Z80 instruction fetch mechanism

[Jim Battle]

Jules Richardson wrote:
> 
> Someone asked this over on the Sinclair group a short while ago, but I 
> suddenly thought that someone here might know...
> 
> Basically they were wondering what the internals of the Z80's 
> instruction fetch were, given that some instructions are multiple bytes 
> in length, but there's only a single-byte instruction register.
> 
> I theorised that control in the Z80 is all just a state machine, so 
> multiple instruction bytes presumably advance things to a new state (and 
> what's left in the IR during execution is just one byte from a 
> multi-byte instruction) - but it sounds like the OP was wondering if 
> anyone knew the exact mechanism (basically, has the design of the state 
> machine ever been documented anywhere).
> 
> (Given that I'm on a 'homebrew CPU' trip right now, I'm rather curious, 
> too :-)
> 
> Quite possibly this level of detail's never been made publicly 
> available, but I figure someone here may have had close involvement with 
> Zilog and know more. Online resources cover the overall internal 
> architecture, but just 'black box' the control logic section (including 
> the IR).

Rodnay Zaks had a fat Z80 book that went into quite some detail of the timing of the bus 
and mentioned a hidden "W" register, but I don't recall what that was for -- holding a 
byte temporarily during some do-si-do.  I have the book but it is buried in the garage.

I have no doubt prefix bytes, (CB, ED, DD, FD) just set a flop that modify the 
interpretation of subsequent fetches -- that is more economical than storing the entire 
byte (or two bytes in some cases).  Immediates and IX/IY offsets just go right to the 
latch in front of the ALU.

I'll try and find the book.