RetroBrew Computers Forum
Discussion forum for the RetroBrew Computers community.

Home » RBC Forums » General Discussion » Mini MC68040 (Discussion about the construction of a SBC with a MC68040)
Mini MC68040 [message #4644] Tue, 24 April 2018 01:53 Go to next message
ale500 is currently offline  ale500
Messages: 44
Registered: April 2018
Member
I want to build one MC68040 based SBC.

Background: Some years ago I tried to build my own SBC based on a MC68040 with a SpartanII FPGA as glue and control all logic. I have some boards made and partially populated one. Kind of a proof of concept. But I'd like to keep it a bit simpler.

The idea would be a two 100x100 mm stack with:

- board 1 processor, buffers and glue logic.
- board 2 SRAM and EPROM/EEPROM/Flash, something. I mean simple in design, 4 8x8 EEPROMs or so, and 4 SRAMs (128kx8 or 512kx8). Some IO too Smile

Is someone on board ? pun intended Smile
Re: Mini MC68040 [message #4645 is a reply to message #4644] Tue, 24 April 2018 07:59 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ale500 is currently offline  ale500
Messages: 44
Registered: April 2018
Member
Here a pair of images of the planned two boards. I had to go for SMD parts for the buffers as there sadly is not enough room for regular DIL parts. Those are 74ABT245DB (SSOP20-Type II 0.65 mm pitch), I have like 40 or so pieces. Not very plussed I am.
Re: Mini MC68040 [message #4646 is a reply to message #4645] Tue, 24 April 2018 08:30 Go to previous messageGo to next message
jcoffman is currently offline  jcoffman
Messages: 332
Registered: October 2015
Senior Member
1. What would run on this 68040? Linux would require > 2mb (KISS-68030 requires 32Mb for Will's Linux port.Wink
2. Connectivity to an IDE (CF card?Wink or SD interface would be desirable; mandatory for Linux.

--John

Re: Mini MC68040 [message #4647 is a reply to message #4646] Tue, 24 April 2018 09:16 Go to previous messageGo to next message
rhkoolstar is currently offline  rhkoolstar
Messages: 276
Registered: October 2015
Senior Member
You might want to use PLCC32 parts for the ROM. They come with TH sockets and take about half the space
Cheaper too...

Rienk
Re: Mini MC68040 [message #4648 is a reply to message #4644] Tue, 24 April 2018 10:48 Go to previous messageGo to next message
yoda is currently offline  yoda
Messages: 125
Registered: October 2015
Location: Cedar Rapids, IA
Senior Member
Hi

If you look back through postings at Jackalope, Andrew Lynch and myself were working on a design for a 68040. We have some preliminary KiCad of it. It uses a 68150 as a dynamic bus controller so a single eeprom for booting is all that is required then. It has been put on hold for a while as other projects have come up but I plan on resurrecting it soon. I am in the process of moving to a new house so it will be a few months before my electronics workshop is back up and working.
Re: Mini MC68040 [message #4650 is a reply to message #4648] Tue, 24 April 2018 21:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ale500 is currently offline  ale500
Messages: 44
Registered: April 2018
Member
The idea with the bus sizer is a very good one. It seems a bit difficult to get or it is very expensive. If only used for an 8 bit bus to an E(E)PROM, a cpld would do. One has to issue 4 reads, latch the data and then present a full 32 bit read, some clocks later and to assert TA. It sounds simple. I have some XC9572XL that could do that.

Edit: I was fiddling a bit with the bus buffers and I could replace the 4 buffers with 2 XC9572(XL) and use them for the bus sizing too. I have to see if the logic would fit, these CPLDs are not that big, nor that fast.

