and debug or just examine how the computer works.

The only complaint I have is that the pro kit doesn't appear to have up to date documentation. The website is still mostly focused on previous generations and the pro kit itself doesn't come with any documentation (or at least mine didn't). When I had an issue after assembly, it made debugging very cumbersome as I didn't understand how some of the modules worked. I assume this is simply because the pro kit is so new and will be fixed in time.

Wayne | Oct. 31, 2017

Awesome Z80 CPU kit. Nice modular design. Easy to build.

I have significant experience building homebrew Z80 computers. The RC2014 kits are very nice and modular. They go together easily and are well documented. Operation is completely reliable. Kit was shipped very quickly and was well packaged. RC2014 community is vibrant and helpful. This has been a great experience!

+ Show 35 more