>FWIW, DJNZ decremented the 8-bit B register towards 0 for relatively quick loops. This left 16-bit HL and DE free for the good stuff. Amazing to think that the quite good ZBasic that came on ROM for the TRS-80 eventually all boiled down to a handful of registers and a stack.

The even larger masterpiece was the work done for 6502 and its cousins, with just three 8-bit registers and some minimal instruction set. How did they ever write code for that, it must have been horrible.