The timing is so critical for these faster processors that without
expensive design tools (or a nice calculator and a few years of
computations) you simply won't be able to make a reliable board.

It's not so much connecting the chips together, but routing the board so
the wires on a bus are close enough in length that the signal arrives at
the next device within certian parameters.

Something to think about:  At 1GHz light travels just under 30cm, often
less than the depth of your case, in one clock cycle.  At these speeds
you have to take into account the shape of the signal when it arrives at
the chip it's intended for.  You may see squigly lines (lines that
wander back and forth for no apparent reason) on motherboards you deal
with - these aren't just to look cool...

-Adam

-Adam

Tony Goetz wrote:

>Hey, I was talking to a friend earlier and we were wondering something. Has
>anyone built a PC from scratch? i.e. design and build a motherboard,
>incorporating a pentium class processor or similar? (Still probably using
>standard memory, IDE drives, cards, etc.) Okay, yes, I suppose IBM could fall
>into that category, as well as the geeks of the 80's that got us where we are
>today. But nowadays, has anyone taken a commercial processor and built a
>custom motherboard for their own PC? Reprogrammed a pentium/athlon/whatever?
>Seems like it would be a heck of a project, but quite a rewarding one! I did
>some searches on the web but, as expected, ran into little more than how to
>build your own computer using commercial motherboards.
>
>Just a bit curious. If nothing like this is out there - why don't someone get
>to work?? ;)
>
>-Tony
>
>--
>http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different
>ways.  See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.
>
>
>
>
>

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http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different
ways.  See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.