A small computer based on an Atmega32 microcontroller

[FlevasGR]

Hello folks,

recently i got the idea of building a small 8 bit computer w/ internet connectivity. It will be based on an Atmega32 with ethernet interface and expandable ram.

The reason i want to do it is mostly for fun but also to learn few things. If you have any challenge you want to add check the github page: https://github.com/meletisf/AVR-PC

[jpmkm]

Sounds like a very ambitious project.  Are you going to have a local display or will you need to connect to it with a serial terminal?  Are you going to try to fit all your code in to the 32KB of onboard flash?

Good luck!

[FlevasGR]

Sounds like a very ambitious project.  Are you going to have a local display or will you need to connect to it with a serial terminal?  Are you going to try to fit all your code in to the 32KB of onboard flash?

Good luck!

For now im going to use a nokia LCD display since i want something which just works. Also it's simpler to build a gui for the specific screen.

Regarding the space i have no idea if i can fit everything in there... I might need to change chip for larger storage in the near future

[dom0]

Things like these aren't fun without some kind of memory protection (virtual memory for example), which has been around in minicomputers since the 70s (remember the PDP-11?). That makes toying around with your own OS just so much more fun, that I wouldn't do it on an AVR for this reason alone. The basically non-existant IO bus capabilites of AVRs add to it. Doing stuff with minicomputers and SPI is just no fun...

[c4757p]

Are you going to try to fit all your code in to the 32KB of onboard flash?

Have to, unless he goes with a (probably quite slow) bytecode interpreter in flash, as the AVR can only execute directly out of flash.