Fantastic job, Jan! You nailed the explanation of the architecture, and did it a lot better than me. I don't know, maybe I am too involved with the project to understand what I need to say for people who are not involved, or I am just too dull as an explainer. Anyway, great job! A couple of comments: you do have Andy's Manic Miner in the uSD card I sent you. I think it's called "manic.bin" or "miner.bin", something like that. Also, the latest versions of CAVIA, SCUNK and SPACER are compatible with all the software available so far. It's a pity Gordon's BIOS didn't work for you, I am not sure why it didn't. CERBERUS behaved as if it couldn't find the uSD card or some file in the SD card, although I can't tell for sure. Anyway, thanks and congrats! PS: You also brought to my attention an error in the system diagram (the manual): CAT doesn't talk directly to the data and address buses, but only through PSACER, as you repeatedly pointed out. Yet, the current diagram suggests that it does. I will correct that today.
Oh Jan, if I remember correctly, to save memory Gordon put the startup screen as a whole on a single file in the uSD card. His BIOS will look for that file. If you don't have it in there, it will beep. I think that's what's going on!
AAAH! That would explain it. I tried multiple times to compile/upload the Sketch and also the pre-compiled hex file without any luck. I'll try to put the files on the SD card. :D
Thanks Bernardo! I tried to make it as brief as possible to still be digestible. It probably helps that I don't know too much about the intricacies of it myself. Your documentation was immensely helpful in understanding the basic functionality and to (hopefully) bring some of it across in the short-ish video, even for an "educated noob" like me. :) Overall, my Cerberus journey has been super interesting and fun so far. I hope the project gets some more attention soon. Thanks for all the work you did to bring Cerberus to life!
I watched your design and build series multiple times. I was super excited to see Jan cover it. At first I thought it was a mistake and someone else had named their computer Cerberus 2080!
It's definitely fun to tinker with! I wish I was a better programmer myself. I would totally try to port some stuff myself if it wasn't for my complete lack of education in that field. I understand it should be *relatively* easy to port existing stuff because the 6502/Z80 assembler code is mostly compatible (except for I/O, graphics and sound).
It's (mostly) an educational project, so I think that's on purpose to keep it simple to grasp. I guess there's a lot of possibilities to customize the CPLD programming to add more features though. There's also plans for an updated version of the board at some point, as far as I know. And Bernardo is working on two other projects with a similar approach but more capabilities. :)
Suuuper interesting! Whenever I see something like this computer, I want to buy it and work with it. The reality, though, is that it would probably end op hibernating indefinately on my desk somewhere together with the other petrified projects 😂😂
Hi Jan, has someone already ask you about the discrepancy of the High and Low memory sizes? It states on the manual pages you show 32KB Low and 28KB High. Where are the 4KB of High MEM went? I just saw the video and Character RAM 2KB each, so I assume there is the missing High MEM. ;o)
Oh, I'm not sure why that is actually. The chips are both the same 32k SRAMs, so it probably has something to do with system reserved memory space or something like that. You would have to ask Bernardo directly, I guess... :D
Nice system for understanding computer function. But a cerberus where one his heads is a 'CAT' head is strange (at least if 3 dog heads are considered as normal).
I wish someone could just pay me to sit all day and tinker with stuff like this, just started relearning and finally understanding c64 machine language, so much fun, but so little spare time - thanks for making this video, love seeing these new «old» systems pop up :)
Yeah so why does this remind me of the commodore 128? ;-) through this detective learning tool I'm seeing a computer thru those 128 colored glasses. or a battle of the CPUs 64v.Speccy. cpm networking here too?
CP/M is not possible currently, because it would require an 80 column mode. At least as far as I understand it. But the dual processor approach is very reminiscent of the C128 indeed! :D
@@JanBetaactually CP/M doesn't really care about the columns. It is designed to run on a serial terminal. I have written a driver for the TMS 9918A VDP for my CPM 3 port, and it works perfectly fine with 40 and even 32 columns. It's just a matter of writing a driver for the video interface that handles terminal control codes.
Zilog is an American company, so it's Zee-Eighty!! If this incorrectness persists, I will start calling the Zed-X Spectrum the Zee-X Spectrum!! I'm not bluffing, I'll do it!!
Very nice. One thing that occurred to me... the VERA design (graphics chipset for the Commander X16) has recently been released under an MIT license. I wonder how hard it'd be to integrate VERA into the CERBERUS 2080?
