Jameco Electronics Rabbit 3000 - Manual (Page 10)

User’s Manual 1
1. I
NTRODUCTION
Rabbit Semiconductor was formed expressly to design a a better microprocessor for use in
small and medium-scale controllers. The first microprocessor was the Rabbit 2000. The
second microprocessor, now available, is the Rabbit 3000. Rabbit microprocessor design-
ers have had years of experience using Z80, Z180, and HD64180 microprocessors in small
controllers. The Rabbit shares a similar architecture and a high degree of compatibility
with these microprocessors, but it is a vast improvement.
The Rabbit 3000 has been designed in close cooperation with Z-World, Inc., a long-time
manufacturer of low-cost single-board computers. Z-World’s products are supported by an
innovative C-language development system (Dynamic C). Z-World is providing the soft-
ware development tools for the Rabbit 3000.
The Rabbit 3000 is easy to use. Hardware and software interfaces are as uncluttered and
are as foolproof as possible. The Rabbit has outstanding computation speed for a micro-
processor with an 8-bit bus. This is because the Z80-derived instruction set is very com-
pact, and the timing of the memory interface allows higher clock speeds for a given
memory speed.
Microprocessor hardware and software development is easy for Rabbit users. In-circuit
emulators are not needed and will not be missed by the Rabbit developer. Software devel-
opment is accomplished by connecting a simple interface cable from a PC serial port to the
Rabbit-based target system or by performing software development and debugging over a
network or the Internet using interfaces and tools provided by Rabbit Semiconductor.