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Actually our team is sponsered by Microchip and I am an applications engineer for Microchip.
I did a quick price estimate and you could build a 16 bit bus 386ex for a hair under $100. approximately $66 is required for CPU, FLASH & RAM. The remaining $36 will go fast for interfaces, glue, passive components and a power supply. Just a CPU card is not too bad. Making it do something useful will take a few extra devices.
I am building a PPC 403 computer. The parts cost is around $150 but is has LCD/CRT, audio, a PIC comms processor and a few other things. But it is not for the robot.
Our robot computer is fairly simple. It has a quad DAC, 2 current monitor IC's, rs-232 transciever and a 16F877. Current shunts are on a second PCB under the controller PCB. They stack into the box neatly.
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