I got the idea for this project when I found my old Z80 Single Board Computer in the attic. It turned out that it actually still works, and I suddenly remembered how great a learning experience it was to design and build it from scratch, making a lot of errors and fixing them along the way.

After having finished a couple of AVR based projects after I haven't touched electronics for quite a while apart from simple repair tasks, I got the urge to create something else.

I thought it could be fun to learn something new by designing and building a more advanced single board computer that eventually should be able to run a variant of a modern day OS.

Originally I thought about starting with something like a 80386, but I seems like the x86 architecture and hobbyist projects don't mix very well.

Then I discovered that the Motorola 68k platform is much more suited for hobby projects if you want to do something a little more advanced than classic 8-bit stuff like 6502 and Z80.

After reading about these two very impressive projects:

Steve Chamberlin's 68 Katy:

http://www.bigmessowires.com/68-katy/

Luis Alves' 68000 project:

http://mc68k.blogspot.com/

(Both projects were originally implemented on breadboard(!) and both are capable of running uClinux.)

I decided to go for a m68k based project.