Oh, interesting idea! I have no idea if that would be doable. I know that Bernardo is currently working on another new 8-bit system and he’s also revising the Cerberus (because some of the chips used are in short supply again, it seems). Maybe we’re going to see something like that in the future!
Is this actually order-able? Not seeing any way to actually add one to a cart in their site. Says it’s a preorder but there’s nothing there to actually preorder it.
Would the W65C02 work on the commodore 64? I would think it would. I enjoyed the video immensely and hope you will continue with more videos on the C2080 as I will definitely purchase one.
No, the W65C02 isn't a drop in replacement for the 6510: the line levels are different, the W65C02 doesn't support some additional instructions the 6510 had, and the W65C02 is more "correct", so doesn't support the "illegal" instructions that were commonly used in games and demos, and there are also slight pinout differences. You could build an adaptor board, and that would get you 90% the way there, but plenty of software won't work quite right.
As it happens the Byte Attic has a board that allows you to drop in a W65C02 in place of a 6502, but that probably won't be enough to replace a 6510, unfortunately.
Unfortunately it wouldn't. Not only are there minor differences between the W65C02S and the original 65C02, Commodore also used a modified version of the latter in the C64.
with an adapter you could make it work in a vic 20, but there are missing components that are required for the 6010 that the c64 uses. The 6510 is an enhanced 6502.
There's a recent project that adds some logic to the 65C02S and makes it compatible with the C64's 6510, if I remember correctly. Can't find the link at the moment but it's a little PCB with some additional chips that should make it useable in the C64, too.
This computer is a great achievement. Both the most important chips from the eighties, the Z80 and the 6502, but I am not that fonned about those special chips. I know, life goes on and the technique never stops evolving and innovating. What is the use of combining forty years old microprocessors with ultra modern superchips? It is like adding the latest high tech navigation system on a horse and carridge.
I think the reasoning behind using the CPLDs is the fact that they are (relatively) easy to obtain these days and reprogrammable. Designing proper pre-programmed custom chips or using existing ones and aligning the rest of the system to that would have been too costly and would have made the layout a lot more complicated, I guess.
A CPLD isn't really that much different to an old-timey gate array (a.k.a. ULA, PLA). The principles of operation are the same, only there's a bit more logic contained in a CPLD than there was in a 1980s gate array. But if that extra logical capacity isn't being used anyway, what difference does it make?
No, each pixel is represented by one bit at this point. Maybe there is a way to get color output by reprogramming the CPLDs in the graphics circuit, but that's beyond my scope... :D
Oh, I‘m in the "process" of removing the coating, just didn’t finish yet. I used alcohol and patience to get it off, worked okay but takes some time. Do you have any special tricks?
@@JanBeta If the damaged coating has a "greenish" glow, try baking soda, with a little bit of water. Be carefull not to use too much water as it can seep into the LCD. If the coating has purple glow, the same process is valid, but it will be much harder. We do a lot of these displays.
This is still in its very early stages of development on the software side, so people just made the changes they needed to make without much consensus. As I mentioned in the video, there are of course plans to unify the BIOS issues and make a new version that incorporates all the little changes into one new version. It's definitely going to get more straightforward in the near future. (There's also far better examples for "too many cooks", think of the Commander X16 project, for example...)
Currently not, no 80-column mode! Maybe in a future version, which I may be forced to design anyway, as some of the ICs used in this version, despite my attention to availability, are very hard to find now, due to the deepening chip crisis.
Most text-based stuff should work right out of the box. And I think with the new graphics libraries for the BBC BASIC port, it should be relatively easy to modify more involved project to make them work, too. I have yet to look into that.
Sorry for the screen recordings! I thought it would be a very brief portion of the video and I was too lazy to set up OBS. I promise to do it properly in the future. ;)
"FORTH, I don't know how that works..." It's pretty simple (though not what people are used to- in fact, arguably it's reversed from normal), until you start doing the interesting things, at which point all guarantees go out the window, because your code can take complete control of the input and output. You could wind up switching to Lisp or C (or Basic) part way through a program if someone implemented compilers/interpreters for them.
Yeah, I briefly looked at FORTH code but I guess I need some time to digest and grasp how it works. Super interesting (and different) programming language though! I'm definitely going to take another look sometime.
Hi Jan, you pronounced my name very well. You should try FORTH it's a fun language. Oh, I'm not the author of the emulator running on Windows though,, I believe it's Paul Robson. Great videos Jan! Keep it up!
