The beginning: Foenix Music eXtension (FMX)

The beginnings of Foenix can be traced to a conversation between Stefany Allaire and David Murray (The 8-bit guy) that occurred at a Portland retro conference. The story has been told many times but the short version is that a discussion about collaboration led to differences of opinion that led to Stefany going out on her own to begin design of an operation that she would own end-to-end.

Here is an early video that begins with ‘the challenge’ then goes into the first and a few subsequent revisions of the first product, the FMX.

The original FMX Foenix was designed, built, and improved upon in nearly a dozen iterations, then shipped to early adopters culminating in the GA release.

With a concentration on graphics and music, the Foenix platform offers retro enthusiasts a chance to get close to the hardware while enjoying an uptick in performance. To paraphrase the sentiment behind her philosophy, Stefany seeks to recreate the experience that many of us started with decades ago when we first switched on our 6502 based home computer and were faced with a blinking “READY.” prompt and nothing more than a reference manual with a few sample programs to key in.

All of the Foenix products are produced from a one-person makers-shop located in Western British Columbia, Canada. Stefany designs the hardware (in many cases, 6 layer boards), develops the FPGA code, integrates classic ICs, selects components and designs and prints enclosures, then assembles and ships worldwide.

Of course the operating environment, Kernel, development tools, utilities, games, and demos are coming from all corners of the world and interest and adoption is increasing on a week-by-week basis. Collaborators including Peter J. Weingartner and Daniel Tremblay have been working hand-in-hand with Stefany to build the kernel, virtual environments, and other software, such as recently released titles from Norman Yen are bringing highly interactive and well produced games to the community.

C256Foenix.com is the best source for info on currently shipping products and pricing, but the history of the product line can only be dug out of YouTube videos and by browsing around. There is a massive amount of video, pictures, and descriptions out there. It’s worth a look, the history is interesting.

This year’s VCF booth includes representation from the FMX line, the C256U+, the soon-to-ship A2560K, and multi-CPU capable GEN X platform.

But it all started with a personal challenge, and the FMX.

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