Cerberus 2080 New 8-Bit Computer Build

[@jengelenm]

Nice you’re covering this. I heard the museum is struggling, it’s near my house. I wanna go there, when i find a tiny hole in my busy family schedule…super!

[@sebastian19745]

I saw Cerberus being born from may 2021 (when I found the Byte Attic´s channel and I subscribed). It was a very beautiful journey. I also remembered a lot about Z80 and learned many things about 6502 (that I never used; I am a Z80 guy). I liked the idea, the projecting and building process and I am glad that it don´t remained a niche forgotten project and you bring it to the attention.

[@JanBeta]

Hope bringing some attention to this great system helps the Home Computer Museum, too! :)

[@jurgmesser7723]

I like the fact that you have a genuine Swiss pocket knife 😄. Always useful!

[@JanBeta]

I have several actually! Love them!

[@dennisp.2147]

It's really worth watching the videos where Byteattic designed this. I watched as he was designing it. It's quite interesting. I'm happy to see Jan putting one together.

[@Bewefau]

links ?

[@dennisp.2147]

@@Bewefau just look for "byteattic" in the search bar. he has a whole playlist dedicated to the design.

[@awilliams1701]

while you were building it I'm like........wait isn't that z80 socket backwards. lol At least you caught it.

[@bretttesdall2155]

Glad to hear I’m not the only one with OCD regarding resistors and the stripes being in the same orientation.

[@Lioncave_Gaming]

Danke Jan für deine tollen Videos und das du die Technologie aus unsere Kindheit und Jugend zurückbringst. Unterhaltung pur statt dem Mist der heutzutage im Fernsehen läuft.
Beste Grüße
Marinus

[@jeromethiel4323]

While the 6502 was ubiquitous, i feel the Z-80 was a much more advanced design. So many good features. The biggest was a larger register space, stack that could be 64K, and relative addressing that was basically infinite. The 6502 was a good design, and cheap to make. But it had a lot of drawbacks. 256 byte stack, 256 byte space for relative addresses. Limited registers.
The 6502 was pretty efficient on a per clock basis, but i think the Z-80 is vastly underappreciated for what it brought to the table.

[@m0nde]

"It looks like we built a new computer, feels good!" :) I'm looking forward to seeing it in action, great video.

[@catriona_drummond]

Finally a computer that you can benchmark against itself!

[@BilisNegra]

Well, nothing extraordinary about benchmarking a computer against itself, and I mean 100% the same one, no part replacement: think of overclocking. However, if you mean specifically an 8-bit computer, yeah, that's rare.

[@catriona_drummond]

@@BilisNegra I mean one CPU against the other.

[@BilisNegra]

@@catriona_drummond Yeah, I know you meant that.

[@KieronWray]

congrats on getting the pc working so quickly, without an extended debugging session required :D fascinating to watch, great vid thanks!

[@mal2ksc]

I know this will make the sponsor happy to hear, but that is a gorgeous circuit board. Modern gaming motherboards could take some style cues.

[@chefjoesplaylists2565]

I'm using the ez380 as it's a Z80 processor with more peripherals and a mind boggling clock speed. It's also 3.3v and compatible with modern 128k RAM and gigabyte nor flash.

[@chefjoesplaylists2565]

Details: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zilog_eZ80 Wikipedia article.

[@thebyteattic]

You may want to have a look at the Agon project, the younger brother of CERBERUS. Agon uses pipelined eZ80 CPUs running at 20 and 50MHz (depending on the variant). You can find Agon's homepage on the top menu of CERBERUS's homepage linked by jan on the video description.

[@chefjoesplaylists2565]

@@thebyteattic Thanks 🙂

[@andrewdunbar828]

@@thebyteattic Is there any kind of modern 6502 roughly equivalent to the eZ80?

[@KitsuneAlex]

Cerberus refers to the three-headed helldog, i think it may be called that because it has multiple brains :D Great video! ^^

[@Doug_in_NC]

Yes. If you watch the Byte Attic videos on it, you will see Bernardo explain that the Z80, the 6502 and the Atmel are the three “heads”.

[@Starchface]

I would not have thought of this, such a philistine am I. This makes so much sense, it must be so. Brilliant.

[@SimonEllwood]

Multilayer boards are no different to solder for pads that do not connect to the inner layers. Two inner layers are typically power planes and yes soldering to pins that connect to the power plane ARE harder to both solder and desolder.

[@brendonelton]

A fantastic video! I thoroughly enjoyed watching from the beginning to the end! You should do more uploads like this, Danke Jan Beta, du bist eine Legende!