Hey, good to read you here. Also glad I managed to pronounce your name correctly. ;) I'd love to try some FORTH examples (although I'm not sure if I'm smart enough to understand the language). Hit me up on thejanbeta at gmail dot com if you like. :)
Not so simple when one of the versions requires a library that isn't even mentioned in the documents and another version that won't upload from a windows PC, only mac.
Just remember this is in its very early stages regarding software development. There are plans to make a kind of unified BIOS version that incorporates all the changes made by the individuals. Obviously at this point, people just modified things when they needed additional functionality to make their particular code work. There's most likely going to be a more straightforward way of doing things pretty soon.
Great video, and a neat system. My only issue is that the designer seems to think that a Z80 is a "much faster" processor at SAME clock speed as 6502. Here's a quote from his video as a response to someone saying the speed is 4:1 ratio (meaning 8MHz 6502 is equivalent to 32MHz Z80): What? No, the Z80 is a much faster processor than the 6502, if running at the same clock frequency. The 6502 was just cheaper. Little shocked that a designer of the system with dual CPUs did not take the time to understand the two CPUs... For the record, Z80 is about 3x slower than a 6502 at same clock speed, so a ZX Spectrum (at 3.5MHz) is actually slightly faster than a C64 (1MHz) on CPU-intensive tasks.
Good call! I think it's super difficult to compare the two processors in general because the approaches are so different. Would be interesting to see a comparison with various benchmarks for similar tasks (although the code would be vastly different probably) at the same clock speeds. In real life, I guess they were mostly equivalent (at least back in the day). As you say, the Z80 was usually clocked higher than a 6502.
This seems kind of interesting. I wonder.... Can both CPU's be used at the same time? Does it support colour or is it only B&W? I do wish the sound was better and had the option of disabling the sound on the board and have a 3.5mm audio jack out the back for external speakers. The product page really needs a FAQ section to answer some of those questions.
So far, you can only use one CPU at once. I guess it would be doable to switch between them "on the fly" through a modified BIOS. Color is not supported, as each pixel is only one bit. There's room for customization though, maybe it would be doable by re-programming the CPLDs in the graphics circuit. Adding a 3.5mm audio jack is totally doable if you connect it in place of the buzzer and adjust the Atmega's code a bit, I guess.
Too expensive and complex as a trainer. The obsession with not having an FPGA, yet having having a microcontroller and three programmable logic chips is very strange. It is an interesting project but I am not sure who it is aimed at.
I think that 3 CPLDs is way too much, just switch to an FPGA! Or pick a faster MCU that can do literally everything you need to. I'm okay with just a single CPLD or MCU, but FPGAs are kinda too much, because you might even place the entire CPU/System on the FPGA, rendering the "hands on" idea of the project useless.
@@cocusar I was also baffled by the complexity of the system that should teach students about 8-bit systems, but made it way too complicated! Is this project still alive?
Fantastic job, Jan! You nailed the explanation of the architecture, and did it a lot better than me. I don't know, maybe I am too involved with the project to understand what I need to say for people who are not involved, or I am just too dull as an explainer. Anyway, great job! A couple of comments: you do have Andy's Manic Miner in the uSD card I sent you. I think it's called "manic.bin" or "miner.bin", something like that. Also, the latest versions of CAVIA, SCUNK and SPACER are compatible with all the software available so far. It's a pity Gordon's BIOS didn't work for you, I am not sure why it didn't. CERBERUS behaved as if it couldn't find the uSD card or some file in the SD card, although I can't tell for sure. Anyway, thanks and congrats! PS: You also brought to my attention an error in the system diagram (the manual): CAT doesn't talk directly to the data and address buses, but only through PSACER, as you repeatedly pointed out. Yet, the current diagram suggests that it does. I will correct that today.
Oh Jan, if I remember correctly, to save memory Gordon put the startup screen as a whole on a single file in the uSD card. His BIOS will look for that file. If you don't have it in there, it will beep. I think that's what's going on!
AAAH! That would explain it. I tried multiple times to compile/upload the Sketch and also the pre-compiled hex file without any luck. I'll try to put the files on the SD card. :D
Thanks Bernardo! I tried to make it as brief as possible to still be digestible. It probably helps that I don't know too much about the intricacies of it myself. Your documentation was immensely helpful in understanding the basic functionality and to (hopefully) bring some of it across in the short-ish video, even for an "educated noob" like me. :) Overall, my Cerberus journey has been super interesting and fun so far. I hope the project gets some more attention soon. Thanks for all the work you did to bring Cerberus to life!
