68k homebuilts

Hi everyone As a 4th year computer engineering student with a part time job, I definitely have too much time on my hands, so I've been thinking about doing something like building my own computer. I remember playing with the 68k SBCs back in my assembly class, so I thought something from that family might be an interesting choice. It's ambitious, but ideally I'd like to do 16/32 bits and a few megs of memory. Have any of you built something like this? I'm looking for links to project pages, shared experiences, and advice on what processor to use. Reminiscence is welcome too, if you have fond memories of such a thing :) Thanks John Floren -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn -----REPLY----- Hi! If you are interested in home brew computing you are welcome to join us on the N8VEM home brew computer project. It is currently Z80 CP/M based but if you would like to explore 6800/6809/68k designs you could design your own SBC and reuse the peripheral board designs we have already. There is an SBC, an ECB backplane, an ECB bus monitor, and an ECB prototyping board available now. There have been 68k based ECB designs in the past although I am not an expert in how those work. As long as it uses +5, GND, Address, Data, and a variety of control bus signals it should work though. A Disk IO board (IDE and NEC765A FDC) and a Terminal Replacement Board (uses VGA monitor & PS/2 keyboard) are in the works. Several builders have projects as well such as a USB & network peripheral (!) which allows running CP/NET. There is another builder with a project that allows wireless serial communications and numerous interfaces to relays, etc. That same builder made an AT keyboard interface and a 20x4 LCD display with NVRAM controller. In short, you could focus on your 68k SBC design while leveraging the peripherals and standard bus components already available. Take it for what it's worth. You can contact me offline if you'd like more information. There are photos, schematics, PCB layouts, ROM images, parts lists, BOMs, and bunch of other stuff on the website. The PCBs are all $20 each. Good luck with your project! Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch http://groups.google.com/group/n8vem http://n8vem-sbc.pbwiki.com/