[Updated on: Wed, 25 April 2018 00:18]

Report message to a moderator

Re: Mini MC68040 [message #4652 is a reply to message #4650] Wed, 25 April 2018 06:49 Go to previous messageGo to next message
yoda is currently offline  yoda
Messages: 125
Registered: October 2015
Location: Cedar Rapids, IA
Senior Member
Well most of the I/O is 8 bit as well so there is a need for bus sizer. I would be curious on a bus sizer in CPLD as the board includes at least one if not 2 of these to include glue logic as well as a DRAM controller. The DRAM controller is the thing that has held up the design the most as I am not very knowledgeable with DRAM interfacing.
Re: Mini MC68040 [message #4653 is a reply to message #4652] Wed, 25 April 2018 09:42 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ale500 is currently offline  ale500
Messages: 44
Registered: April 2018
Member
If the memory mapped ports do not have to be contiguous then they could be mapped in modulo 4 addresses avoiding the sizer, at least for that. The IDE/CF is a similar case. What do you think ?
Re: Mini MC68040 [message #4654 is a reply to message #4653] Wed, 25 April 2018 11:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
yoda is currently offline  yoda
Messages: 125
Registered: October 2015
Location: Cedar Rapids, IA
Senior Member
Yes that works but is not very clean and for IDE if you want to use 16 bit mode, may be a little more tricky
Re: Mini MC68040 [message #4655 is a reply to message #4654] Wed, 25 April 2018 22:55 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ale500 is currently offline  ale500
Messages: 44
Registered: April 2018
Member
As I see it, you connect the IDE port to D31..D16, the address lines to A2..A5 and done. The data read/write port on the IDE controller is just one address. Could you please elaborate on the "not clean" and "tricky" aspects ?
Re: Mini MC68040 [message #4656 is a reply to message #4655] Thu, 26 April 2018 07:02 Go to previous messageGo to next message
yoda is currently offline  yoda
Messages: 125
Registered: October 2015
Location: Cedar Rapids, IA
Senior Member
By not clean I mean you have multiple addresses mapping to devices which can cause program debug nightmares. I just like true mappings and adding CPLDs are pretty straightforward and can remove these issues very easily and handle other things that are required. Using 4 eeproms etc takes up a lot of space and is complicated for some users to program them correctly so having one is easier and in the space of 3 extra ROMs you can fit a couple of CPLDs so you have more flexibility.
Re: Mini MC68040 [message #4658 is a reply to message #4656] Thu, 26 April 2018 09:11 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ale500 is currently offline  ale500
Messages: 44
Registered: April 2018
Member
I wanted something in the KISS spirit, maybe I simplified it a bit too much.
Re: Mini MC68040 [message #4661 is a reply to message #4658] Thu, 26 April 2018 11:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
yoda is currently offline  yoda
Messages: 125
Registered: October 2015
Location: Cedar Rapids, IA
Senior Member
There are trade offs both ways. I like having a single eeprom as it makes development a little faster (at least until you get a hi speed serial port running reliably). I also want something robust enough to eventually support Linux which means interrupts and dram and more so it is hard to keep entirely simple.
Re: Mini MC68040 [message #4663 is a reply to message #4661] Thu, 26 April 2018 13:12 Go to previous messageGo to next message
jcoffman is currently offline  jcoffman
Messages: 332
Registered: October 2015
Senior Member
RE: Keeping it simple, 68040 vs. 68030

68040 was considered for the KISS board. It's primary advantages over the 68030 are speed & integral FPU.

The 68030 has certain advantages over the 68040: same footprint as 68020 & dynamic bus sizing. The missing FPU is made up with the Linux FP emulator.

It all comes down to engineering tradeoffs. A 6U VME-size board with ECB bus would fit the Siemens 6508 chassis, with the 12-slot RetroBrew backplane.

