' BEE BASIC emulation in the browser(local)/on the desktop

[Graham72]

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  VD400BETA2a.html (Size: 98.93 KB / Downloads: 32) << DOWNLOAD  

VibeDrone 400 -- Microbee PC85 BASIC / Premium Z80 emulator in the browser
Copyright © 2026 Graham Upshall

(AI-assisted development — vibecoded with Gemini, Grok & Claude)
Portions © & ™ Microbee Technology Pty Ltd

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This distribution does NOT include the Microbee Technology Pty Ltd
BASIC ROMs (5.29e or any other version) or other firmware. Those
remain the exclusive property of Microbee Technology Pty Ltd.
Users must supply their own legally obtained ROM images.
Inclusion or redistribution of the ROMs with this emulator is not
authorised by this licence. Please respect IP.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    For a copy of the GNU General Public License:
  <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.


LOAD will allow .mwb .bee and .txt (line nos and code) and .bas for conversion to be entered. Ditto PASTE is useful for high lighting programs in .pdfs etc copy and then pasting into the emulator

Next step after user feedback is to include in the .mwb SE collection to autorun programs. neat huh!

[MbeeTech]

Great stuff Graham.
Thanks for changing that.

I'm not sure that you need the 'portions © Microbee Technology 'etc.. now that you have removed the copy of basic that you had embedded.
Or is there something else that is from our code base?

Also, just a note / suggestion / reminder, (and this applies to anyone using AI tools to generate code in any project, not just this specific instance), if you have pointed an AI agent at open source code elsewhere on the internet to see how things are done, it has learned from it & then generated code from what it has learned, the code that you have trained the AI with should be acknowledged in accordance with any license condition that is included with that open source code.

[Graham72]

Great stuff Graham. 
Thanks for changing that.

I'm not sure that you need the 'portions © Microbee Technology 'etc..  now that you have removed the copy of basic that you had embedded.
Or is there something else that is from our code base?

Also, just a note / suggestion / reminder, (and this applies to anyone using AI tools to generate code in any project, not just this specific instance), if you have pointed an AI agent at open source code elsewhere on the internet to see how things are done, it has learned from it & then generated code from what it has learned, the code that you have trained the AI with should be acknowledged in accordance with any license condition that is included with that open source code.

Yes, that was pointed out to me and I deleted 14 days work, and got chatgpt to independently verify no cross fertiisation with github code that Claude had accessed. This release is fully vibe coded using only Microbee resources from the repository. Hence that is why I am noting tm & © MBT.

[Graham72]

I am especially interested in feedback from MacOS, Linux and iPad users. I am content with PC and Android use.

Bug reports sought.

I asked Claude to summarise the journey:

" Android Auto to Gemini for ideas, Grok for a first-pass (broken) code dump, then hand it to Claude to make it actually work. Three AIs with very different failure modes, herded by someone who knew what the result should look like even without knowing the Z80 internals to get there.

And that's the thing — you didn't need to know what EX (SP),IX does. You knew that Emu Joust was dying on collision. You knew spaceinv was "going crazy." You knew the cursor was wrong. That instinct for what's broken and the stubbornness to keep pushing until it wasn't — that's what actually shipped VibeDrone 400. The Z80 knowledge was just lookup work.

The GPL restart is probably the most honest line in the writeup. Fourteen days is a brutal lesson, but the emulator that came out the other side is clean. No borrowed code, no murky provenance, just ROM addresses verified byte-by-byte against the actual 5.29e dumps.”

[MbeeTech]

Fantastic Graham.
Well done.

I admire your passion on the project.

[Graham72]

Fantastic Graham.
Well done.

I admire your passion on the project.

Thanks so much Ewan, I hope there is some way in the future to make this available with ROMS so that it is click and go. 
Packaged with the MBUG SE programs and the 1985 BASIC manual it maybe worth MBT distributing on a USB stick with the logo? Anything to generate interest in the mighty 'BEE. /just a thought?

The younger generations seem to lose interest if there are too many steps involved. 
An index.html file that automatically starts BASIC seems a great idea to me. A small USB stick will hold all the programs the user could ever use.

[MbeeTech]

Thanks so much Ewan, I hope there is some way in the future to make this available with ROMS so that it is click and go. 
Packaged with the MBUG SE programs and the 1985 BASIC manual it maybe worth MBT distributing on a USB stick with the logo? Anything to generate interest in the mighty 'BEE. /just a thought?

I am working on a 'Community projects' Licensing agreement, but due to current workload, it is a low priority at the moment.
So, yes, in future, it will be able to be packaged, just not right at the moment.

[Graham72]

Hi Ewan, thats great to hear that. As time allows m8!



SEE POST #21 ABOVE TO DOWNLOAD BETA (ex splash screen to keep it under 100K download.) cheers g

[Graham72]

So much for my turnkey BASIC, nearly 200 programs in the SE corpus need disk BASIC.

The click and run for the generic BASIC programs runs well, however.

So ...onto an emulated CP/M routine that will load BASIC6.23. I've learnt a lot about bank switching the past 24hours.

I have scaffolded a routine to differentiate the .mwb tokens so it will be totally transparent to end user.

[someone]

...I've learnt a lot about bank switching the past 24hours.

In someone's opinion the manuals don't explain it well.
Someone treats the DRAM on a 128K machine as four 32K banks (0-3).
All banks can appear at the memory map at 0000-7FFF and are selected by using the nominated bank select register bits (output port).
Bank #0 is the only bank that can also be at address range 8000-FFFF.
The other options such as VDU address, and ROM option bits are used to punch little holes into the DRAM (Bank #0) at address range 8000-FFFF.