There have been plenty of Z80 computer builds here on Hackaday, but what sets them apart is what you do with them. [Andrew] writes in with his Z80 single-board computer made from scratch, using the Arduino standard headers for its I/O. In turn, since he needed an easy way to program the flash memory which holds the software to run on the Z80, he used an Arduino Mega as a debugger, making the SBC an Arduino shield itself.

Using such a common header pinout for the Z80 computer allows it to be used with a variety of readily-available Arduino shields. This compatibility is achieved with an analog-digital converter and a 3.3 V regulator, mimicking the pins found in an Arduino Uno. The code, available on GitHub, includes an extensive explanation and walkthrough over the process in which the Mega takes over the bus from the Z80 to function as a fully-featured debugger. Programs can be loaded through embedding an assembly listing into the Mega’s sketch, or, once the debugger is up you can also upload a compiled hex file through the serial connection.

This isn’t the first time [Andrew] has been featured here, and his past projects are just as interesting. If you need to translate a Soviet-era calculator’s buttons into English, hack a metallurgical microscope or even investigate what’s that Clacking Clanking Scraping Sound, he’s the one you should call.

All good things, and apparently our coverage of Maker Faire, must come to an end. Here’s a few more things we saw in New York this last weekend that piqued our interest:

A 10x scale Arduino

[Robert Fitzsimons] of Part Fusion Electronics made a gigantic Arduino. It wasn’t quite functional, but [Robert] did manage to make a few 10:1 scale LEDs (with built-in circuit protection), 1 inch pitch headers, and a few other miscellaneous components out of foam and paint.

Since he’s from Dublin, Ireland, [Robert] didn’t want to take this giant board home with him. He graciously gave it to me in the hopes of turning it in to a proper working Arduino. I’ll do my best, [Robert].

There are hundreds of Lisas buried in a landfill in Utah.

Tekserve, an indie Apple store located in the heart of Manhattan, really knows how to put on a good show. For the entirety of their stay at Maker Faire, they had people showing off one of the first digital cameras, Apple Newtons, and an awesome collection of vintage Macs. No, your eyes do not deceive you; that’s a real Lisa there in the bunch.

Sadly, they didn’t have the boot disk to turn any of these on. Pity.

Yes, there were celebrities at Maker Faire

Well, celebrities to the Hackaday crowd, at least. [Ben Heck] showed off the electronic automatic sunglasses he built. It’s a pair of lensless glasses, a servo, light detector, and a pair of clip-on sunglasses. When [Ben] is out in daylight, the sunglasses swivel down. Inside, the amount of light received by the detector decreases and the shades rotate up.