The 68K is a complex and full featured CPU, so there is a lot of tedious detail to be done that has nothing to do with the overall concept of "design a CPU". Fo

The 68K is a complex and full featured CPU, so there is a lot of tedious detail to be done that has nothing to do with the overall concept of "design a CPU". For example, there are so many instructions that it took a couple of days of time just to write the microcode. Let's use an analogy. Suppose you have a class where they teach using Minix. Tasks like "rewrite the time slice algorithm" or "implement part of a filesystem" can be valuable to understanding how an OS works. But if the final project is "reimplement the Linux kernel from scratch" well then you are going to spend a lot of time on the detail work of what you already understand without actually learning much new. It's a poor use of time. Or in compiler classes. Mess with a module in LLVM is a valid learning experience. Implement a tiny language is super valuable. But "write a C compiler conforming to the C Standard" gets you into a lot of gory details about C, takes an enormous amount of time, and teaches you very little about the theory and practice of compilers and languages.