I watched your design and build series multiple times. I was super excited to see Jan cover it. At first I thought it was a mistake and someone else had named their computer Cerberus 2080!
Ahhh, just what I needed, still sick with human malware after 2 weeks so a bit of Jan on a Sunday is great. :)
Hope it helped to pass some time! Speedy recovery, Vincent! :)
This looks like an interesting project. I hope software development continues as there could be some nice retro games conversions.
It's definitely fun to tinker with! I wish I was a better programmer myself. I would totally try to port some stuff myself if it wasn't for my complete lack of education in that field. I understand it should be *relatively* easy to port existing stuff because the 6502/Z80 assembler code is mostly compatible (except for I/O, graphics and sound).
Everybody's so excited about it, but it lacks graphics and sound capabilities.
It's (mostly) an educational project, so I think that's on purpose to keep it simple to grasp. I guess there's a lot of possibilities to customize the CPLD programming to add more features though. There's also plans for an updated version of the board at some point, as far as I know. And Bernardo is working on two other projects with a similar approach but more capabilities. :)
Suuuper interesting! Whenever I see something like this computer, I want to buy it and work with it. The reality, though, is that it would probably end op hibernating indefinately on my desk somewhere together with the other petrified projects 😂😂
Hi Jan, has someone already ask you about the discrepancy of the High and Low memory sizes? It states on the manual pages you show 32KB Low and 28KB High. Where are the 4KB of High MEM went?
I just saw the video and Character RAM 2KB each, so I assume there is the missing High MEM. ;o)
Oh, I'm not sure why that is actually. The chips are both the same 32k SRAMs, so it probably has something to do with system reserved memory space or something like that. You would have to ask Bernardo directly, I guess... :D
Nice system for understanding computer function. But a cerberus where one his heads is a 'CAT' head is strange (at least if 3 dog heads are considered as normal).
Yeah, I noticed that, too. I guess it's Bernardo's humor. Certainly made me giggle a bit. ;)
I wish someone could just pay me to sit all day and tinker with stuff like this, just started relearning and finally understanding c64 machine language, so much fun, but so little spare time - thanks for making this video, love seeing these new «old» systems pop up :)
Yeah so why does this remind me of the commodore 128? ;-) through this detective learning tool I'm seeing a computer thru those 128 colored glasses. or a battle of the CPUs 64v.Speccy. cpm networking here too?
CP/M is not possible currently, because it would require an 80 column mode. At least as far as I understand it. But the dual processor approach is very reminiscent of the C128 indeed! :D
@@JanBetaactually CP/M doesn't really care about the columns. It is designed to run on a serial terminal.
I have written a driver for the TMS 9918A VDP for my CPM 3 port, and it works perfectly fine with 40 and even 32 columns.
It's just a matter of writing a driver for the video interface that handles terminal control codes.
Zilog is an American company, so it's Zee-Eighty!! If this incorrectness persists, I will start calling the Zed-X Spectrum the Zee-X Spectrum!! I'm not bluffing, I'll do it!!
Good point! I tend to say zed but try to at least mention the other pronunciation in each video I talk about the Speccy or the Z80 processor. ;)
@@JanBeta :-D
The BBC basic was converted to run by Dean @BreakIntoProgram
"Does it run BBC BASIC?" is the new "does it run DOOM?" :D
Very nice.
One thing that occurred to me... the VERA design (graphics chipset for the Commander X16) has recently been released under an MIT license. I wonder how hard it'd be to integrate VERA into the CERBERUS 2080?
Oh, interesting idea! I have no idea if that would be doable. I know that Bernardo is currently working on another new 8-bit system and he’s also revising the Cerberus (because some of the chips used are in short supply again, it seems). Maybe we’re going to see something like that in the future!
Jan i could spend aweek with you in your lab fixing old 8bit computers
Very cool 8-bit machine. i love it can run BASIC. Maybe i will port some of my software on it..:)
Oh, that would be cool! The one thing this project needs is more great software! :D
Is this actually order-able? Not seeing any way to actually add one to a cart in their site. Says it’s a preorder but there’s nothing there to actually preorder it.
I suppose they ran out of components due to the global shortages. :/ Hope they manage to get new stock soon.
Thanks for the great video.
Would the W65C02 work on the commodore 64? I would think it would. I enjoyed the video immensely and hope you will continue with more videos on the C2080 as I will definitely purchase one.
