I'm throwing in the towel once more on the Kestrel-2DX project.  However, not because I'm aggravated, or feel defeated over some seemingly insurmountable technical issue (*cough!* Pseudo-SDRAM *cough!*).  Oh no -- this is far, far better than that.  I'm throwing in the towel because I've won.  The Kestrel-2DX, as I've come to envision the computer design, is complete.

This computer is, bugs and/or feature requests notwithstanding, fully operational.

For the last two weeks, I have spent zero time using my workstation PC for the purposes of Kestrel development.  My entire interaction with the Kestrel, backups notwithstanding, has been with developing software directly on the Kestrel, inside of DX-Forth.  It's even largely the reason why I haven't been making updates as of late.

This has lead me to what I think is perhaps my first Law of Computing:

You know you're finished when you spend more time with your project than you do with the tools to build it.

I've been having a blast.  I spent the last week or so building up a set of slides to present at today's SVFIG meeting.  Despite DX-Forth not being a super-high performer, I'm planning writing a simple, terribly elementary game -- you know, the sorts of games one would write in BASIC on a Commodore 64 or Apple II.  I doubt it'll push its limits; but, it's all that I know how to do, and it should show nicely what is possible to accomplish with the machine to others.  I'm considering creating some videos along the way as well, so folks can see what it's like working with the system in real-time.