8080 and z80 are simple for me, 80286, 80386 and above are too complex for me.
Then you are basically questioning the point of designing a 386-based board, because you don't like the 386 and don't understand it?
My post was just meant to show that it's not purely a matter of "nostalgia", since there are even much older CPUs that people design boards around, and there's certainly an interesting learning factor beyond the nostalgia.
The fact the 386 is much more comple than a Z80, yet is still "approachable" enough that you can make your own board around it, makes it all the more interesting for learning purposes.
It's probably possibly to do the same thing with a 486, although that's beginning to be a bit hairy.
The architecture may not have been the best ever designed, for sure, but this still has had a large impact on the modern history of computing, so there's much to learn with it. Even the bad sides.
And, in spite of its quirks, the "protected mode" of the 386 was actually rather interesting, and was never really used to its full potential. Maybe because it was a bit too "inconvenient", and laziness almost always wins.
