Product Time Line

May, 1987	Prepared specification for FF-80 project. The FF-80 was to be a full-featured, microprocessor based repeater controller. Heavy emphasis placed on end-user programability.
May, 1989	Three FF-80 prototypes in field trials.
June, 1990	Entered FF-80 in Motorola Design contest. Won third place honors. In spite of this sucess, the FF-80 was scrapped as a viable product. The primary emphasis for this decision was in the poor quality of the speech synthesiser used in the FF-80 design. Began writing specifications for FF-800 using the TI speech synthesiser and word set. This provided much better speech quality at the expense of a limited vocabulary.
January, 1991	FF Systems as a company begins doing business. Two field prototypes in service, began work on the FF-8070 Digital Voice Recorder and the FF-8090 ICOM IC-901 interface.
December, 1991	First trials on the FF-8090 interface complete. All functions except CTCSS encode sucessfully reverse-engineered.
December, 1992	First PCB run for the FF-800 complete (rev D).
March, 1993	FF-8070 development complete. PCB layout contains 32 mega-bits of DRAM with provisions for expansion to 64 mega-bits.
June, 1993	Re-engineered FF-800 PCB to fix some routing errors and incorporate circuit enhancements (rev E).
September, 1993	Added support of Doug Hall RBI-1 to FF-800 firmware. Requires Additonal logic to interface -- designed adapter to be provided with FF-180 at no additional charge.
October, 1993	Introduced FF-180f chassis with display.
	FF-800 firmware advanced to V2.xx to mark several major changes in the structure of the operating system.
January, 1994	Began research into a digital audio delay module.
April, 1994	First FF-CAD prototype complete. Performed critical comparison with a competitor's delay module (based on bucket-brigade technology). The FF-CAD had a better noise floor and wider dynamic range. Results of comparison allow the FF-CAD to be released as a new product.
May, 1994	First FF-PGMR prototype complete. Basic EPROM programmer for 2716 through 27512 devices.
September, 1994	FF-0.8 DTMF control module released as a new product. Allows simple on/off control of up to 8 outputs.
November, 1994	FF-8072 DVR multi-port adapter released as new product. Allows up to 4 FF-800 controllers to share a single DVR.
	Re-engineered FF-800 PCB to incorporate circuit enhancements (rev F).
January, 1995	Began prototype testing of the FF-Remote and FFlash options to allow direct firmware uploads without changing EPROMs.
February, 1995	FFlash and FF-Remote released as a new products.
March, 1995	New firmware for the FF-0.8 DTMF control module released to allow module to generate a timed CW ID. ID string is field programmable using DTMF commands.
May, 1995	Re-engineered FF-800 PCB to incorporate circuit enhancements (rev G).
December, 1996	Re-engineered FF-8080 prototype and released it as the FF-899 HF interface.
February, 1997	First alpha tests of new operating system for FF-800 (v3.00).
August, 1997	Released FF-8900 FC-900 interface to allow use of FC-900 and ICOM 900 modules as remote base.
June, 1998	FF-800: Incorporated support for expanded non-volatile memory and doubled length of speed dials (v2.19o).
August, 1998	Developed FF80PC as a serial data converter add-on for the FF-800. Allows user defined interfaces to communicate with the FF-800 via an RS-232 or TTL serial link.
March, 1999	FF-800: Completed alpha testing of V3.00 and released to beta sites.