ZBasic Architecture

The first ZBasic platform was based on an Atmel ATmega32 microcontroller with a clock speed of 14.7456 MHz. The onboard Flash memory of the ATmega32 processor is dedicated to the ZBasic internal system firmware (the virtual machine or VM). The 2K bytes of the ATmega32 RAM memory is partitioned into User RAM and System RAM. The User RAM area is 1.5K bytes and is reserved for the direct access by user-written programs and heap space for dynamically created memory such as strings. The 512 bytes of System RAM is reserved for use by the ZBasic virtual machine. Also 992 out of 1024 bytes of internal processor EEPROM is available for persistent variables. The user’s compiled program is stored in 32K bytes of external EEPROM.

The "second" generation of ZBasic devices are based on the ATmega644 microcontroller which is pin compatible with the ATmega32. The larger RAM and EEPROM of the ATmega644 directly translates into more RAM (3.5 Kbytes) and EEPROM (2016 bytes) for the ZBasic programmer.

A recent addition to the family of ZBasic devices are the ZX-24e and ZX-24ae. These are 40 pin DIL devices that are pin compatible with the 24 pins of a ZX-24 but are extended to include an additional 16 pins for more I/O. The ZX-24e/ZX-24ae are also integrated like the ZX-24/ZX-24a devices but add a true RS232 level transceiver, a switch to select logic level or RS232 level outputs, socketed EEPROM, and a power moniter LED.  See the Oak Micros website for additional information.