Inside Raven, the open hardware Atari clone powered by a Motorola 68060

Retro computers usually come back in polite, modern disguises. They return as emulators, FPGA boards, mini consoles, or tidy software packages that let you relive the past without ever touching a soldering iron. Raven is not that kind of comeback. Raven is a newly designed Atari-compatible computer built around a real Motorola 68060 processor. It is open, experimental, gloriously hands-on, and very much aimed at people who think that building a 68k computer from scratch sounds less like a warning and more like a weekend plan. This is not nostalgia in a plastic shell. This is retrocomputing with the lid off.

Not an emulator in a fancy hat

There is a big difference between pretending to be an old computer and actually behaving like one at the hardware level. Raven sits firmly in the second camp. Created by Anders Granlund, Raven is a custom motherboard built to run Atari-style operating systems and applications on real 68060 hardware. It supports systems such as EmuTOS, FreeMiNT, and MagiC, giving it a direct link to the Atari ST and Atari-compatible software world.

Older ST games are handled through software emulation, but clean GEM and TOS applications can run more directly. In other words, Raven is not trying to be a museum exhibit. It is trying to be a living machine. A slightly unhinged living machine, perhaps, but that is part of the charm.

A 68060 with something to prove

At the centre of Raven is Motorola’s 68060, running at 96 MHz. To anyone raised on modern multi-core processors, that number may not immediately cause dramatic music to play. But in Atari terms, this is serious horsepower.

The original Atari ST used a Motorola 68000 running at 8 MHz. Raven’s 68060 is not just faster; it belongs to a later, more advanced generation of the same processor family. It is like comparing a bicycle to a touring motorcycle, assuming the motorcycle also has MIDI ports and a fondness for GEM desktops. Raven feels like an alternate-history Atari: the machine that might have appeared if the 68k line had kept evolving and somebody at Atari had been allowed to raid the PC expansion-card cupboard.

Ports, slots, and proper old-school weirdness

Raven comes with the sort of hardware list that makes retro people sit up a little straighter. It supports up to 48 MB of RAM and 16 MB of ROM. It includes MIDI in and out, Atari-style serial and parallel ports, joystick ports, IDE storage, PS/2 keyboard and mouse support, a real-time clock, and YM2149 sound. Then there are the four 16-bit ISA slots.

That gives Raven a brilliantly odd personality. It is part Atari dream machine, part 1990s PC, and part “I found this graphics card in a box under the bed and I refuse to let it go.” The ISA expansion support opens the door to graphics, sound, networking, and other hardware experiments. It also gives Raven the feeling of a machine from a timeline where compatibility was less about app stores and more about whether you had the right card, driver, jumper setting, and emotional resilience.

A computer for builders, not bystanders

Raven is open hardware, but that does not mean it is simple. This is not a glossy boxed kit with foam inserts, a quick-start guide, and a cheerful sticker saying “some assembly required.” Raven is much closer to “some assembly, debugging, reading, re-reading, soldering, and possibly questioning your life choices required.”

The project is shared openly, but it is clearly presented as a personal build for fun, learning, and experimentation. That honesty matters. Raven is not pretending to be a commercial product. It is a serious hobbyist machine for people who understand that open hardware sometimes comes with sharp edges. Or, to put it another way: if your usual repair strategy is turning something off and on again, Raven may have further questions for you.

Why it matters

The interesting thing about Raven is not simply that it runs Atari software. Emulators already do that very well. What makes Raven special is that it continues the idea of the Atari-compatible computer as actual hardware. It asks a lovely, slightly dangerous question: what if the Atari line had not stopped where it did?

Raven is one possible answer. A fast 68k processor. Expandable hardware. Familiar Atari DNA. Modern open-source operating system support. Enough legacy ports to make musicians and tinkerers smile. Enough complexity to make casual users back away slowly. It is not just preserving the past. It is extending it.

The joy of machines you can understand

Modern computers are powerful, convenient, and mostly sealed away from us. They update themselves, hide their workings, and occasionally move all the settings for no obvious reason. Raven belongs to another tradition.

It is a computer with visible decisions. A machine of sockets, buses, ROMs, chips, cards, and ports. You can point to things. You can trace signals. You can understand why something works, and when it does not work, you can suffer in a very educational way. That may sound like a joke, and it partly is. But it is also the heart of retrocomputing. These machines invite people to learn.

The Atari spirit lives on

Atari computers always had a particular character. They were loved by musicians, bedroom programmers, demo-scene artists, gamers, and people who wanted something a little different from the beige PC mainstream. Raven captures that spirit beautifully.

The MIDI ports are not just a technical detail; they are a little cultural flag. The GEM and TOS compatibility is not just software support; it is a connection to a whole way of using computers. The ISA slots are not merely expansion options; they are an invitation to experiment. Raven feels like a machine built by someone who remembers that computers used to be exciting not only because of what they could do, but because of what you could do to them.

Not normal, thankfully

Most people will never build a Raven. That is fine. Most people probably should not build a Raven. There are easier hobbies, like gardening, photography, or arguing online about whether the Atari ST or Amiga was better. Actually, maybe not that last one. That one is dangerous.

But Raven does not need to be mainstream to be important. It exists because someone cared enough to design it, document it, test it, share it, and keep the old 68k flame burning in a new machine. That is the kind of project that keeps retrocomputing alive as more than nostalgia. Raven is impractical in the best possible way. It is clever, eccentric, open, demanding, and full of personality. A new Atari-compatible computer in 2026 sounds absurd, which is exactly why it is wonderful.