C256 Foenix Feburary 2020 Update

02/05/2020

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From the Feburary 2020 Newsletter

Rev C4A is Shipping

Rev C4A – Official Release

The shipping of the early-birds has begun in early January 2020, after a long period of test and fabrication. However, having all the surface mount components placed and soldered on the board doesn’t mean that everything is nice and dandy. Au contraire, to some extent, it is only the beginning as the through-hole components need to be installed and soldered by hand…

…Then the tedious aspect of debugging and completely test each and every board begins. So, for every board that has been assembled by the machine, it will take about 4 more hours per board to complete. This doesn’t include the time taken by a vicious bug found on some boards. When the board is finally tested and deemed ready to be packaged, the 3D Printed enclosure needs to be prepared and the board installed inside. Final tests need to be done and verification that the Byte Blaster for the FPGA that is supplied with the unit will work.
All of that to say that it is taking a lot of time to process each board and to make them ready for shipping since I am only one person doing this. The throughput is minimal as I can only process between 3 to 6 per week. This in turn just consumes all my time which in turn stops me from finishing the development of the Vicky II graphic controller among other things.
Developing a new product from scratch is a lot of work and I know my early-birds have been very patient and I would like to thank them for that. Now, that the Foenix FMX is finally making its way into new homes, it will be upon the new owner to bring that new retro computer to the next level because at the end of the day, there is just so much I can do…

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The C256 FMX in new homes…

THE FOENIX FMX – The C256 Foenix Dev Platform

Since the beginning, I have mentioned many times how the C256 Foenix FMX is a high-end version of the C256 Foenix but also a Development platform to help create software for the upcoming “official User Version” C256 Foenix that I hope to release before Summer. Those who are beginning to receive these development units will really be at the forefront of creating the next generation of software for the unit. As we speak, the BASIC interpreter has been instantiated in the unit, the FX/OS or the Foenix Workbench is still in the work and already we have a tracker for the unit. These 3 pieces of software have been created by the very small team of Alpha developers. I can only imagine what the next generation will come up with…

Long live the C256 Foenix!!!

C256 FMX New Home

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The Developers Lounge

The Developers Lounge will be expanding in 2020 (I hope), I am very eager to present new developments after the full release of RevC4.

No developer project to showcase this month, I bet that this is the calm before the storm! See you next month!

VCF PNW (March)
VCF EAST (April)

Early announcement about me being present at both events this year. I will be exhibiting and presenting a class at the April event. So if you are looking to see the unit in action, I invite to come by. I will be talking more about those events in the next update in March. Stay tuned.