microbee – Page 2 – I Like 8 Bits

While I wait for orders to arrive

I’ve got various bits’n’pieces on their way from China, so I haven’t been quite as busy as I could have been. Not a lot of upgrades / repairs are in the pipeline anyway so I haven’t needed to fix stuff. Having said that, my SE/30 needs to be broken down and the Digital board needsContinue reading “While I wait for orders to arrive”

Being the Microbee

I got the PC85 Microbee working 😀 First up, I am, once again in debt to the Retro Communities to which I belong. The people over at both Microbee Technologies and MSPP (Especially Brad) who provided advice, pointers and general assistance as I got the second of my Microbees working. Now, the fault I wasContinue reading “Being the Microbee”

Deliveries

I’ve put the Microbee away for a bit. I’ve done a lot of work on it, and it’s a LOT more stable. Not completely stable and I’m yet to work out why. (I’ve desoldered the connectors between the boards and completely replaced them. I’ve also replaced the ROM socket for the IC27, which was greenContinue reading “Deliveries”

2 Bee or not 2 Bee

Couldn’t resist THAT bad pun 🙂 So I’ve got a couple of days of leave, and now that my wife has plied me with Yum Cha, and I’ve done my first non retro repair around the house, I thought it was time to start working on another one of my retro-computers. Sorry, not the PET.Continue reading “2 Bee or not 2 Bee”

Of Bees and PETs

Another quickish update on two of my systems. Microbee The Microbee is happily working now. I swapped out an underpowered PSU for a more “meaty” one and now it’s booting reliably and is able to load games off my nearby Android phone. I just use the built in Android playback app to playback WAV recordingsContinue reading “Of Bees and PETs”

Another update on the Microbee

So I have now tested the Microbee with software and I can report I have successfully loaded several old tape games. It did highlight two issues: Two of the keys were not registering at all. I carefully desoldered them but couldn’t work out how to get into them at first. They seemed quite different toContinue reading “Another update on the Microbee”

Quick Updates

I have one of the Microbees booting, having made a quick cable to supply power and video. In the end, I needed to reseat the top board and remove the corroded battery, and that was it! Back on the 11th,I bumped my Atari STᴱ, it slid off the shelf and fell less than half itsContinue reading “Quick Updates”

The New Haul

So that moratorium on buying new Computers? Yeah that’s totally gone. Look what I got! So I got an incredibly kind offer of a Microbee, with box, no less, and two more “spare parts” systems that were nearly complete. The Microbee is another Z80 based system. Later models ran CP/M with disk drives but theseContinue reading “The New Haul”

What next?

While I wait for a bit more financial liquidity before I purchase some more bits and pieces, I’ve been contemplating what to do next. I’m in a strange place where pretty much all my systems work, one way or another. The Wizzard may need a replacement controller, but that doesn’t mean the main unit doesn’tContinue reading “What next?”

The current Wish List

Here’s a list of all the things I “want”.This does not include my two systems stuck overseas. Thanks Covid. The Immediate Future These are the things I’m actively searching for to buy as they become available. I’m not going to go silly on them. (I’m looking at you, $1,000 Microbee!) Amstrad CPC 6128 or 464:Continue reading “The current Wish List”