Not in JPM fruit machines, we used the PLCC chip like the AMiga 600 ;-) [ we had 20 MHZ 68k boards for running 'compliance' tests, I wanted so bad to stick one in my A500 back in '96 ]
Wow, just wow, the memories. Computer archaeology . Was once convinced that the 680x0 series of chips would dominate the micro market, due to the elegant instruction set, and large number of wide registers. Mainframe on a chip.
The reason it did not dominate was because the computer companies who marketed 68000-based designs had leadership with their heads firmly up their backsides. Only the PC makers learned the number one lesson from the Commodore 64: Volume is the king of business.
68k was a magnificent piece of silicon, a far better implementation of cisc than an X86, with its weird addressing scheme and the lack of dedicated registers... a poor extension of an 8085, adapted to the 16 bit world... Try to figure out what Motorola would have been if IBM had selected 68k for its pc implementation: maybe Intel had dissapeared... and Motorola would have thrived!! The best processor with the best architecture, does not turn into the best selling silicon all the times... Look at the demise of Power PC , which was a very nice processor architecture... ( a designed a board myself with an 8245 running at 200mhz...) The 68k board is nice, but all that random logic is a bit disturbing! Why not use a Max II or a Lattice to squeeze the garbage into a single chip??
@@sauronbadeye His game was to reproduce Alan Clements's project board with period glue logic. I knew people wire-wrapping on 68k boards in college, maybe around 1990. They probably used that very book for the course; it looks familiar. Wish I had that wrapping tool!
@@GnuReligion At that time books showing how to design around microprocessors were quite popular: I bought the "Bug Books" series, teaching how to interface an 8080 to almost anything existed on planet earth! These books had also program examples, snippets of assembler codes designed, for the purpose : in general young electronic engineers like me were not too familiar with low level program languages like assembler and mastered instead high level stuff like Basic and Fortran........
When we first got our hands on the Motorola 68000, just about all the developers wet themselves. It was a dream to program in assembler. First big project was an air-to-air navigation system with 5 x 68000 CPUs. My job was to program the graphics display board, showing icons of other friendly and foe contacts on the airplane's HUD.
I designed and built my own 68000 based CPU board over 25 years ago. It has 64K of EPROM and 64K RAM. In the last year I dug it out and got it running again. I needed to redo the monitor program as the EPROM contents had started to change some bits. I have modified the board to allow optional use of NVRAM instead of EPROM. I have a very basic monitor program running on it that includes downloading S format records but I will check out the TUTOR monitor and the enhanced version of BASIC.
Mr. Tranter- you've done it again! Your previous videos inspired me to build my own Altair Micro and also 6502 SBC.. Now you've made another video that teaches and inspires! Thank you for sharing this!!!
Awesome stuff dude. I love the way you sincerely portray the material. It doesn't sound forced or pretentious at all; just, informative! Thanks a million for your efforts!!
Lots of people are tired of the corporate world doing everything for you and handing it all to a person "Turn Key." It's really rewarding to actually build something yourself and see it work - not just open up a box and plug something in.
So very cool... I just did a modest amount in 6802 but the 68000 was a very big, generous architecture and super clean instruction set. I would have loved to have a system like you put together so well back in 1984! Very slick.
Very well done, and for someone who grew up near Philly, direct to the point ! is a big plus. I'm just now putting together a Motorola MVME based system for fun. And after seeing your video want to build a basic 68K board. BTW in the 70's I built a AMD2900 board from AMD's data books -pete
Impressive Jeff. I have lower ambitions and that is to emulate a Motorola 6809 microprocessor. I have the 'micro-code' programmed, just need some hardware to interface to it. they were great times when these devices first appeared.
there's actually a few projects that deal with adding a unix-like OS to microcontrollers: - there's retroBSD (a port of 2BSD to a 32 bit microchip microcontroller with 512kb of ROM and 128kb of RAM, it's said it's enough to run the kernel plus some additionnal programs) - and liteBSD (a port of BSD4.4 for the same microcontroller).
I'm listening to this and it freaks me out about how much I remember about switching levels on old TTL logic. [ hahaha ] Of course you used the FTDI chip for switching levels ;-) [ 5 volt 'tolerant' ]
Really cool stuff. I've dreamed of building my own computer for a while.... I think I've settled on the 68K, but I keep thinking Z80 for the simple fact of CP/M ... but then I think why do I need a large library of software for something I'm basically developing to tinker with...
There might be interest in getting some PCBs if you finished a design. If you stayed with with all through hole parts you could use a couple of AS6C4008 512KB SRAMs for 1MB total. A lot more than the 32KB on the original Motorola MC68000 Educational Computer Board. I have a MECB that I haven't tinkered with in quite a while.
Agree, maybe newer parts but still staying with the SBC concept. I'd do the same with the ROMs and make them EEPROMs. BTW doing my first KI CAD project this spring.
For another challenge, try making a similar SBC using the WDC65C816 (used in the Apple //GS). For a different type of challenge, see if you can make a video adapter board for your 68k SBC using the "Propellor" chip, an 8-integer-core 32bit micro controller, that has primitive hardware support for generating NTSC video.
My understanding is they were mostly used in PCMs (Power Train Control Modules, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powertrain_control_module) which would be proprietary software specific to each car manufacturer and probably not running under an operating system as such.
