Tag: microbee
Life Gets in the Way
It’s been nearly a month without a post. While some things have happened in the meantime, not a lot of new developments have occurred. Microbee: First the bad news I was supposed to be bringing one of my Microbees to the Perth Amiga Users Group gathering, so of course, I chose the DRAM 128k with…
My goodness, it’s been a while!
Hi Intarwubs. It’s been a while since my last post. Things have been very slowly proceeding, and then, like unplugging a cork, there has been a huge rush this long weekend. Updates on the last post So some quick updates on everything covered in the last post. Firstly the Microbee ROM switcher is working fine.…
Some new additions, some new repairs
While the last few weeks have been busy, they haven’t been that busy on a retro front. I realised I’d ordered the wrong Floppy Disk controllers for the Microbee and the MSX controller, so I had to order replacements. They’ll take quite some time to get here, but that’s OK. Due to some financial commitments…
Stuff coming down the pipe
So it’s been a while since I did anything major. I did do another spin (My third so far) at the laser cut Microbee case, which revealed I needed to refactor parts of it. I tried to make a fastening system so the upper half and the lower half could be screwed together, but I…
Posting will slow for a while
So I’ve gone back to work after an extended holiday, so output is likely to slow for a bit. However, I’m still doing retro “stuff” so I thought I’d share some of it. One of the coolest projects I completed on the weekend was building an MT32Pi Hat. This consists of a Raspberry Pi running…
Bits and Bobs
Well, here we are again. Amiga 2000 I built up the -5v rail for the A2000 and fully reassembled it. Unfortunately the A2000 is presenting with a black screen. No synch or other signs of life. Not the end of the world, but it does mean it’s on hold until my new Oscilloscope arrives. Mac…
Upgrades, Problems, Parts
It’s been an exciting few weeks. Archimedes The Archimedes continues to confound me. I finally got a replacement 1772, plugged it in and… No change! At this point I have swapped out all the chips that feed the floppy disk. If you look at the schematics, I have socketed and tested IC29, IC30, IC38, IC…
Repairing Microbee No3 Keyboard
The third Microbee was now nominally “working” insomuch as it was booting reliably to the command prompt. Only thing is, I couldn’t test anything further without a keyboard. The keyboard was partially working, and having removed the keycaps I could see a mix of 3 different keyswitches. White stemmed with a horizontal bar, Black stemmed…
Three Bee, Three Bee!
For anyone trying to follow along at home, last we saw the Microbee computers, I’d managed to make the cable for the Microbees, and proven the base 32k “Communicator” model was working fine. I’d resurrected the PC85 and upgraded it to an 85b model complete with a bunch of embedded games. Now back to the…
Mini MicroBee update
I have the PC85 Microbee from the last post working now. Thanks to Ernest, who persevered in his assistance and identified a mistake in the ROM order, I was finally able to get a proper booting PC85B system. This allows double sized (16K – AKA 27128) ROMs and I’ve got a couple of additional games…