homebrew 'puter project (was: 8008?

[Roger Merchberger]

Rumor has it that Ethan Dicks may have mentioned these words:

>I've been thinking about the tiny-8008 project for some time - I may
>have to scrape together the parts and give it a go - I can always
>borrow an 8008 from my pile of 11/34 spare parts.

I've been thinking of building my own 6809 project (I have four AVR 
projects and a couple serial ports on a Linksys router I need to build 
first, tho)...[1]

Originally I was going to design and build my own buss structure / 
backplane ( I was thinking 80 pins - 40-pin IDE headers are bog-easy to 
find... ;-) something that could expand to a 16-bit CPU....

First card would be a fully buffered CPU, next card might be 256K or 512K 
RAM, 3rd card might be a small LED/LCD display (2x40 or somesuch) and of 
course, one card full'o'blinkinlights... ;-)

My question: Would I be better to do that, or should I center it around an 
existing buss, like VME or somesuch?

>Of course, as soon as I do that, I'll have to rig something up for a
>4004... ;-)  I think it wouldn't be too hard to make a 4004-based
>digital clock, at least in terms of the programming.

I've been wanting to build a digital thermostat. "Why spend $50 on one from 
the local hardware store, when I can build one for $100!" ;-) Naw, besides, 
the prebuilt thingies don't give enough 'programmability' for my tastes.

Having started out with the 6809, personally I find it hard to get excited 
about 4-bit CPUs, myself... ;-)

[[ Altho I did have at one time that Radio Shack single-TI-chip-4-bit 
computer trainer thingy... ]]

Ah well, back to work.
Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

[1] I just got the latest (non-CVS) tarball of PCB compiled on my new Linux 
 From Scratch 6.1 install on my laptop - I'm ready to start designing things.

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger   | "Profile, don't speculate."
SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers |     Daniel J. Bernstein
zmerch at 30below.com          |