Bernardo Kastrup’s CERBERUS 2100, an academic single-board laptop that places a MOS Know-how 5602 and a Zilog Z80 on a single board alongside an AVR and a number of complicated programmable logic gadgets (CPLDs), is now available for purchase — because of a partnership with with Bulgarian open {hardware} specialist Olimex.

“CERBERUS 2100 is an open supply {hardware} and software program academic multi-processor eight-bit laptop, that includes each Z80 and 6502 CPUs, plus an AVR processor as I/O [Input/Output] controller,” Olimex founder Tsevetan Usunov writes of the machine. “Constructed with CPLDs, CERBERUS 2100 is absolutely programmable even with respect to its {hardware}, on the stage of particular person gates and flip-flops.”

The design was first unveiled by Bernardo Kastrup late final yr, following dissatisfaction with how computing is historically taught. “Yr after yr I used to be taught data principle, digital sign processing, management principle and whatnot, however not how an entire laptop is put collectively from scratch,” Kastrup wrote on the time. “Apparently, that wasn’t thought of necessary, as in our skilled lives we had been anticipated to work solely on, and with, high-level components — not the entire, and never from scratch.”

The CERBERUS 2100 is Kastrup’s reply, and the machine he wished he’d had again then: providing the power to experiment with each the MOS Know-how 6502 and Zilog Z80 processors, competing powerhouses of Eighties residence computing, together with dripping proper down into how the {hardware} works to virtually the transistor stage. “Furthermore,” Kastrup provides, “it permits for experimentation at each firmware and {hardware} ranges, because the system is constructed round three in-system programmable CPLDs [Complex Programmable Logic Devices] and an AVR I/O [Input/Output] controller.”

Kastrup launched the machine’s design and supply code on GitHub below the permissive MIT license, and promised a manufacturing run of assembled boards to comply with — and has partnered with Olimex on that very factor. “The preliminary batch of CERBERUS 2100 [boards] is assembled, examined, and works as anticipated,” Usunov says, with orders open now for rapid delivery.

The CERBERUS 2100 could be ordered on the Olimex internet store at €219, whereas the design stays out there below the MIT license on the undertaking’s GitHub repository for many who would relatively construct their very own.