I've posted before about how it's getting harder to find some of the vintage chips used in this project, and things aren't getting any better. I have a pretty good source for MC68010s at the moment (and have stock), but things like the MC68681 and V9958 are so hard to find that I've had to stop offering them as part of the kit on Tindie :(

With that in mind, there's been a lot of discussion recently over on Discord about future directions for the project, and the awesome community came up with some great ideas for the next major board version! Big thanks to everyone who's been involved in discussing this and suggesting ideas so far!

The Next Major Board Version

The new board won't replace the current one (in-fact, I've just sent of a new revision of the version 1 for manufacturing - more on that below!), but will be a kind of souped-up "pro" version - I'm thinking along the lines of A3000 vs A500 :) 

Briefly, these are the specs we're working to at the moment:

• Modular CPU, supporting 68020 or 68030 (modular, on a daughterboard)
• Full 32-bit data and address bus on the mainboard
• The MC68901 will be replaced in UART duty by a MaxLinear XR68C681 (PLCC, but mounted in a THT socket)
• Expansion via an evolution of the current bus, with buffering and DIN 41612 connectors
• 2MB RAM as standard, expandable (probably with SIMMs of some kind)
• IDE on-board (thanks to MarkM on Discord)
• I2C on board (with a PCF8584T)
• Video on board ( with Xark's Xosera FPGA project)
• Sound - Possibly something on-board, as yet undecided

Obviously some of these components will be SMD, which is a shame as I've always wanted this project to be easily-solderable by those of all skill-levels, but I think for the "pro" version it's not such a big deal, and I'm planning to offer the kits with those few components pre-soldered. 

In terms of design, it's very early days yet - I've barely broke ground in Kicad beyond setting up a new project and importing the relevant libraries, but I'll definitely keep updating here as things progress! And as always, all this is up for discussion, either in the comments here or on discord.

The Next r1 Revision

There's been a lot of work on the firmware lately, and the latest alpha firmware (v1.3) now has reasonably well-tested SD card support! In support of this I recently respun the r1.2 board with the addition of dedicated pins for an SD 5V adapter (like this one for example). There's also some bug fixes and general tidy up on there, making this the most reliable, most capable rosco_m68k ever. It will be launching on Tindie as soon as I get the boards back from the fab and check I've not made any silly mistakes :D 

New 68681 board

Following on from discussions on the next major version, I decided to back port some of the future-proofing ideas back to the r1, starting with replacing the existing MC68681 DUART board with a XR68C681-based one. The prototypes are working perfectly, and I'm waiting on a good quantity coming back from the fab right now. It looks like this:

This will be supported out-of-the-box with the next firmware release later this week, and the board will launch on Tindie (with the option of getting new ROMs in the package) at the same time. This will allow me to once again offer full kits of the 68681, which I've not been able to do for a while because of a lack of original MC68681s of sufficient quality.

Lots more going on

There's lots going on with this project, and this post only just scratches the surface! There's all kinds of community hardware projects in the works, from a "super IO" board that e2k is working on to Henk's flat-out-awesome front panel, and there's a ton of software happening too. I'll definitely try to be better about updating here but if you want to stay in the loop, join us over on Discord!