So is this some form of super mutant rabbit? Nope – it's a microprocessor that runs rings around the old Z180 but uses an updated Z180-style instruction set to make things easy for experienced Z80/Z180 assembly language programmers.

If you can program a Z180, you can program this baby! – or should that be bunny?

Going back in time, the Rabbit 2000 Microprocessor was first let out of its hutch by Rabbit Semiconductor in the US in 1999 and immediately spread out, recently arriving Down Under after a long swim across the Pacific. It's a robust little critter that's completely unaffected by the Calisi virus and is supported by several very impressive development kits that include the Dynamic C programming language.

And no, that's not a trial version of Dynamic C – it's a fully-working version that's supplied with the core modules and the development kits.

The RabbitCore RCM2100 Developer's Kit includes an RCM2100 Ethernet core module with 512KB of flash memory and 512KB of static RAM; a prototyping board; an RS232 programming cable (10-pin header to DB9); a Dynamic C SE CD-ROM (includes royalty-free TCP/IP stack with source plus complete product documentation); a plugpack power supply; and a "Getting Started Manual".

There's more than one Rabbit running around in this warren. Apart from the Rabbit 2000 microprocessor itself, there's also the Rabbit 2000 and RabbitCore 2000 development kits; the RabbitCore RCM 2100 & 2200 Ethernet Core modules; the two development kits associated with these core modules; plus a host of other Rabbit-based products, including the "Jackrabbit" development board, the "RabbitLink" card and the "Rabbit Cloning Board".

The "RabbitLink" card lets you program and debug your Rabbit-based system via a network or the Internet – see Fig.1. What's more, an inbuilt miniature web server and SMTP client can be controlled by any embedded system via the RabbitLink's serial port. This allows the system to send information to the network using either email or easily-updated static HTML pages.

Want to breed Rabbits? – the Rabbit Cloning Board lets you do just that. It copies compiled software programs from one Rabbit 2000-based board to another without the need for a PC.