[coreboot] 486 Motherboard from scratch

ron minnich rminnich at gmail.com
Sat Nov 24 17:05:59 CET 2012


Long ago, one could buy a bunch of off-the-shelf ICs (e.g. 6809, 8086,
etc.) and build a computer. I used to do it. It required a very low
level of skill.

That's no longer true. If you wonder at possible reasons, see:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-_cgb4gRhZxl9anxudIgO_NAB80yq-ks4HtOx-zlDz8/edit

The fact that you could build such systems was no accident: it was the
result of very careful engineering.

Nowadays, now that I see the engineers who do this kind of design at
Google with modern chipsets such as sandybridge, I marvel at how hard
it is. It is unlikely that Apple II could happen today with these
newer chipsets and CPUs.

If you want to do your own board design best start with a modern chip
that's designed to allow such activities, i.e.a SOC such as an AMD
SC520 (can you buy those any more?) or one of the ARM SOCs. Just my 2
cents.

ron




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