Chloe 280SE

Published on 23 December 2021 by Andrew Owen (1 minutes)

I’m the community manager for the open hardware/open source Chloe 280SE FPGA computer project. Besides my main role and contributing assembly coder, I’m also the graphic designer for the project.

I created the koru logo, the corporate typeface (a hybrid of Gill Sans / Infant), 6×8 pixel bitmap typefaces (supporting Roman, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew and Japanese characters), and of course the keyboard design.

Imagine an alternative 1987. IBM never bothered to enter the microcomputer market. Apple has yet to launch the Macintosh. A new generation of 16-bit computers aimed at people who grew up with 8-bit machines is on sale. The IIGS from Apple, the Amiga from Atari, the C65 from Commodore. But the MSX Turbo-R is still in development. There’s a small window of opportunity for another manufacturer to launch a 16-bit, Z80 instruction set compatible machine that can run Microsoft BASIC programs. The Chloe Corporation aims to take 8080 and Z80 users into the 16-bit era with the new Chloe 280SE.