hits since 2001-11-29.
The Cape Computer Club was quite active in the eighties, and the 680x group built a 6809 computer on Eurocards. I've scanned the schematics, CPU, DRAM, CRT Controller pages 1, 2, and 3, Floppy Disk Controller, Serial Port, and Parallel Port. I have better (bigger) scans available if you need them, but I would say that these are for historical interest only (although I would like to get my hands on some of this hardware :-).
If you used to belong to the Cape Computer Club, drop me an email.
While still in high school, I played with Motorola D2 and D3 6800 processor boards, and somewhere along the way I fell in love with the 6809. The Cape Computer Club had a fairly active 680x group which designed and built a kickass 6809 system -- Graphics, Dynamic RAM, DAT (That's Dynamic Address Translation, not magtape), the works. At that stage I didn't have the budget to build a similar system, so I kept playing with the 6800 stuff.
A few years later I was a student and had access to design tools (well, smARTWORK, which is better than nothing) and I could easily get double sided (but not through-hole plated) PCBs made.
My first attempt basically duplicated the 6883 SAM application note, i.e. the same basic circuit as the Radio Shack Color Computer and the Dragon. That board turned out to be unbuildable, due to the lack of though-hole plating, and the project got sidelined.
My second attempt was much simpler. I realised that I could get 64K of RAM using just two chips (32kx8 CMOS RAM), and by that time I had access to peecees that I could use for a terminal, so I didn't need a built-in video display.
Unfortunately I got a few things wrong, and I couldn't get the board to work. Read all about it if you want to.
The Microbox is a 6809 / 6883 (SAM) based design with 64K main RAM and 128K video RAM with a NEC 7220A graphic display controller. Quite a nifty design, even if the PCB is huge. Read about my Microbox ][ here.
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