Some people who have a hankering to run GEM/TOS applications might just fire up an emulator, or maybe coax an old Motorola 68k-based Atari ST system back to life. Then there are people like [Anders Granlund], for whom hard mode is a way of life and making a custom mainboard around a genuine 68060 CPU and associated peripherals is a reasonable approach to pick. Thus quoth the Raven project.
The project commenced in 2024, when [Anders] started a thread on it over at the Exxos Forum which thus became pretty much the project log for the endeavor.
Both RAM and ROM ICs are on SIMM sticks, which seems like a pretty nifty idea compared to the typical socketed or soldered-in approach here, allowing for up to 48 MB of RAM and 16 MB of ROM.
On the custom ATX-compatible mainboard you get a total of 4 ISA slots, as well as everything from YM2149 audio, IDE HDD and legacy Atari peripheral support. All of which fits in a standard ATX case with an ATX power supply. If this tickles your fancy, you can find the design files for the current A1 board revision, though you will have to source your own ICs.
With all of it assembled you can run Atari’s TOS with its GEM UI, or the modern equivalent in the form of FreeMiNT.
Apollo 68080 (Vampire / Apollo Team) seems to be an avenue one can explore.
But Apollo already has a standalone Apollo V4 Atari that is a consumer product, whereas, quoth the raven, This is not a consumer product, clearly put on Github. Apparently the success of Motorola 68060 working in an Amiga depends a lot on the CPU going into a “68040 mode”. Macintosh ROMs won’t even work with this mode. Fortunately there’s PiStorm accelerators for both Amiga and Atari. I also hear on the forums that 68060 is getting rare. For that and other reasons, this project is very impractical. Again quoth the Raven, “it’s a platform for low-level tinkering”. Perhaps it would be more interesting to try the 68080 rather than recreate Meet the Raven, but I’m afraid the efforts to run Atari’s TOS or FreeMINT, unless you’ve already been deeply involved with the development, are also impractical. I’m glad the article author threw in these links but, my feelings are it’s an OS project Nevermore!
finally a serious diy computer using simm sticks and isa slots. I wanted for years to design such a thing. You can insert soundblasters and what not that way. Very nice. I would have started with the more easily to get 68000, but this is so nice.