[@BocaRetroGames]

Yes! Have a great Sunday! Thanks for the entertainment

[@philipruthven8225]

Nice build job on a already very promising 8-bit learning platform. Been watching the development videos and its awesome to see Cerberus come up from concept right through to implantation. I wish I could afford this for myself to play on but will have to use the emulator for now.
Great effort by all involved so far.
(Personally I would love it if I could run Commodore Basic 2.0 on his an pretend its a upgraded PET!)

[@Colin_Ames]

I always enjoy videos like this. I am looking forward to the next one, where we learn what can be done with this device.

[@kevincozens6837]

Thanks for the video about this new old school dual CPU board. Interesting to see the unit switching between CPUs. It was so seamless that you wouldn't really know it was done.

[@timschonherr7674]

I wish someone would build a modern 386 or a 486, where there is CF and SD as well as modern BIOS such as XT IDE some PCI and ISA slots on board. So i can use old CPUs and RAM with modern CF/SD. Maybe even add USB and a USB to PS2 emulator/converter on board.

[@little_fluffy_clouds]

This already exists, sort of. My vintage PC is based on an ASUS 440BX board with USB, I have added a CF to IDE adapter which lets me boot from a CF card. It has a P3 CPU and old school 512 MB RAM.

[@timschonherr7674]

@@little_fluffy_clouds This is what i have as well, but P3 is still quite new. I have a collection of 486 cpus and well i would love a solution for those.

[@dougjohnson4266]

Thank you Jan. Looks very interesting.

[@gentlebear76]

That looks like a cool platform! Looking forward to more videos featuring this 😀

[@gandalf87264]

I would rather start building a through hole PCB by placing my resistors and diodes first because they are the smallest components on a through hole board. The reason being that when you turn the board over to solder them, the table will push them flat to the surface of the PCB.

[@misterretrowolf1464]

Very nice build. Thanks!

[@JustinEmlay]

When removing pin headers like that, use cutters to cut between the pins then remove them one pin at time ;) Easy peasy.

[@giuseppelavecchia775]

Motherboard stupenda,assemblata con grande maestria e perfezione!. sei sempre il migliore Jan

[@Nimmbin]

Great video. Thanks for sharing 🙂

[@gwyllymsuter4551]

In 1974 Electronics Australia released a computer kit called the EDUC8 microcomputer. For a brief moment it was believed this was the first home computer kit in the world. It was only later did they learn it was pipped at the post by the Mark8. If Jim Rowe hadn't held back releasing the article to expand it from 32 bytes to 256, history would be different.
Anyway, I have Re engineered new modern pcbs with everything in exactly the same place and I want to send you a kit. Look it up

[@wayland7150]

That regulator is an excellent plug in replacement for the normal LM7805 found on these projects. It can handle input voltage up to 36 volts and delivers 2A 5V without getting hot.

[@tonybennett7145]

Great video Jan. Really interesting.

[@badrolix]

Very nice! Good work! I like this!

[@PicaDelphon]

6502 for the Workhorse, and the Z80 For the Master, Nice..Now Lets Program this Three Head Puppy....

[@gertsy2000]

Very nice computer Jan. Well done.

[@NickT6630]

I watched the Byte Attic's videos too :)

[@superviewer]

Thanks, Jan. You are a great inspiration/motivator. Did you ever make a how to get into the basics of soldering/electronics? Equipment. I'll take a thorough look trough you channel.

[@JanBeta]

I never did a basics video like that. I think there are already some very good videos by others regarding that! I'm not much of an authority when it comes to general electronics knowledge or soldering as I'm mostly self-taught. Thanks for the kind words though! :D

[@christopherjackson2157]

I wonder what our modern computers would look like if the hardware companies were more straightforward and open about the designs. There are so many brilliant people who are effectively locked out of participating in the development because they don't work for the right companies. Corporate structures are great at incremental change but its people in their basements and attics working away on hobby projects like this who stimulate the giant leaps forward.

[@JVHShack]

Now that i have watched this, I want one. I do have an old HP Pavilion case with a dead Intel Celeron based motherboard (500MHz era) in it that I would like to house the Cerberus into as well.

[@brostenen]

Wow!!!! That manual there..... 😮😮😮

[@simmo1024]

Pretty and well designed board. Impressive.

[@JesperSevel]

With so many foolproof references on both motherboards and components, I can not comprehend how that you can turn things around. embarrassing Jan just embarrassing! :-D - Thanks for good content. ;-)

[@StevenIngram]

Hmmm. Can you imagine if you could use the z80 as a GPU for the 6502? LOL

[@raoullangner-macmillan7655]

Great Video, thanks.