Re: Mini MC68040 [message #4664 is a reply to message #4663] Thu, 26 April 2018 20:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
plasmo is currently offline  plasmo
Messages: 916
Registered: March 2017
Location: New Mexico, USA
Senior Member
ale500,
I'm glad you are thinking about the 68040 SBC. I afraid I don't have much time to participate in the discussions. Here are some unorganized thoughts I have:

* There is a conceptual design of booting 68040/68360 off a byte wide EPROM. You'll need an I/O coprocessor anyway. 68360 is a good I/O candidate and this concept is interesting:
https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/application-note/AN2035.pdf
* If you use 4x EPROM, use 5V flash (e.g. 29F040) that allow you to reprogram them in-situ.
* You need to worry about heat sink + fan. 68040 is quite a power hog, heat sink is required. Even 68LC/EC040 needs heat sink & fan.
* 4 layer pc board is the baseline board design. This plus relatively expensive 68040 CPU means cost control is out of window. One can reasonably design & build 68030 based SBC for $40 or less thus do not require crowd funding, but 68040 SBC will be $150-$200. Count on 2 design iterations and half a dozen qual units and you are talking about a significant investment. An coordinated effort is needed to realize it.
* 5V SIMM72 DRAM is available up to 128meg. It is a good fit with the 68040. A simple DRAM controller takes a dozen flip flops to implement in CPLD.
* Be sure to connect D24-D31 to devices with interrupt vectors. This is different than 68000 which expects interrupt vectors from D0-D7.
* When I designed the 68040 in the early 1990's, I used Altera's EPM9560 which is the biggest 5V CPLD I'm aware of at the time. It may still be available, but costly, no doubt. I may be wrong but I don't believe Xilinx has 5V CPLD anywhere near that size.
* If you can find 3.3V 68040 then you'll have much better (& cheaper) selections of parts. I don't believe 3.3V 68040 is available in PGA, however. Some surface mount components are required in any case.
Good luck!
Re: Mini MC68040 [message #4665 is a reply to message #4644] Fri, 27 April 2018 07:12 Go to previous messageGo to next message
lynchaj is currently offline  lynchaj
Messages: 1080
Registered: June 2016
Senior Member
Hi
The Jackalope is a third generation of the Gryphon 68030 SBC. As I recall the various generations of prototypes had more or less found and fixed the bugs. Jackalope is a cleaned up version of the Xagdin which was the second generation Gryphon 68030 rebuilt using free/open source EDA tools. Rather than start over from scratch maybe it would make sense to pick up the Jackalope and continue where it left off. It would probably be easier than another blank sheet restart.

https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=dev:boards:ja ckalope_68030:start

https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/doku.php?id=builderpages: yoda:xagdin

68040 is cool but expensive and complicated. Even more so than the 68030 which is complex by itself. A 3.3V 68040 would probably be relatively more compatible with recent technology as the 5V parts are scarce and power hungry.

There was a 3.3V 68040 & FPGA based project on Hackaday called Trollbook which sounds similar to what you describe

http://slaeshjag.org/viewpost/1001-project-introduction-trol lbook-a-homebrew-68040-computer
Re: Mini MC68040 [message #4666 is a reply to message #4664] Fri, 27 April 2018 09:06 Go to previous messageGo to next message
yoda is currently offline  yoda
Messages: 125
Registered: October 2015
Location: Cedar Rapids, IA
Senior Member
Been down the 60360 route - not a good option. It is way more complicated than needed and there is no clear connecting with 68040 as it requires PALs which no equations are available and the software initiation is very complex - I would not recommend that route.
Re: Mini MC68040 [message #10586 is a reply to message #4666] Sun, 04 February 2024 05:49 Go to previous message
plasmo is currently offline  plasmo
Messages: 916
Registered: March 2017
Location: New Mexico, USA
Senior Member
I am working with forum member mikesmith on a support board for a commercial 68040 mezzanine board (IP940). So I'm rekindling my interests in 68040. What is the status of the mini-040 project?
Bill
Previous Topic: STC89C52 DIY learning board kit
Next Topic: Micro 8088 / Xi 8088 BIOS Releases


Current Time: Tue Jul 15 12:18:13 PDT 2025

Total time taken to generate the page: 0.00756 seconds