Back in May 2022, the Rust Foundation awarded funds to the Rust community through their Community Grants Programme. My bid for was funds to cover the next around of Neotron Pico PCBs, and I was lucky enough to receive $3000.

So, I've been busy!

I have a big box of parts with most of the through-hole components. I've also been revising the PCB design. closing out the tickets I raised on the Rev 0.5.0. There's a new board layout, various parts changes to cope with the ongoing silicon shortage, and more.

Currently I have only a few tickets left, and then it's off to JLCPCB to order another batch of five. These will be used for testing, and if functional, distributed to people who want to help with the PCB testing. Assuming the issue list is sufficiently short, there will then be a "production" run of 25 boards. As these have been paid for by the Rust Foundation, they will be given away for a nominal sum as "kits" containing a half-populated PCBA and a selection of through-hole components, such as sockets. These can then be used to get some progress on the BIOS, the BMC firmware and finally the Neotron OS itself.