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February 7, 2026

I thought it was high time I went back to the 2000s and started a blog. Something I've been meaning to do for the last 26 years but never actually got around to. Back then I wanted to put things online that I hadn't found answers to myself in the hopes that someone somewhere would have the same problem and would find my lonely blog and find the answer. In fact for many years I had a sole text document hosted with some obscure compiler error and its solution. It got hits but it wasn't a blog. This time though I have even more obscure things and I'll probably get even fewer hits, but it's not about that.

Quite a few years ago I picked up some Z80 and 6502 CPUs with the eventual idea that I would create a homebrew system with them, à la Ben Eater^[1], I was probably inspired by him, but I can't say for sure. Time passed and a friend of mine was digging in some boxes and found some NS32k^[2] processors he bought with the same idea but, again, never got around to. I egged him on to build a system out of them, and he actually did^[3]. This then inspired me to get to work on my homebrew system, I decided to start with the Z80 as that seemed the simplest.

One night, while staring at the rat's nest for my first ever PCB design wondering what I'd got myself in for, I searched Facebook Marketplace for Z80 and found a whole bunch of Furrer + Gloor 'Eurolog' Z80 boards. "What on earth is this?", I asked myself. A web search of the model numbers didn't really give many answers, apart from a few auction websites with very little detail^[4].

To say my interest was piqued was an understatement.

My homebrew Z80 had progressed. By some coincidence, I had decided on the same type of connector as the Eurolog system, a DIN 41612, though a wildly different pin arrangement^[5]. By this point I had a working CPU, RAM/ROM, serial port and a minimal OS.

I bit the bullet and bought some of the cards and the beautiful brushed aluminium enclosure he had.

I bought:

• EML-DMC64 - a 64KB RAM board.
• EML-CPC7 - CPU board with a CTC and space for 6 RAM/ROM ICs, each space is configurable for different types of ICs.
• EML-FDC4 - Floppy drive controller, unfortunately it's a hard sectored drive and I've not been able to track any down^[6].
• Micropolis Floppy Drive

This left quite a few still with the seller, while they weren't that expensive it adds up quickly, especially for a side project. So while splitting up the collection slightly killed me, it had to be done. Once they arrived I was astonished with what I had. They were in mint condition, unused, with original packaging complete with warranty card from 1983.

The homebrew project ticked along... Memory banking, a second serial port for a virtual block device, the Eurolog cards nibbling at the back of my mind, waiting for their turn. I decided that the homebrew system was my learning gateway to this Eurolog system. My homebrew was fairly simple, no timers, no proper interrupt system... the Eurolog system had a seemingly unlimited amount of jumpers and no documentation.

I started to do some research and found out Furrer + Gloor is now a company called Syslogic^[7], based in Switzerland. I reached out to their support email not really expecting much... but got a reply! Not only a reply from their support team but a reply from Walter Gloor himself! The email simply read:

Das tönt ja schön!

Amazing!

Support provided me with what documentation still exists and even gave me permission to distribute it.

With newfound enthusiasm for the Eurolog system I bought a couple more boards from the Facebook seller:

• EML-SIC4 - Quad serial port
• EML-MPC1 - Maths co-processor board

I received another email from Syslogic, their support team had had a water cooler moment with the media team and word had got out about the find. It's their 40th year and they will be doing some blogs about it^[8], would I like to do something? Yes! I mean sure... but I don't really do that sort of thing... and so here we are.