This may be interesting: a new home computer powered by the WDC65C02 @ 6.29MHz. (There’s also an option to replace the CPU by a WDC65C816 – as seen in the Apple IIGS – or a custom FPGA clone of the 6809, but the latter apparently requires reflashing the board.)
There’s quite a number of peripherals available for the system, it’s almost like visiting the computer shop back in the day. Also, a remarkable amount of Commodore hardware compatibilty, but, unlike the Commodore machines, there’s a nice version of BASIC with support for structured programming and a built-in 6502 assembler on the software side of things.
While the system isn’t especially cheap (there’s currently an ordering window for the initial relase), there’s also a low-cost single board version (the F256 JR, a Mini-ITX board w/o a case or a keyboard) at about a third of the price.
Here’s a YouTube video, which made me aware of the Foenix F256K:
Edit, note on the WASD key caps used: My experiences are mixed. While they provide custom key caps at a reasonable price, the print isn’t especially durable. (My shift keys are now blank. )
I’ve looked at the Foenix project since more or less day 1, but it’s never quite been what I’ve desired - that might not have stopped me getting one though, but…
… it was always priced out of my “toy” budget - especially trying to get one into the UK - Import duties, taxes and postage add-ons makes anything coming from the left-pond just silly expensive, sadly.
This one might look attractive to porting my BCPL OS to it - however as it only has 256KB of RAM (and I’d hope it wasn’t MMU’d/Banked for the 65816 like it is for the 65C02 version) is a bit tight - could run applications, but not the compiler.
It might be interesting to see if it’s SuperBasic is portable to other platforms though…
Yes, me too. I can see that FPGAs aren’t cheap and the JR may be even reasonably priced, but the jump to a triple for the “nice” machine is a bit steep…
(Also, as this isn’t the 1980s and Commodore, waiting a few months wil probably not help… )
But how much was that shiny new 25 MHZ 386 when it came out.
Memory may be as issue, as high speed static ram (45 ns?) is hard to find now days. Get it while you can. Ben,
Stefany Allaire visited us at TPUG a few years back and showed us a very early version of the Foenix. It was quite impressive even back when it was a basic 3d-printed case and some heavily revised PCBs
I don’t really know the parts bill, but there seems to be a bit more to it, like all the interfaces, costs for the software and designing a full-fledged system. Multiply this by 3 to make it a viable product and $200 is quite cheap. I think, the appeal of this is really that is much more like a consumer product (as in the “old days”) than a homebrew. The “K” hits this mark pretty well, but is also much more (and much too) expensive. At half the price (i.e., as the manufacturer, for the most just forward the costs for the keyboard and the case to the costumer, in order have a generally appealing product, much like it was with the Apple II) I could see this thing fly…
If you look at the prices of small RAM upgrades for hobby computers on Tindie, this about hits the average price. It’s not that it’s a single board with one chip on it, it doubles the Jr’s available RAM.
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