With all the different microcontroller platforms out there, it's sometimes annoying because there's a solution that does exactly what you want but it's targeting some weird architecture that isn't what you use, or has suddenly become hard to find.

I think it's about time we organize all our open source microcontroller-based firmware around a simple, widely available, and powerful architecture, for consistency and interoperability.

The Intel 80486.

@foone DX or SX?

@kevin DX. It's been 35 years, we can splurge a little

@foone I wonder how small they could make a 486 on today's silicon processes. I need a tiny swarm of them, sewn into my clothing!

@Foritus exactly!

Microsoft's all open sourcing ms-DOS 4.0, Intel should open source the 80486.

They're about the same age.

I want a raspberry pico that's x86 and runs at 5v, is that so wrong?

@foone 5V? In this economy??

@xinmyname I live in th. Past! We use 5v back here, I don't care how much you youngins love your 3.3v and 1.8v

@foone Well, it should not be microsoft opensourcing, it should be copyrights expiring. We should not need their cooperation. And for 486, patents are expired, so open source 486-class designs are available. Too bad Linux now requires Pentium class :-(. Search for MISTer. (And yes, it would be still nice if Intel did the opensourcing).

@foone yes, yes it is.

@zzt I don't have anything handy, and Intel archived and hid everything to do with the board, but:

* It draws ~ 5 W, and the SoC gets hot

* The sketch won't survive a reboot unless you install the micro-SD system image (Yocto Linux in disguise)

* Restarting takes ~30s

* Every bit of I/O is handled via an expander chip. You can maybe poll a pin 8 times/second

@scruss @zzt egads. I saw those when they first came out, now I know why they immediately faded out.