[coreboot] 486 Motherboard from scratch

[Rex O'Regan]

On Fri, 2012-11-23 at 22:45 +0100, Peter Stuge wrote:
> Hi Rex,
> 
> Rex O'Regan wrote:
> > How hard would it be to design, source components and construct a
> > motherboard for something simple such as a 486DX from scratch?
> > 
> > I am interested in doing this primarily to learn about what it takes to
> > design a motherboard and what's in them and how the components interact.
> 
> Not very many are designing 486-class boards these days, so you will
> not get many answers. If you want to find out I think you have to try.
> 
> As always, keeping it simple and introducing one or at least very few
> unknowns each time helps the success rate.
> 
> You'll need various tooling for bringup, oscilloscope, logic analyzer,
> and so on. But with 500-1000 EUR/USD you can already get quite a
> useful lab set up! Of course not name brand state of the art, but
> wholly adequate for a hobbyist mainboard design.
> 
> Programmable logic is certainly one way to go, but would of course
> bypass the procurement exercise.
> 
> If you have time - a fun project!
> 
> 
> //Peter
> 
Thanks for the confidence, you make it sound like others are designing
for other processors. I just chose the 486 as it seems to be about the
most basic that can still be used but if there are others doing a
similar thing with another class I would be quite happy to use a
different class to get access to more information.

Cheers,
Rex