No, the W65C02 isn't a drop in replacement for the 6510: the line levels are different, the W65C02 doesn't support some additional instructions the 6510 had, and the W65C02 is more "correct", so doesn't support the "illegal" instructions that were commonly used in games and demos, and there are also slight pinout differences. You could build an adaptor board, and that would get you 90% the way there, but plenty of software won't work quite right.
As it happens the Byte Attic has a board that allows you to drop in a W65C02 in place of a 6502, but that probably won't be enough to replace a 6510, unfortunately.
Unfortunately it wouldn't. Not only are there minor differences between the W65C02S and the original 65C02, Commodore also used a modified version of the latter in the C64.
with an adapter you could make it work in a vic 20, but there are missing components that are required for the 6010 that the c64 uses. The 6510 is an enhanced 6502.
There's a recent project that adds some logic to the 65C02S and makes it compatible with the C64's 6510, if I remember correctly. Can't find the link at the moment but it's a little PCB with some additional chips that should make it useable in the C64, too.
This computer is a great achievement. Both the most important chips from the eighties, the Z80 and the 6502, but I am not that fonned about those special chips. I know, life goes on and the technique never stops evolving and innovating. What is the use of combining forty years old microprocessors with ultra modern superchips? It is like adding the latest high tech navigation system on a horse and carridge.
I think the reasoning behind using the CPLDs is the fact that they are (relatively) easy to obtain these days and reprogrammable. Designing proper pre-programmed custom chips or using existing ones and aligning the rest of the system to that would have been too costly and would have made the layout a lot more complicated, I guess.
A CPLD isn't really that much different to an old-timey gate array (a.k.a. ULA, PLA). The principles of operation are the same, only there's a bit more logic contained in a CPLD than there was in a 1980s gate array. But if that extra logical capacity isn't being used anyway, what difference does it make?
Wow, loading BBC Basic! This is already a hackers dream.
Indeed! :D
Thanks, I'll study it, but mainly I wanted to ask if it wouldn't be better to use a WD65C265 and or Z80280!
Nice sunday entertaiment. Thanks!
Very nice concept. I does not have color ?
No, each pixel is represented by one bit at this point. Maybe there is a way to get color output by reprogramming the CPLDs in the graphics circuit, but that's beyond my scope... :D
I see your Macbook suffers quite a bit of damaged screen coating. If you need a tip to remove the coating alltogether let me know :-)
Oh, I‘m in the "process" of removing the coating, just didn’t finish yet. I used alcohol and patience to get it off, worked okay but takes some time. Do you have any special tricks?
@@JanBeta If the damaged coating has a "greenish" glow, try baking soda, with a little bit of water. Be carefull not to use too much water as it can seep into the LCD. If the coating has purple glow, the same process is valid, but it will be much harder. We do a lot of these displays.
Oh, and use a soft cloth!
Looks like a project with too many cooks.
This is still in its very early stages of development on the software side, so people just made the changes they needed to make without much consensus. As I mentioned in the video, there are of course plans to unify the BIOS issues and make a new version that incorporates all the little changes into one new version. It's definitely going to get more straightforward in the near future. (There's also far better examples for "too many cooks", think of the Commander X16 project, for example...)
At least it doesn't require a working knowledge of 4tran...
Does this thing run CP/M?
Currently not, no 80-column mode! Maybe in a future version, which I may be forced to design anyway, as some of the ICs used in this version, despite my attention to availability, are very hard to find now, due to the deepening chip crisis.
Know any games made in BBC Basic you could load up?
Most text-based stuff should work right out of the box. And I think with the new graphics libraries for the BBC BASIC port, it should be relatively easy to modify more involved project to make them work, too. I have yet to look into that.
@@JanBeta These magazines seem to all contain game listings: archive.org/details/themicrouser
Very nice video!
The coolest 8 bit computer on youtube.
Please setup OBS for screen capture instead of recording your screen?
Nice bit of kit
Sorry for the screen recordings! I thought it would be a very brief portion of the video and I was too lazy to set up OBS. I promise to do it properly in the future. ;)
👍
A Dutchman naming a chip "Scunk". Typical...
It was Skank, before he changed the name...
Many heads, many confusing BIOS versions.
Yeah, I hope there’s going to be "the one BIOS to rule them all" soon. :D
Ich bemerkte Pinkie Pie Pez. Bist sie Brony?
Nice follow up video Jan. Very well explained and educational for me.
I love the old 8 bit computers.
