68000 Homebrew computer with video
2-Zons wrote 11/21/2018 at 21:30 • 4 pointsI'm thinking of starting a 68K build as a project. I'm pretty rusty at digital electronics. I built a 6809 computer with serial interface while in school back in 1991. I remember looking into 68000 systems at the time and how nice of a processor the 68000 was to program. I've seen references here and elsewhere of people bread boarding 68K systems in very short order. Is this a good place to get advice and discuss options for my system? Is there a digital electronics forum somewhere with a more specialized user base that would be better?
I would like to build a computer that can output video. I'm considering building a video controller out of logic chips, or an FPGA. The original Amiga chips were bread-boarded out of logic chips from what I understand. I'm not looking at building anything fancy, just a color frame buffer and VGA output. Possibly HDMI output if it's not too difficult.
I would also be open to using an inexpensive packaged video controller that would interface well with the 68K. I've considered using an old VGA card (I've got many of those lying around), but interfacing to that might be quite difficult.
My goals for the computer are:
* Color Video - at VGA resolution
* Simplicity - I want to be able to finish it. But not as simple as just using a Raspberry Pi, I want to build the system myself.
* Cost - I don't want to spend a lot of money on it.
Any suggestions are appreciated?
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I want to build the computer traditionally (CPU, RAM, ROM, IO, etc. I am considering FPGA for the video unless I can find a good chip out there that will be easy to interface to and program. I don't want to implement the whole computer on FPGA, that's kind of against the point of the project.
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If you want to make it yourself and still keep it simple, FPGA is the way to go. There are some implementations of other processors using FPGAs on this website, it might be a good place to start your quest.
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