Is it possible to connect a Motorola 68k to an arduino? If so, how?

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Is it possible to connect a Motorola 68k to an arduino? If so, how?

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Welcome to the forum

What application do you have in mind for such a combination ?

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I want to make a retro computer

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What is the purpose of the Arduino in this retro computer ?

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For easier work with Motorola.

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Details ?

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For example?

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What is going to be easier ?

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Motorola family processors always were pretty easy to use, compared to, say, Intel or Zilog.
What do you want the 68K to do?
What do you want the Arduino to do?

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What makes you think it would be easier with an Arduino? You said you don't even know if it's possible, that's why you began this topic.

There are microcontrollers today that similar or greater in power than a "retro" microprocessor.

For example

NAME 520 ST / ST+ / STM
MANUFACTURER Atari
YEAR 1985
CPU Motorola MC68000
SPEED 8 mHz
CO-PROCESSOR 'Shifter' and 'Glue' custom chips
RAM 512 KB (520 ST/STM), 1 MB (520 ST+)
ROM 192 KB

to the spec of a Raspberry Pi Pico:

RP2040 microcontroller chip designed by Raspberry Pi in the UK
Dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ processor, flexible clock running up to 133 MHz
264kB on-chip SRAM
2MB on-board QSPI flash
2.4GHz 802.11n wireless LAN (Raspberry Pi Pico W and WH only)
26 multifunction GPIO pins, including 3 analogue inputs
2 × UART, 2 × SPI controllers, 2 × I2C controllers, 16 × PWM channels
1 × USB 1.1 controller and PHY, with host and device support
8 × Programmable I/O (PIO) state machines for custom peripheral support

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The RasPi then can run a 68k emulator, if the original ROMs shall be used.

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It was literally a billion times faster.

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68000 is a 16-bit MPU without memory and UART/I2C/SPI/DIO/ADC peripheral controllers. The Arduino UNO have all those. The OP might, probably, be using UNO to acquire signals from various sensors and devices and then send them to 68000 for processing. The communications between 68000 and UNO could be made using UART Protocol. However, the combined job of 68000 and UNO could be easily done using single ESP32 Arduino.

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Signal processing is useless without output on a screen. Such hardware can not be emulated in real time by an Uno nor by a browser on a mobile or PC.

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My noise-cancelling headphones seem to manage nicely without a screen.

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On a retro computer?

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I had an AtariSTE, and both recorded and processed audio on it. The screen wasn't necessary.

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First of all, realize that the 68k is a dynamic part, you can not pause the clock for very long. IIRC there was a static version.

To interface it to an Arduino, I would suggest a Mega for all the pins. Use a 68008 8 bit bus version. The Arduino will basically be emulating memory and I/O (fortunately, in 68k land I/O is memory mapped. So you will connect the address, data, and control lines like clock, R/W etc.

Then you would spent a lot of time with the 68k timing diagrams.

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Once you get a bare 68k computer operating you might add a parallel to I2C chip like a PCA9564 and connect an Arduino as an I2C slave for all your I/O.

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Thing is, a minimal 68k system using actual vintage memory and I/O chips isn't much more complicated than using an Arduino...

Pick up some old issues of "DTACK Grounded"...