Il video è ottimo.la motherboard e' fantastica!
Is this project still alive?
There's a new Cerberus project that superseded this one: www.thebyteattic.com/p/cerberus-2100.html
"FORTH, I don't know how that works..." It's pretty simple (though not what people are used to- in fact, arguably it's reversed from normal), until you start doing the interesting things, at which point all guarantees go out the window, because your code can take complete control of the input and output. You could wind up switching to Lisp or C (or Basic) part way through a program if someone implemented compilers/interpreters for them.
Yeah, I briefly looked at FORTH code but I guess I need some time to digest and grasp how it works. Super interesting (and different) programming language though! I'm definitely going to take another look sometime.
Hi Jan, you pronounced my name very well. You should try FORTH it's a fun language.
Oh, I'm not the author of the emulator running on Windows though,, I believe it's Paul Robson. Great videos Jan! Keep it up!
I could send you some small examples if you want to try FORTH on the CERBERUS?
Hey, good to read you here. Also glad I managed to pronounce your name correctly. ;) I'd love to try some FORTH examples (although I'm not sure if I'm smart enough to understand the language). Hit me up on thejanbeta at gmail dot com if you like. :)
Schade das es nur in englisch ist.
Yes, but can it run "Elite"?
Not yet. But I bet it's totally doable. Should be relatively easy to port, using some of the graphics libraries for the BBC BASIC port.
It's pretty nice hardware but the software developers made a complete mess.
Made a mess of what? The BIOS? It's a simple BIOS to let people get started.
Not so simple when one of the versions requires a library that isn't even mentioned in the documents and another version that won't upload from a windows PC, only mac.
that is one reason i don't like github, people just assume you already have/know everything and don't write clear instructions.
Just remember this is in its very early stages regarding software development. There are plans to make a kind of unified BIOS version that incorporates all the changes made by the individuals. Obviously at this point, people just modified things when they needed additional functionality to make their particular code work. There's most likely going to be a more straightforward way of doing things pretty soon.
Great video, and a neat system. My only issue is that the designer seems to think that a Z80 is a "much faster" processor at SAME clock speed as 6502. Here's a quote from his video as a response to someone saying the speed is 4:1 ratio (meaning 8MHz 6502 is equivalent to 32MHz Z80):
What? No, the Z80 is a much faster processor than the 6502, if running at the same clock frequency. The 6502 was just cheaper.
Little shocked that a designer of the system with dual CPUs did not take the time to understand the two CPUs... For the record, Z80 is about 3x slower than a 6502 at same clock speed, so a ZX Spectrum (at 3.5MHz) is actually slightly faster than a C64 (1MHz) on CPU-intensive tasks.
Good call! I think it's super difficult to compare the two processors in general because the approaches are so different. Would be interesting to see a comparison with various benchmarks for similar tasks (although the code would be vastly different probably) at the same clock speeds. In real life, I guess they were mostly equivalent (at least back in the day). As you say, the Z80 was usually clocked higher than a 6502.
the 8 bit guy makes games mabey you could try him
I offered a unit to him, if he promised to write some software for it. But he said he was too busy with the X16, so that didn't go through.
@@thebyteattic That makes sence probley doing his game for like around 5 old commputers
This seems kind of interesting. I wonder.... Can both CPU's be used at the same time? Does it support colour or is it only B&W? I do wish the sound was better and had the option of disabling the sound on the board and have a 3.5mm audio jack out the back for external speakers. The product page really needs a FAQ section to answer some of those questions.
So far, you can only use one CPU at once. I guess it would be doable to switch between them "on the fly" through a modified BIOS.
Color is not supported, as each pixel is only one bit. There's room for customization though, maybe it would be doable by re-programming the CPLDs in the graphics circuit.
Adding a 3.5mm audio jack is totally doable if you connect it in place of the buzzer and adjust the Atmega's code a bit, I guess.
Too expensive and complex as a trainer. The obsession with not having an FPGA, yet having having a microcontroller and three programmable logic chips is very strange. It is an interesting project but I am not sure who it is aimed at.
I think that 3 CPLDs is way too much, just switch to an FPGA! Or pick a faster MCU that can do literally everything you need to. I'm okay with just a single CPLD or MCU, but FPGAs are kinda too much, because you might even place the entire CPU/System on the FPGA, rendering the "hands on" idea of the project useless.
@@cocusar I was also baffled by the complexity of the system that should teach students about 8-bit systems, but made it way too complicated! Is this project still alive?