Available Now
The brand-new old computer™ you can build yourself
Get your retro on and build yourself a brand new, state-of-the-art, forty-year-old computer! The Really Old-School Computer™ (rosco_m68k®) is a family of simple yet powerful 16/32-bit computers with a base spec that compares with home computers of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
68010, 68020 and 68030 Editions: Full kits available now from just £134.99!
(... and PCBs available from just £19.99!*)
* Limited time offer, usual PCB price £34.99
Fun and easy to build
The rosco_m68k® is designed from scratch to be easy to build and fun to hack on. With an exclusively through-hole design, our four-layer board means there's plenty of space and no fiddly bits, and we only use high-quality modern PCB fabrication techniques to ensure that the boards we ship are a dream to solder.
Even if you're a beginner, by following just a few simple tips from our comprehensive build documentation you'll have a great time putting your new computer together.
All you need to get started is a soldering iron and some solder (we like lead-free, 0.8-1mm diameter).
Designed for hacking
Once you've built your new computer, our comprehensive software makes it really easy to start hacking.
Connect to your PC or Mac via a USB to Serial converter and set up a terminal emulator (we like Minicom), and you're ready to go. The in-built serial bootloader and tons of demo and sample programs let you give your new machine a run as soon as the solder is dry.
Building code for the rosco_m68k couldn't be easier thanks to our Homebrew tap* that contains the whole toolchain, ready to go.
With GDB support and a fully-featured custom MAME® fork with support for the rosco_m68k platform, debugging is a breeze on both emulated and real hardware.
And just like the hardware, all our code is open source - you can find it on GitHub.
Stunning Graphics & Sound
With the optional Xosera video add on from XarkLabs & rosco_m68k®, get stunning, 90's-style video on your modern flatscreen (or VGA monitor if you prefer!)**.
Custom designed by XarkLabs for the rosco_m68k®, Xosera uses the UPduino 3.0 FPGA board (not supplied) with our custom interface board to support VGA and HDMI / DVI output (via standard PMOD adapters, not supplied) to bring awesome Amiga-style video to your rosco_m68k®!
With a fully-featured blitter, pixel-synchronised co-processor (a.k.a Copper) 128KiB of video RAM and four independent PCM audio channels, Xosera blows everything else out of the water when it comes to retro-style graphics and sound.
And with full video terminal support right out of the box, with the brand-new rosco_m68k® Keyboard (coming soon!) you can have a fully standalone retro system!
* Supports macOS® or Linux®. Windows® supported via a virtual machine or Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Additional software installation required.
** Additional hardware required. Recorded via HDMI capture device. Some sequences shortened.
rosco_m68k® is a registered trademark of the Really Old-School Company Limited in the United Kingdom.
Mac® and macOS® are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries and regions. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries. Windows® is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. MAME® is a registered trademark of Gregory Ember. This project is not supported or endorsed by the owners of these trademarks. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.