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Matt Mets’s December 9, 2009 Make: post documented a modular homebrew computer built around the Motorola 68000. At the time of the report, two of its five planned boards were complete; the construction described used perfboard, a homemade header-based bus, copper wire, and extensive soldering. The post is a progress snapshot, not a complete build guide or confirmation that the computer was eventually finished.
What the project was
The project, by Flickr user nike6, was organized as a five-board modular computer centered on a Motorola 68000 processor. Instead of describing a single finished circuit board, the Make: article shows a build in progress, with separate perfboards connected through a homebrew header-based interconnect bus.
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Its construction materials and methods included perfboards, copper wire, and substantial hand soldering. The report does not identify a particular perfboard size or brand, connector model, or parts list, so those details cannot be inferred from the article.
What was complete in the dated report
When Matt Mets published the post on December 9, 2009, two of the five planned boards had been constructed. That count describes the project at that date only; it does not establish how much was finished later. The article links to the maker’s 68K computer photo set, which is the cited visual record of the build.
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What the report does not establish
The Make: post does not provide enough detail to treat this as a reproducible computer design. It does not specify:
- The contents or function of each of the five boards
- The 68000 processor variant or operating clock speed
- Memory capacity or memory types
- Input/output capabilities
- Whether software ran on the system
- Whether the project was completed
- A schematic, bill of materials, or complete build procedure
Those omissions matter: a modular layout and visible wiring reveal the project’s construction approach, but not whether it could boot, what it could do, or how another builder could duplicate it.
How it fits among other homebrew 68000 computers
Other projects illustrate the range of design choices in homebrew 68k systems, but their specifications must not be assigned to nike6’s build.
| Project | What its own source documents | How it differs from the 2009 report |
|---|---|---|
| nike6’s modular computer | Five planned boards; two constructed by December 9, 2009; perfboards and a homemade header-based bus, as reported by Make: | An early progress report without published specifications for memory, I/O, clock speed, software, or completion. |
| Y Ddraig | Its project page lists 10 MHz operation, EEPROM, SRAM and DRAM, serial and parallel ports, PS/2, IDE, a real-time clock, and expansion slots. | A separately documented expandable system; these details say nothing about nike6’s computer. |
| Mackerel-68k | The project page describes a family of 68k single-board computers, support for several processor variants, and Linux work. | A distinct board family rather than evidence about the five-board perfboard project. |
These examples are useful for seeing different approaches—modular perfboard construction versus single-board designs, differing memory and I/O scope, and varying levels of project documentation. They are not a basis for ranking performance: the available descriptions do not provide a common test or benchmark.
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A separate technical account of a homebrew 68000 system discusses design concerns such as reset-time ROM mapping, address decoding, wait states, UARTs, and floppy control. These are useful examples of the engineering decisions a builder may face, but they are not documented features of nike6’s project. See Wouter’s account of a homebrew 68000 system for that separate design.
What the historical post is useful for
The 2009 item is best read as a glimpse of an ambitious hands-on hardware project: a 68000 computer being assembled across multiple wired boards, with a custom interconnect and visible, labor-intensive construction. Readers seeking a working design, exact component choices, or the project’s final outcome will need direct documentation beyond the short progress report; the cited post itself does not resolve those questions.
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