What should this retro computer do and how should it benefit me on a daily basis? That’s the question! Well…I will look at porting a version of Basic to the system. That will provide me with a programming language that I will be able to use to develop the application. What if the system also monitors the temperature, humidity, solar radiation and rainfall from the environment in and around my workshop?

By designing the system to be ultra low power while operating, it should have the ability to go asleep when the workshop is powered down, only waking up at specific intervals, to record the necessary signals, save the data and go back to sleep.

Power requirements should be very simple – a small solar panel charging a battery that the unit will run off.

It would be nice to have some form of display. Display controllers drain power so it will be best to keep the system power consumption as low as possible.

After checking stock, I have found some old HD63x0x micro’s that will form the basis for this project. These micro’s have some onboard peripherals that will help when trying to connect to the outside world. The most important component that I see is the on-board UART, which will allow for RS232 communications to a PC.

While it would be fantastic to have a system that records this information, what if I want the system to do something totally different in the future – having one PCB which is the computer core and another which is the interface – some form of stackable system like the PC104 systems that exists?  I will start on making the SBC, (Single Board Computer) and then I’ll focus on the interface board later. At the same time I’ll need to think about how the interface board will work and how to connect other interface boards…

Having a separate interface board is making me think about having other boards attached as well, like a floppy drive controller, to let the system connect to a 3.5″ floppy drive (just because I have a few of them lying about in the workshop). What about a video display board? I know that this wouldn’t fit into my thoughts about low power, but if the system is modular, I could make up a system that is low power for the data logging solution and another system as the desktop retro computer (all from the same technology). Then I will look to see if I can get them to talk to each other, to my PC, or my Mac.