[coreboot] 486 Motherboard from scratch

[Peter Stuge]

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