Z86C47

The Z86C47 Digital Television Controller (DTC) introduces a new level of sophistication to single-chip architecture. The Z86C47 is a member of the Z8^® single-chip microcontroller family with 16 Kbytes of ROM and 236 bytes of RAM. The device is housed in a 64-pin DIP package, and is CMOS compatible. The part features ROMs for program storage and character generation. The Z86C47 microcontroller may be used in prototyping, low volume applications or where code development is required. Zilog's DTC offers fast execution, efficient use of  memory, sophisticated interrupts, input/output bit manipulation capabilities, and easy hardware/software system expansion along with low cost and low power consumption. The device provides an ideal performance and reliability solution for consumer and industrial television applications.

The Z86C47 architecture utilizes Zilog's advanced Superintegration™ design methodology. The device has an 8-bit internal data path controlled by a Z8 microcontroller,On-Screen Display (OSD) logic circuits/Pulse Width Modulators (PWM). On-chip peripherals include five register/ memory mapped I/O ports (Ports 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6), Interrupt control logic (1 software, 2 external and 3 internal interrupts) and a standby mode recovery input port (Port 3, pin P30).

The OSD control circuits support eight rows by 20 columns for 128 kinds of characters. The character color is specified
by row. One of the eight rows is assigned to show two kinds of colors for bar type displays such as volume control. The OSD is capable of displaying high resolution (11 x 15 dot pattern) characters.

A 14-bit PWM port provides enough voltage resolution for a voltage synthesizer tuning system. Seven 6-bit PWM ports are used for controlling audio signal level. Five 8-bit DTC applications demand powerful I/O capabilities. The Z86C47 fulfills this with 35 I/O pins dedicated to input and output. These lines are grouped into five ports, and are configurable under software control to provide timing, status signals, parallel I/O and an address/data bus for interfacing to external memory.

There are three basic address spaces available to support this wide range of configurations: Program Memory, Register File and Data Memory. The Data Memory address space contains a number of control registers for the  PWMs, OSD, and I/O Ports 4, 5, and 6. Specifically, there are 13 PWM and eight OSD control registers mapped into the external memory address space. Three I/O registers for Ports 4, 5, and 6 reside in data memory space as well.The Register File is composed of 236 bytes of general purpose register, two I/O Port registers and 15 control and status registers.

To unburden the program from coping with the real-time problems such as counting/timing and data communication,
the DTC's offer two on-chip counter/timers with a large number of user selectable modes (see block diagram).