[@sumplais]

Cool having a new 8bit system and for a great cause but it makes me wonder if we'll ever get the Chicken Lips 16.

[@daspec]

The ONLY thing I don't like about this otherwise great project, is that the motherboard is HUGE!!!
It has too much wasted space between traces and chips and could have been smaller than a micro-ATX like a DTX to fit in more cases.
Maybe someone with PCB design software can make a smaller version of it.

[@toronado455]

Thanks very much for the video. 🏆

[@guyh3403]

Wow!
What a beauty!

[@DFX2KX]

This looks like it'd be fun to put together. wonder if you can use one CPU as a coprocessor for the other one, like the BBC Micro can do with a second 6502 board.

[@MicrobyteAlan]

Very interesting and informative. 👍👍

[@pXnEmerica]

It's about time someone put all the elderly in a home.

[@0rynsmods]

They need to make one with an 8008 to give the 3rd head.

[@thebyteattic]

The third head is the ATmega328p :-)

[@inerlogic]

RCA 1802

[@DavePoo2]

47:45 - I would be careful of ESD when pulling these sticky protectors off

[@piwex69]

6:51 The Z-80 socket is put the other way around ... ironically at the moment you advice to pay attention to it. ;)

[@JanBeta]

Yeah, a tiny bit embarrassing... :D

[@ray73864]

Hot air gun + desoldering gun will fix the problem of trying to desolder pins from the ground plane :)

[@TheRealBlackspawn]

Wow, I wasn't aware that Bernardo Kastrup is into retro computing. I only knew about his philosophical works. It's a small world I guess. :D

[@JanBeta]

I actually didn't know his philosophical works until very recently! Coincidentally, I studied philosophy for quite a while when I was at university. I'm definitely going to read some of his publications soon! :D

[@kenknight5983]

That kind of sd card reader, it seems to be able to be read by 6502 cpus: ruclips.net/video/5bgyyv5woLA/видео.html
I'm wondering if that sd card reader could be used in some kind of new c64 cartridge- one that's cheaper with fewer features (just a cheap way to load roms off sd card)

[@Smartphonekanalen]

Great video.

[@DennisFranssen]

Hey mr Beta! Love your channel very much! But I think you need a new soldering tip ;)

[@JanBeta]

The tip itself is actually fine and relatively new, the iron and heating element are ancient and dirty. ;)

[@chrisrobson8540]

just wondering where the educational joystick ports go?🤣🤣

[@BBHexKey]

A 6502 and a z80? Sounds like a DIY Sega genesis

[@JanBeta]

Close, but without the advanced graphics and sound. The Genesis has a 68000 and a Z80 though. ;)

[@andrewdunbar828]

@@JanBeta Other than having colour graphics, the obvious sequel to this machine would be one with a 68000 as well as the Z80 and the 6502. Everyone I knew back in the day who could code assembly moved to the Amiga from either a Z80 or 6502 platform. So in a way these three are the classic triumvirate. Perhaps that would be a good name for the project (-:

[@elmariachi5133]

After the most promising project of an modern 8bit computer system for fans, the Commander X16, has been mostly let down by it's own creator, I am not so fond of the idea anymore. The only chance such a system can be fun for more than a few days is having a thriving community releasing lots of software. And the CommanderX16 was the only one that had a realistic chance for reaching the critical mass :(

[@thebyteattic]

For what it's worth, there is already a lot of free, open-source software and firmware available for CERBERUS, developed by several different people. Check out the homepage for links and demonstrations. Much more is to come now that the project is getting more attention from the community, as you can see on the messages posted on the CERBERUS development group's page on Facebook (linked from the homepage). Unlike the X16, CERBERUS is real and ready, and it has been so for 9 months already. And also unlike the X16, it was developed by professional computer and software engineers. We sat quietly working on it for months (all of which was recorded and is available on RUclips for free), until we convinced ourselves that it not only worked as planned, but did so robustly. Only then did we release it. Also unlike the X16, it is a completely open-source project offered for free, and thus much more conducive to community effort than the X16.
As curiosity, was the X16 project actually abandoned? I thought it was only severely delayed (it's been over three years, enough time to do it 3x over), but not really abandoned... Was the abandonment officially announced?

