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Cerberus 2080 — Three-Headed Retro Computing Project

June 8, 2021 by 6 Comments

For seven months, [Bernardo Kastrup] at [TheByteAttic] has been realizing his childhood dream of building his own computer. It was this dream that steered him into the field of computer design at the age of 17. After thirty years in the industry, he finally has some time to design the computer he dreamt about as a kid. His requirements are ambitious: fully open design, gate-level details, thru-hole or PLCC for easy hacking, well-established processors with existing tool chains, low-cost development tools for CPLDs, no FPGA, standard ITX case compatible, and so on. He quite reasonably decides to use more modern electronics for video (VGA), keyboard (PS/2), and program storage (flash drive). Along the way, he chooses to put three processors on the board instead of one:

  • Zilog Z84C0010 (Z80)
  • WDC W65C0256 (6502)
  • AVR ATMEGA328 (RISC Controller)

When coming up with the concept and requirements, [Bernardo] had a fictitious alternate history in mind — one where there were follow-ups to the ZX80, PET/CBM, or TRS-80 from the late 1970s that were extensions to the original systems. But he also wanted a clean design, without cost-cutting gimmicks, in order to make it easier for learners to focus on computing itself — a didactic architecture, as he describes it. Turn the crank for seven long months, and we have the Cerberus 2080. [Bernardo] has put the design on GitHub, and made a video series out of the whole process, of which the introduction video is below the break. There’s even an online emulator developed by retro hacker  [Andy Toone].

We wrote about the 6502-based ERIC-1 project back in 2014 which shared the bus with an ATMEGA simulating ROM. The Minty Z80 project from 2019 also uses a similar technique. Thanks to [Frédéric] for sending us the tip.

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Cold War Code Breaking Manual Teaches Impossible Puzzle Solving

June 8, 2021 by 25 Comments

Cryptologist [Lambros Callimahos] was a victim of his own success. He wrote a trilogy of books called Military Cryptanalytics covering code breaking in 1977. The first two volumes were eventually published, but the NSA blocked the public release of the third volume back in 1992. But last December, it finally saw the light of day.

Of course, some parts of the book are redacted, including parts of the table of contents. That’s pretty bad when even your chapter headings can be classified. [Richard Bean] over on Phys.org has some notes about the book along with some examples of hard-to-solve crypto puzzles.

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Tractors And The Right To Repair: It’s Going Global

June 8, 2021 by 65 Comments

For more than a few years now, we’ve been covering the saga of tractors from the larger manufacturers on which all components are locked down by software to the extent that they can only be replaced by officially sanctioned dealers. We’re thus pleased to see a couple of moments when the story has broken out of the field of a few farmers and right-to-repair geeks and into the mainstream. First up:  a segment on the subject from NPR is worth a listen, as the US public radio station interviews a Montana farmer hit by a $5k fuel sensor on his John Deere as a hook form which to examine the issue. Then there is a blog post from the National Farmers Union, the body representing UK farmers, in which they too lay out the situation and also highlight the data-grabbing aspects of these machines.

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This Week In Security: Ransomware, WeLock, And Amazon Arbitration

June 4, 2021 by 9 Comments

Another week of ransomware, and this time it’s the beef market that’s been shut down, due to a crippling infrastructure attack out of Russia — but hold up, it’s not that simple. Let’s cover the facts. Some time on Sunday, May 30, JBS USA discovered a ransomware attack against their systems. It seems that their response team did exceptionally well, pulling the plug on affected machines, and starting recovery right away. By Wednesday, it was reported that most of their operations were back in action.
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Fueling Up For Fusion: MAST’s Super-X, JET’s Deuterium-Tritium Experiments For ITER, And More

June 2, 2021 by 38 Comments

We’ve had nuclear fission reactors in operation all over the world for ages, but nuclear fusion always seems to be a decade or two away. While one cannot predict when we’ll reach the goal of sustained nuclear fusion, the cutting edge in test hardware is advancing at a rapid pace that makes us optimistic. Beginning as soon as this month and extending over a few years, we’re living through a very exciting time for nuclear fusion and plasma physics.

The Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak (MAST) got a big upgrade to test a new cooled divertor design. JET (Joint European Torus) will be testing the deuterium-tritium fuel mixture that will be powering the ITER (the research project whose name began as an acronym for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor but has since been changed to just ITER). And the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator is coming back online with upgraded cooled divertors by next year.

Here the MAST Upgrade’s Super-X divertors have so far shown a ten-fold decrease in the temperature which the divertor is exposed to while carrying thermal energy out of the tokamak reactor. This means a divertor design and ultimately a fusion reactor that will last longer between maintenance sessions. On the stellarator side of things, Wendelstein 7-X’s new divertors may allow it to demonstrate the first continuous operation of a stellarator fusion reactor. Meanwhile, JET’s fuel experiments should allow us to test the deuterium-tritium fuel while ITER is working towards first plasma by 2025.

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New Part Day: RP2040 Chips In Single Unit Quantities

June 1, 2021 by 27 Comments

Since the launch of the Raspberry Pi Pico back in January the little board with its newly-designed RP2040 microcontroller has really caught the imagination of makers everywhere, and we have seen an extremely impressive array of projects using it. So far the RP2040 has only been available on a ready-made PCB module, but we have news today direct from Eben Upton himself that with around 600k units already shipped, single-unit sales of the chip are commencing via the network of Raspberry Pi Approved Resellers.

This news will doubtless result in a fresh explosion of clever projects using the chip, but perhaps more intriguingly it will inevitably result in its appearance at the heart of a new crop of niche products that go beyond simple clones of the Pico in different form factors. The special ingredient of those two PIO programmable state machines to take the load of repetitive tasks away from the cores raises it above being merely yet another microcontroller chip, and we look forward to that feature being at their heart.

The Broadcom systems-on-chip that power Raspberry Pi’s existing range of Linux-capable boards have famously remained unavailable on their own, meaning that this move to being a chip vendor breaks further new ground for the Cambridge-based company. It’s best not to think of it in terms of their entering into competition with the giants of the microcontroller market though, because a relative minnow such as the RP2040 will be of little immediate concern to the likes of Microchip, ST, or TI. A better comparison when evaluating the RP2040’s chances in the market is probably Parallax with their Propeller chip, in that here is a company with a very solid existing presence in the education and maker markets seeking to capitalise on that experience by providing a microcontroller with that niche in mind. We look forward to seeing where this will take them, and we’d hope to eventually see a family of RP2040-like chips with different package and on-board peripheral options.

Smartphone App For Leftover Vaccinations

May 30, 2021 by 29 Comments

South Korea’s Disease Control and Prevention Agency launched a pilot program yesterday to minimize vaccination waste using a nationwide smartphone app. People who are over 30 years of age can search for leftover doses on their smartphones. If any are available, they can book an appointment immediately within the app, and then get to the medical center within hours to receive the injection. One can tag up to five nearby inoculation centers to receive an instant message when a dose becomes available.

These leftover doses arise from people who have missed their appointment, but also just as you would expect when considering the short shelf life of the opened vaccine, the number of doses per vial, and modulo arithmetic. Within hours of the program rolling out, people began complaining about server problems and the lack of available doses. But this is a pilot program, after all, so some glitches are to be expected.

The full program is supposed to begin on June 9th, although it isn’t clear how it will be different from the pilot project, other than presumably having fewer bugs. The lead picture above shows the availability of leftover vaccines in central Seoul this morning — zero (the symbol 없음 means “none”). But the system does indeed work and people received vaccinations yesterday utilizing this program.

Technically speaking, this isn’t a new app, but rather, it is integrated into the two most popular South Korean portal sites. Anyone already using KakaoTalk or the Naver portal on their smartphone can use this leftover vaccination service with just the press of a few icons. Are the health authorities in your region utilizing smartphone apps or online reservations sites to distribute these leftover doses, doses that would otherwise be discarded? Let us know in the comments below.

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