monahan_z
Experienced Member
As we start into 2019 I’m thinking what I would like to sink my teeth into as a S100 board project for this year. All the easy ones have been done! Thanks to some of our members here, and in particular Todd Goodman, one can now obtain a diverse range of new S100 boards which when mixed/added to S100 motherboards can lead to some exciting electronic circuits and software. The range of S100 boards can be seen here:-
http://s100computers.com/My System Index Page.htm
Our new S100 FPGA prototype board provides an almost limitless number of options.
One of my dreams was always to bring Windows to the S100 bus. I have always been impressed by how even cheap laptops no bigger than one S100 board can run such the OS with, these days, huge amounts of RAM and high resolution displays.
I have been toying around with the idea of building a SBC S100 bus board with something close to that capability. OK after you pick yourself up off the floor from laughing -- let me explain.
Such a board would be essentially a laptop motherboard but it would contain a S100 bus interface (with an embarrassingly high number of CPU wait states) such that one could use our S100 boards as well. While our static RAM board(s) may be only of use to buffer data to/from other bus CPUs/boards the I/O ports could be use with most of our S100 boards – as is.
A dream system would be windows talking to a 6502, a 68030, an Arduino board, a speech synthesizer, an Arduino, a FPGA etc…
How would one do this? The biggest question is what is the CPU? Clearly a 80486 is the easiest to do. Our current board is not adequate in terms of speed and, more importantly, RAM addressing. It has the advantage however that the software jump from MSDOS to windows would be easiest. I have an old AT 80486 clone here and I seem to remember it did a fair job running pre-Windows 95. Not sure if say Windows XP can be run of even a fast 80486. Does anybody here know?
The next option would be to step up to a Pentium or later family. These are large chips and would probably be limited in speed because of minimal CPU cooling. Still some laptops use(d) them.
I’m trying to determine if the next, the Intel Atom CPU’s use the same instruction set (i.e. 80486), if so that might be a better option. It goes without saying with BGA chips we would have to have a chip adaptor and farm out the soldering. Have always been impressed how small/simple that Edison board was.
All of the above chips will absolutely require onboard DRAM SIMMS. Except for the Atom, a Northbridge type of controller for refresh etc. Sounds like a mouthful but remember small laptops have all this.
Help needed.
What I’m trying to find is schematics. Has anybody in our group seen/have a detailed circuit of a ”modern” laptop Intel CPU complete with DRAM/refresh chip and ideally a video controller chip.
Put another way -- what is the simplest Intel/Windows motherboard you have seen with a schematic.
Open to any and all suggestions.
John Monahan
PS. I know there will be Linux suggestions, thanks, but I really would like to focus on a windows OS.
http://s100computers.com/My System Index Page.htm
Our new S100 FPGA prototype board provides an almost limitless number of options.
One of my dreams was always to bring Windows to the S100 bus. I have always been impressed by how even cheap laptops no bigger than one S100 board can run such the OS with, these days, huge amounts of RAM and high resolution displays.
I have been toying around with the idea of building a SBC S100 bus board with something close to that capability. OK after you pick yourself up off the floor from laughing -- let me explain.
Such a board would be essentially a laptop motherboard but it would contain a S100 bus interface (with an embarrassingly high number of CPU wait states) such that one could use our S100 boards as well. While our static RAM board(s) may be only of use to buffer data to/from other bus CPUs/boards the I/O ports could be use with most of our S100 boards – as is.
A dream system would be windows talking to a 6502, a 68030, an Arduino board, a speech synthesizer, an Arduino, a FPGA etc…
How would one do this? The biggest question is what is the CPU? Clearly a 80486 is the easiest to do. Our current board is not adequate in terms of speed and, more importantly, RAM addressing. It has the advantage however that the software jump from MSDOS to windows would be easiest. I have an old AT 80486 clone here and I seem to remember it did a fair job running pre-Windows 95. Not sure if say Windows XP can be run of even a fast 80486. Does anybody here know?
The next option would be to step up to a Pentium or later family. These are large chips and would probably be limited in speed because of minimal CPU cooling. Still some laptops use(d) them.
I’m trying to determine if the next, the Intel Atom CPU’s use the same instruction set (i.e. 80486), if so that might be a better option. It goes without saying with BGA chips we would have to have a chip adaptor and farm out the soldering. Have always been impressed how small/simple that Edison board was.
All of the above chips will absolutely require onboard DRAM SIMMS. Except for the Atom, a Northbridge type of controller for refresh etc. Sounds like a mouthful but remember small laptops have all this.
Help needed.
What I’m trying to find is schematics. Has anybody in our group seen/have a detailed circuit of a ”modern” laptop Intel CPU complete with DRAM/refresh chip and ideally a video controller chip.
Put another way -- what is the simplest Intel/Windows motherboard you have seen with a schematic.
Open to any and all suggestions.
John Monahan
PS. I know there will be Linux suggestions, thanks, but I really would like to focus on a windows OS.
