This 68k Board Is About As Simple As It Gets

For those of us who remember the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, it’s likely that a sizeable quantity of those memories will come in the form of a cream or grey box with a Commodore, Atari, or Apple logo on it These machines were the affordable creative workstations of their day, and under the hood were a tour de force of custom silicon and clever hardware design. We might, therefore, be excused for an association between 68000 based computers and complexity, but in reality, they are as straightforward to interface as the rest of the crop of late-1970s silicon. We can see it in [Matt Sarnoff]’s 68k-nano, about as simple a 68000-based single-board computer as it’s possible to get.

But for all its simplicity, this board is no slouch. It packs a megabyte of RAM, 64k of ROM, a 16550 UART, and an IDE interface for a CompactFlash card. There is also provision for a real-time clock module, through an interesting bit-banged SPI interface from the 16550’s control lines. There appears also to be a 50-pin expansion header.

Software-wise there is a ROM monitor that provides test and housekeeping functions, and which loads an executable from the card plugged into the IDE interface if there is one. This feature makes the board especially interesting, as it opens up the possibility of running a μClinux or similar kernel for a more fully-featured operating system.

The 68k doesn’t receive the attention here that some of its 8-bit contemporaries do, but it still appears from time to time. We’ve certainly featured at least one other 68000-based SBC in the past.

Thanks [Anton] for the tip.