The Motorola 68000

I got into Motorola 680x processors first, and from there the obvious path was the 68000.

Soon after the 68000 came out, Byte ran articles on not only the processor but also the computers that used it -- foremost the Apple Macintosh, but also the Amiga, Atari ST, Corvus Concept, Fortune 32:16 and others. When I started studying at the University of Stellenbosch in 1985, I found the Byte shelf in the Engineering Library, and my studies diverged somewhat from what the lecturers were trying to teach me.

Design Philosophy Behind Motorola's MC68000, part 1, part 2 and part 3.

Homebrew 68000

My first 68000 system was homebrewed on three Eurocards. Read about it here.

I am slowly writing a new monitor for it, based on FBUG68K, dBUG and DdriagDOS, using cross-tools created by Stephen Moody's excellent script.

Quelo assembler

I've been using the Quelo assembler which I downloaded from bode.ee.ualberta.ca (184140 Mar 16 1991 asm68k.tar.Z) back in 1994. Here's a local copy QUELOASM.ZIP.

This assembler can be used to assemble the tutornew monitor mentioned in the comp.sys.m68k FAQ -- I get a bit-identical image so things obviously work right.

My notes on using the Quelo crossassembler.

EASy68K

I've also played with EASy68K which does provide an IDE Integrated Development Environment) but I prefer the Quelo assember.

asmx

Another nice assembler is Bruce Tomlin's asmx. I had to install Cygwin to compile the Windows binary asmx.exe (you also need cygwin1.dll and while the documentation claims that an asterisk at the beginning of a line is a comment, I had to add a line "if (*linePtr == '*') return;" to the DoLine() function to make this work.

But it runs under Windows 7 so it's less of a schlepp than Quelo. On the other hand it does require a ';' before the comment at the end of the line so I would need to edit TUTORNEW or whatever to make it compile with asmx.

WinHex

WinHex is a Windows hex viewer / editor. It can join two ROM (Hi/Lo) files into a single binary. Tools -> File tools -> Unify -> Bytewise. File 1 is Hi, File 2 is Lo.

Humbug

Peter Stark wrote HUMBUG for the 6809 and 68000. It's free for non-commercial use by accepting this agreement.

Linux 68K

Steve over at Big Mess o' Wires made Linux run on a solderless breadboard 68008 (!).

68000 on the Apple

• mc-hard 68008-Card for the Apple II (German), PCB layout (Rojas Darius Drepper), also better PCB layout (Delgen Technologies). Full article, translated.
• Stellation Two McMill

Some links and stuff:

• Greg Garner's 68000 32 bit division source code.
• 68000 Assembler/Simulator written at North Carolina State University's Electrical and Computer Engineering department.
• ART-FORTH is a full 32-bit subroutine-threaded FORTH written by Anthony Rose (he of the tephelone). But my copy of the .bin is corrupt
• AS68K 68020/68881/68851 cross assembler for DOS
• Matthew Brandt's C68K Compiler with modifications by Scott Howard.
• Tiny Basic for the MEX68KECB
• Modula 2 source code for a 68000 cross-assembler.
• Motorola's 6809 to 68000 assembler translator
• GCC MSDOS cross-compiler for the 68000 on ftp.lysator.liu.se.
• ABCnix and dnix for the DIAB DS90 and Luxor ABC1600
• Atari ST MINIX on the PT68K. MINIX source is on GitHub.
• Motorola FBUG68K, Revision 1.1. As mentioned elsewhere, the filenames are somewhat stuffed. (Update, 2023. I spent some time on this, demangled the filenames and the ^M, tried to make it work. I have no idea what assembler it's supposed to be written for, the syntax is weird.).
• Fortune 32:16 (also see my blog entry).
• Tutor and Tutornew
• VU68K SBC from Byte, January 1984, and the VUBug monitor written by Edward M. Carter, ported to Raymond Carr's "Raymatic" 68000 Development Board by Russell Brown.
• Karl Lunt wrote a 68000 ROM Monitor, which was published in the May 1989 issue of 68' Micro Journal ( copyright notice). If you type this in, please send me a copy of the binary? Karl also wrote SBasic, a compiled Basic for the 68HC11 and 68000.
• Joe-Mon on the Beckman DU600 spectrophotometer.
• OS-9 68K V3.2
• Geoffrey Brown and Kyle Harper's 68008 design from Computer Design magazine. Well, actually it's a repackaged AN897. Markus' version.
• Bob Coates' Kaycomp 68000 SBC from Electronics & Wireless World, October 1985 to February 1986, May 1986.
• Wichit built a 68k Single Board Computer.
• Somewhere around 1994, Ingo Cyliax developed a 68030-based SBC with an ISA bus interface. Here's a mirror of ftp.cs.indiana.edu/pub/goo I made in October 1999.
• Quanta Q40 and Q60, Sinclair QL -> Aurora / Pandora -> Thor -> Q40/Q60.
• Hawthorne Technologies TinyGiant HT68k SBC on Rich Cini's pages.
• The Applix 1616 is an Australian 68000 computer sold in kit form.
• IDE hard drive interface for the Amiga that looks as if it'll work with any 68000.
• The guide to 68000 assembly language for Fargo Programmers by Jimmy Mardell. Fargo is a programming environment / extension to allow you to write assembler code for the TI-92 graphing calculator.
• Paul R. Santa-Maria compiled an archive of most of the DTACK GROUNDED newsletters. Nice trip down memory lane.
• Motorola 680x0 Resources compiled by Paul RSM and hosted by ckelly at Easy68K.
• You might find the 68K Internet Resources page helpful.
• 68000 Tiny Basic Web Page.
• Jeff Tranter.
• Kiwi - a 68k homebrew computer (Yamaha V9990 graphics, dynamic RAM), and Lee Davison's Enhanced Basic 68k.
• FORTH.
• The story of SAGE.