This is the first episode in a series about designing and building a 68030 based computer. This series will be a complete dive down into the how and why, part selection, construction, testing, and all the steps in between.
I was programmer back in the day (retired now) when all this architecture was new. It's cool to see a retrospective view of it. I also remember the IBM Mainframe Editor we used called 'ROSCOE' , many fond memories of writing RPF's (basically scripts) to write games we weren't supposed to be playing at work !
Have you ever tried running computational chemistry programs on your home lab? I’ve done it with my server using ORCA and it’s quite fun. There’s also GROMACS for running molecular dynamics simulations, although I haven’t gotten around to trying that yet. I thought you might be interested in it after I saw one of your home lab videos. I’m commenting on this video so you see it.
I agree sounds like an awesome project! And it looks like it will be a very capable machine as well. Do you think it would be worth while adding a basic IO interface for things like a PC speaker and/or LEDs/7-seg on the board? (mostly if you can't use an ISA POST card) Also kinda surprised you'd put an ATtiny on the board considering the ATtiny can do more MIPs than the 68030. Thought maybe a CPLD would 'feel' more suitable plus handle any glue logic?
Stay tuned - Both of those ideas are coming up! (great minds think alike) I do agree on the ATTiny! I debated for awhile about using one for this purpose. It would have been possible to do the same logic in the CPLDs, but I didn't mind removing that complexity to something standalone.
@WizardTim, Attiny is around 1 MIPs. 25Mhz 68030s are around 5 MIPs. But yeah, it is using a sledgehammer to crush an ant, but proper power/reset/fault handling is deceptively complicated. The Attinys are great - featureful, self contained, and work with a wide variety of voltages. I'll be doing a video on its operation as soon as I coordinate it with Jeff.
