____ FRST Public Beta _________________________________________________

                        Released Summer 2026
                          Version 1.0.0-beta

The FRST Computer Public Beta is the first release meant to be useful
and stable out of the box -- not just demoable.  It builds on the Alpha
shown at VCF East 2026 with a much steadier footing and a lot more you
can actually do over the network.


What's in the Beta
------------------

  ZRC shell          rc-flavoured shell, ~60 builtins; plus MULTIPLE
                     SHELLS, screen-style (F1/F2/F3 + Ctrl-A)
  Status chrome      persistent top/bottom bars: shell + app status up
                     top; shell switcher, WiFi signal, mesh activity,
                     memory/file meters, uptime + clock along the bottom
  9P namespace       mount, bind, unmount -- local and remote
                     filesystems under one tree, over BLE / LoRa / TCP
  Internet over BT   `attune` to a data crystal and borrow its net:
                     gopher, telnet, and BBSes work over Bluetooth,
                     no WiFi radio required on the deck
  WiFi               multiple saved networks, scan-based auto-join,
                     signal-strength meter
  Networking         gopher (inline + full-screen images), a
                     serviceable telnet client + the `vt` VT100/ANSI
                     emulator, a `boards` BBS dialing book, peer-to-peer
                     BBS, finger
  Images             PBM/JPEG/PNG/GIF dithered to 1-bit: `img` viewer,
                     image slides in `slides`, inline + full-screen gopher
  File transfer      ZMODEM -- downloads off a telnet BBS auto-start
                     and land in /n/local/downloads; upload with Ctrl-] s
  Aether mesh        /net/aether as a filesystem (neighbours, stats,
                     runtime PHY tuning) with `achat` -- no towers.
                     Nodes announce themselves: dial by name, `who`
                     for the roster
  Manual             `man` on the deck -- 46 pages, 106 commands, no
                     network and no host computer; `man -k` searches
  Forth              FRST-Class Forth: the shell and the namespace as
                     Forth words, with a sugar layer you edit in place
                     at /n/local/forth/frst.fth
  File transfer II   `ftp` -- line-mode, RFC 959; `nc` for poking at a
                     service without writing a client
  Editors            ed, sam, vi, se (structural), inline sed, p pager
  Games              Zork, Lost Pig (Z-machine), Apple 1 (65C02),
                     Tetris, Chess, Blackjack, ZZT, Snake, fractals...
                     and DOOM, in ink, running on a crystal while the
                     deck is the screen and the keyboard (`doom`)
  Identity           CGA keys + factotum; your mesh address is derived
                     from your own key
  Reliability        the deck captures its own coredumps to flash,
                     retrievable over 9P
  The web            the real firmware runs in a browser at
                     frstcomputer.com, with a metered guest tier
  Boot time          ~4 seconds cold


Getting the Source
------------------

Release tarballs are available at:

  gopher://frstcomputer.com/  (this gopher hole)
  https://frstcomputer.com/downloads/

What's served:

  -src   full source (MIT licensed, except Frotz which is GPL) as a
         self-contained Zephyr manifest project -- build it with west
  modules
         the three out-of-tree libraries at exactly the revisions the
         manifest pins: 9p4z (9P), aephyr (LoRa mesh), zephyr-pforth

Everything else a build needs is upstream Zephyr, fetched by west.
The WebAssembly build isn't a download -- it's the browser demo at
https://frstcomputer.com, which is this same firmware.

If you have a Waveshare N8R8 devkit, a 7.5" Gooddisplay e-ink panel,
and a Waveshare SX1262 LoRa module, you can build a deck.  See
docs/MODEL4.md for the full BOM.


Known Issues
------------

  - Internal RAM (DRAM) is nearly full; adding features that touch
    DRAM means relocating something to external PSRAM first.
  - The e-ink display can wedge after a warm reset if an SPI transfer
    was interrupted.  A full power cycle clears it.
  - Full display refresh takes ~2.5 seconds; partial refresh (~200ms)
    is used for most interactive work.
  - Discovery of multiple BLE 9P peripherals still wants an
    advertising-layer rework (moot for the wired-keyboard config).


What's Next
-----------

See ROADMAP.md in the source tarball, or type `p /roadmap` on your
deck if you have one.

Short version: a calendar + contacts PIM, regex across the editors,
JPEG in gopher, and the Batch 6 production PCB.


Contact
-------

  BBS       bbs.frstcomputer.net
  Gopher    gopher://frstcomputer.com/
  Web       https://frstcomputer.com
  GitHub    https://github.com/jrsharp/frst


                          See you on the mesh.
