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+--- Thread: Hi from Brisbane (/thread-450.html)
Hi from Brisbane - amy - 02-04-2022
Hi,
I guess I'd better introduce myself.
I've had Microbees since I was little. Right now I have a Premium Plus and a 32kb (which is currently not working
). I think there might be another one floating around the house but I haven't been able to find it yet. I also have a Beetalker and a bunch of old disks and tapes, and a couple of other non-bee vintage computers.I have a lot of fond memories of the Microbee, mostly playing games. I'd love to get it up and running again and see if I can learn to program it, though I only know a bit of C and x86 assembly language.
Thanks,
Amy
RE: Hi from Brisbane - robert1949 - 02-04-2022
I have repaired two Microbees now using the schematic required for the particular model although most mother boards are similar. The core boards most certainly are not.
If you have a good knowledge of digital electronics and multimeters (analogue better than digital) and a good 100 Mhz oscilloscope then the task is not that hard.
I socketed both motherboards and core boards of the two microbee's I own. They were both self built mother boards and the soldering was abysmal, admittedly I spent my working life in electronics teaching the subject in the RAAF in later years.
My first Microbee was bought in 1983 but I sold it on only a few years later, and yes I wrote in Microworld Basic and some Z80 machine code. I moved on to CP/M with another computer (Little Big Board with 8" floppy drives) and then started the IBM clone story through DOS 3.2 and on and upwards to windows. Now here we are and people are retracing their steps including myself.
Regards Robert
RE: Hi from Brisbane - ChickenMan - 02-04-2022
Hi Amy and welcome to the forum
Good to hear from another Premium Plus owner, still my favorite 'bee. We have all the disks and tapes and documentation (well almost all) in our Repository, so join up there to grab whatever - https://microbeetechnology.com.au/forum/showthread.php?tid=15 Hitech C was the most popular ver of C used on the Microbee which is there also. Grab the disk image, copy to your SD card and fire it up on your PP+ and grab the docs also.
I would also be interested in your tapes and disks as there may be something among them that hasnt been archived yet.
RE: Hi from Brisbane - someone - 02-04-2022
Welcome aboard Amy!
Your broken 32K microbee may not boot because its coreboard to baseboard connectors have corroded a bit over the years creating faulty connections.
It is a very common problem with ROM based microbees.
A few insertion and removal cycles and wiggles may be enough to scrub of the unwanted debris to get it to work.
If you're lucky all keys will work perfectly otherwise......
RE: Hi from Brisbane - amy - 03-04-2022
Thanks for your warm welcome
The 32IC is unresponsive at the moment, but I'm going to try and fix it. There's a couple of mods in it (there's some patch wires on the core board, a Viatel mod on the motherboard and a ROM pack) and last time I tried to repair it I replaced the motherboard/core board connectors and the big electrolytic cap. Hopefully I didn't make things worse. I do have a digital meter, a scope, and a working power supply and monitor. I was thinking of starting with the troubleshooting section in the technical manual.
I would love to see if there's still anything on the disks and tapes. Can you do that? I can send them your way if you want. If the games disks are still working, I'd be very happy.
Thanks,
Amy