A DIY 'Entry Level' 68000 based computer 

Kind comments indeed. Thank you!

Thanks for the positive feedback! I think it is always interesting to find out just how much one can do with a microprocessor as you say, without the added complication of a sohisticated circuit.

This one is in fact a well-worn hand-me-down from an old friend, but it's still soldiering on - or should I say 'soldering on'? :-) I can't think of a better way to build a microprocessor based circuit board as a one-off.

Ha ha! I can see where you're coming from! Pleased to see this particular one out the way as I've been mulling it over for several months. The 'short' helpful hints video is on its way, but has turned out to be the longest of the three..

Glad you like the video :-) The wiring is quite straight forward once you've seen it done. First, pull out about 1 cm of wire from the pen tip and by using the tip of the pen, you wrap the wire round the first pin to be connected two or three times. Using the wiring combs, you then lace the wire away from the pin you've just wrapped and drag it along the comb in the quickest direction to the next pin you want to connect.Once again, using the tip of the pen, wrap it around the destination pin two or three times. If you are taking it to yet another destination pin, do your two or three wraps and head off again down the wiring comb to the next pin. I hope that's clear? Once you have all the wraps completed, with the final destination pin now wrapped, press down on the wire using the sharp tip of the pen to break it off. Now visit each wrapped pin with a hot soldering iron and solder to burn off the enamel and make the joint permanent. I hope this helps??

@@lishaton Yes that's very helpful! Next question, where can I get those wiring pens and wiring combs? Oh, and what gauge wire is that? Thanks!!

So sorry that I haven't seen this before. For some reason, this site doesn't tell the originator about any further comments in a thread which is a pain... You can buy the pens, wiring combs and wire from CPC Farnell amongst others. Do a search for "Roadrunner" (not sure about the combs from them?) The web site is: roadrunnerelectronics.com/

Ah well, some folks like a challenge! Take another example of modern cars with manual gearboxes, which are much easier to drive than seriously older models requiring the art of double-declutching, use of manual chokes etc. etc. I guess it's sometimes more fun doing it the hard way :-)

@@lishaton I meant : those people say that 8086 and SH2 assembly is hard. MIPS is great for compilers, but I never heard praise from a human. 6502 assembly only looked easy when there was only 4kB of RAM and you did not want to do any 16 bit arithmetic. Z80 is not orthogonal.

I see where you're coming from. Yes, true.