[@Retro_Royal]

Z80 beats 4Mhz 6502. The pain is real

[@RogerBarraud]

I'd be wary of peeling the film off the acrylic sheets close to the PCB ... that usually generates large electrostatic fields in my experience ... you can feel the hairs on your arms bend when you do it 😕

[@JanBeta]

Good call! Didn't think of that.

[@protonjinx]

I want to build a machine w/ 6502 + Z80 with dual port sram so both cpu's can run at the same time.

[@MaidenAriana]

First try! Well done ;)

[@JanBeta]

Thanks! :D

[@dominikschutz6300]

Frankenstein did it again :P

[@NorthWay_no]

It would have been interesting to use the optimized 65CE20, or indeed the 6809(wossname model number for the optimized Hitachi(?) one? 6309?).

[@joefish6091]

HITACHI HD64180 or Z180 would have been a nice option.

[@NorthWay_no]

@@joefish6091 Oh that sounds interesting. Wasn't either of those what Jerry Pournelle(sp?) used to swear by for his writing when he had his monthly column in Byte?

[@inerlogic]

anyone else scream at the screen as soon as you saw him put the Z80 socket on backwards?

[@CN_SFY_General]

W65C816S may be a more interesting choice for 6502.

[@RogerBarraud]

Seems a bit silly not to have chained the JTAGs together.

[@JustinEmlay]

Eh, you could always shave off the nubs on a cable if you need to reverse it. Would be better than trying to desolder those cable headers.

[@R.Daneel]

As soon as I saw the way they chose to mark pin one, I thought, "people are going to get that wrong, and it's going to be hidden by the socket". Great looking board, but that was a very poor silk-screen choice.

[@JustinEmlay]

I would love to buy this but even their English version of the site it's in English. No clue what I'm clicking on or how to pay or check out.

[@thebyteattic]

I've asked the museum to review this. For now, some help:
1) Go to the page: www.homecomputermuseum.nl/winkel/producten/#!/Cerberus-2080/p/377348409
2) Right under the title ("Cerberus 2080"), click on "English"
3) If you want an assembled unit, check the "volledig geassembleerd / fully assembled" check-box on the upper right
4) Underneath that check-box, the word "Hoeveelheid" means "Quantity," so presumably you want to keep the "1" in there
5) Underneath that, click on "In bestellijst / Add to cart"
6) Underneath that, click on "Ga naar de Kassa," which means "proceed to payment"
7) Pay as per your preferred method.
The acrylic case is not customized, and can be bought separately on amazon:
www.amazon.com/Bewinner-Motherboard-Transparent-Convenient-Overclocking/dp/B07RY7SL4J

[@HomeComputerMuseum]

Will take a look into that. It seems a few things are not going very well in the English section of the site (while it should be doing it right)

[@talideon]

I'm not sure it's that the Z80 program is faster. It's more like the 6502 one is running at a higher resolution as it looks like it's using 2×2 block graphics, while the Z80 one is using whole characters. Depending on the vintage of the Z80, I'd expect it to be a bit slower than a 6502 at the same clock speed, and they're both using a 4MHz clock.
~~Any idea if it has any bitmap modes or colour graphics?~~ Apparently not, which is a little disappointing: some colour attributes would've been nice.

[@thebyteattic]

The 6502 version is only slightly more demanding algorithm-wise, as it updates one character (requiring 8 stores to character memory) in every frame. But this is a very minor extra load compared to generating the frame, which involves calculating state transitions of a cellular automaton and software scrolling. The Z80 is indeed much more efficient for software scrolling, as it has hardware-optimized block memory transfer instructions, such as ldir. Overall, the Z80 is a much superior processor, with a couple of 16-bit registers for address manipulation (without requiring that cumbersome zero page business), many more internal registers than the 6502 (16 vs 2), integrated lines for allowing DMA by peripherals and hardware-optimized instructions.

[@joefish6091]

The 6502 is RISCy the Z80 is CISC, the 6502 is more efficient regarding clock cycles, the Z80 has complex convenient instructions and DMA.

[@d2factotum]

@@thebyteattic LDIR isn't hardware-optimised in any way--you could write a simple loop in Z80 assembly code that would do the same job at exactly the same speed, and unrolling an LDIR loop using multiple discrete LDI instructions is actually quite a bit faster than just using LDIR. The only advantage LDIR has over other approaches is simplicity.

[@andrewdunbar828]

@@d2factotum Spectrum games programmers figured out long ago that the fastest way to clear and copy the screen was to use the stack and all of the registers in a (partially?) unrolled loop. But yes basically anything was faster than LDIR et al.

