FreeWPC was started in 2005 and was written entirely in assembly language, before the availability of the gcc6809 C compiler. An initial attempt to ease programming involved the use of some complicated macros, written in the m4 programming language. Work was halted during the development of gcc6809, then the system was gradually rewritten in C. The early source code repository actually contained the compiler changes as well.
The first time that a FreeWPC ROM was placed into a game was in May, 2008. It did not run OK due to some problems with the watchdog circuit and with the PIC initialization. Those problems were resolved within only a few hours.