It's been nine months since this blog has been updated - my apologies! I've just been flat out at my day job, leaving little energy left to work on new projects. That workload is easing, and I'm hoping 2023 will be a productive year for JD Micro.

There have been a few products worked on during 2022 though. We released ROMXc+ back in March, and that has been popular with //c+ owners. We have also been working on ROMX+ for the Apple II+, with a larger flash memory and real time clock. That will bring the II+ product in line with ROMXe, ROMXc and ROMXc+ (and the price too - if you dont need the RTC then pick up an original ROMX while you still can).

Note the switch that allows inversion of the INHibit signal - handy for some clones. A couple have been built and we should be able to get the firmware completed in the new year and get it out there.

We also developed a WiFi modem card however as the #FujiNet project gained more momentum, we decided that the WiFi card would morph into a FujiNet device, offering greater speed versus smartport.

The hardware design was completed and a prototype hand wired. We've called it Gyve and it features an ESP32-S3, 4Mbit flash, CPLD, 2 x I2S Audio amplifiers for direct attachment of speakers, rotary encoder with push button, and a microSD card.

This is the hand wired prototype - a production PCB will be laid out once the firmware is completed. The production board won't use the ESP dev kit - just the ESP module itself so can be a lot smaller. Same goes with all the other PCB based modules that we've used here including the ROMXce video ROM and audio amplifiers - they just make it quicker to cobble together a prototype (effectively just SMD adapters). The production PCB will be a small card containing the various individual components :

For development purposes, the 50 pin connector on the left goes off (via a 50 way ribbon cable) to a separate card that goes into the slot - that way the prototype can hang outside the computer making it much easier to attach logic probes etc.

Jeff has been active in the FujiNet community, contributing ROM code to assist with printer emulation and the like - lots of good stuff happening there and hopefully we will have our Gyve card ready in the new year.

Have a Merry Christmas everyone, from Jeff and Dean at JD Micro!