C256 Foenix December Update

November has been a short month for me since I was away for the most part which turns out to be a great thing since I could distance myself somehow from the whole project for a while.

Before I left, things were going pretty smoothly and when I came back things kept being very positive. There was still a lot of work to get done considering that every previous revision I was forced to go back to the drawing even before I was done with the testing. This time, I have been able to go through all the different devices (almost at the writing of these lines).

Amongst the very thing I did when I came back from my trip to Asia was to finish certain tests of certain devices on the board to ensure that everything was working as planned. Then I proceeded to make some slight modifications and change small details here and there and I went and proceed to get a large quantity of PCB made. Those PCBs are on their way as we speak.

In my best estimate, I shall receive those PCBs this Thursday. Where I shall assemble one of them to verify the integrity of the design. If the test passes. Then on Friday the 13th, I shall prepare the SMT machine to build a significant quantity of board on Saturday. Now, this is the first step towards having something to ship. The next step will be to hand solder all the through-hole connectors/sockets/etc… Then, a series of tests will have to be performed to make sure the boards don’t have any soldering issues (bad solder/shorts/unsoldered joints).

Now, most of the pre-orders have been with Enclosures and unfortunately, no enclosure has been printed yet. There is still some design to be done. So, the overall idea will be to ship the bare board first so the early birds can start using it. During the month of January, the enclosure will be shipped with the floppy drive and any missing pieces. So unless the early birds decide to opt-out of this procedure, then each unit will be shipped by order of when the purchase was made.

Finally, the plan is to ship as many as I can during the Xmas season. I am not promising anything since a lot can go wrong between now and then. But I can say for sure that the RevC4A design is the official version. I might do another small update later during the month. If there are any questions, you know how to reach me.