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From: rainer@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Rainer Malzbender)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.m68k,comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: 680X0 dream machine
Message-ID: <19620@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Date: 12 Apr 90 19:53:25 GMT
References: <105@motto.UUCP>
Sender: news@boulder.Colorado.EDU
Reply-To: rainer@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Rainer Malzbender)
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Lines: 21

The response about the Unix PC was appropriate, but having built several
homebrew 68000 machines I for one would love to see a public-domain
hardware project. Schematics would be available (in different formats) on
the net, pcb's would be available at cost, and it would run something
like Minix. It would be nice to use available peripherals (multisync
monitors, SCSI drives, etc.) I know some outfit sells 68K motherboards
that then use the PC bus and some of its controller cards, but this seems
unnecessary. You could pretty easily do a motherboard with an '030, SCSI
controller, 1024 x 768 (say) color graphics (256/16M), built in
ethernet, wads of ram using SIMM/SIP's. One issue that needs careful
thought is the bus - the PC bus is cheap, but inadequate, and better stuff
like VME, NuBus, etc. is probably too expensive (ever buy a Mupac VME
chassis ???) Oh yeah, it's got to have CD-quality sound and a DSP on board,
and a transputer interface. Then we'll spend the next five years writing
code for the beast, at which time HAL Systems will come out with the $1000
1000 mips, 100 mflops pocket PC and make us gnash our teeth.
			Free Hardware Foundation :-)
--
Rainer M. Malzbender                           Just another Unix/C demagogue.
Dept. of Physics            (303)492-6829         rainer@hibachi.colorado.edu 
U. of Colorado, Boulder, USA                malzbender@opus.vaxf.colorado.edu