[@Bewefau]

I want to do these things but there so expensive :(

[@JohnDoe-yj5ng]

I wonder if there's a C64 or ZX Spectrum emulators for this computer?

[@JanBeta]

Not yet as far as I know. There are several incarnations of BBC Basic so far, though. Making proper emulators is going to be difficult because of the limited graphics and sound but you could still emulate the core system I guess (I'm not a good programmer at all so I'm mostly guessing here).

[@JohnDoe-yj5ng]

@@JanBeta If you could reprogram the PIC Micros on the board to emulate the C64 or the ZX Spectrum's innards then yes, it could be possible!

[@andrewdunbar828]

The C64 has a lot of custom hardware. The Speccy has basically nothing other than the colour graphics.

[@UnrealVideoDuke]

Should have added a MIDI sound controller. MIDI was literally being developed at the same time as the 8-bit age.. What is the upgradeability of this?

[@JanBeta]

I think MIDI would be relatively easy to implement with a little additional adapter board. There already is a modified BIOS that supports a serial connection as far as I know so MIDI would be an easy step (I don’t know enough about the programming side of things to be of any use though).

[@stinchjack]

Its called Zed-80!

[@andrewdunbar828]

The chip is American but several of its most famous uses were British. When talking about the Sinclair Spectrum it's zed for sure.

[@arrangemonk]

it looks like an angry bull with headphones

[@JanBeta]

I can’t unsee that now… 😅

[@watchmakerful]

Isn't the Z80 socket soldered in backwards?

[@muxman3132]

I was just wondering that too. The arrow was on the top right but he put the notch on the socket on the left.

[@JanBeta]

Yup. Mentioned later in the video.

[@chloedevereaux1801]

to be fair as long as the chip goes in the correct way round it doesn't matter....

[@muxman3132]

@@chloedevereaux1801 My concern was that he might not realize he did it.

[@SenileOtaku]

But has anyone programmed it to play "Bad Apple" yet?

Want

[@fu1r4]

12:46 The sponge is meant to be wet ...

[@thepvporg]

You had me up to the point it boots from a flash card and no thanks, I want something to boot from something reliable, not prone to eating itself.

[@siriusleto3758]

It's only proven to be a computer if it runs Doom.

[@kwanchan6745]

€400 for a built unit ?
makes you think how cheap are 2nd user PCs...I7-3770 with 8 or 16GB for little more than €100

[@JanBeta]

All profits go to the home computer museum. And it’s most likely not very much, given the cost of components and manufacturing for such a low volume product.

[@awilliams1701]

If they could build them in the count of millions, it would probably be a lot cheaper.

[@HomeComputerMuseum]

They don't build them by hand, which we do. And we only have a few people doing that and it costs us as much time as you see on the video. It's actually very cheap considering the time we're working on it.

[@kwanchan6745]

@@HomeComputerMuseum I don't have any issue with the €100 surcharge for a prebuilt board....10 hours of skilled work at €10 per hour is quite reasonable...I just wondered about the €280+ for the components and motherboard...does someone have a bill of materials and costs for the components to clarify what contributes the major cost here ?

[@kwanchan6745]

ah, I see the BOM & prices in git...€146

[@MistahHeffo]

The PCB looks like it was just auto routed.

[@JanBeta]

There’s links to Bernardo’s videos that cover the whole design process in the video description. A lot of work went into this.

[@thebyteattic]

Nope, painfully hand-routed in two-layers for visibility. I also used extra-trick traces for visibility; part of the didactical approach. Auto-route cannot handle the complexity of this system. I am surprised you found any similarity with anything auto-routed here, for it doesn't even remotely resemble what an auto-router would do. They are quite messy.

[@GodmanchesterGoblin]

@@thebyteattic Agreed. I have not watched the design videos but to me as someone who has routed and autoroute dozens of boards in my career, this is a very elegant, if somewhat spacious, manually routed board.

[@anotherdave5107]

"...order deleted due to parts unavailability..."

[@JanBeta]

Oh no. Probably they sold all their stock again. Hope they manage to re-order the necessary parts more quickly. The video already was delayed quite a bit on purpose so there would be at least some stock of units/kits for sale. The supply situation for certain electronics components still is pretty horrible unfortunately. :/

[@IkarusKommt]

Wasting finite planet's resources on such junk is criminal.

[@JanBeta]

Thanks for your educated opinion.

[@bengelman2600]

So lame making it black and white. What a waste.

[@SproutyPottedPlant]

It’s not livestock,

[@Theineluctable_SOME_CANT]

Pointless.
Why have three CPUs if only one runs at a time?
Poor design.