06-04-2023, 01:24 PM
A couple of unusual Microbee were up on ebay last year that had Microfusion labels on them. One of the photographs showed a never seen before coreboard. KimJohn purchased them and sent them to me and MbeeTech to check them out, thanks.
The sticker underneath indicated they were originally a Microbee PC85 and designed and manufactured by Computer Interface Australia Pty Ltd in Tullamarine, Victoria. A date on a sticker inside one of them said it was assembled and tested on 7-5-1986.
The units had a new coreboard fitted and basically the same in both with 64k fitted, but sockets for another 64k. There was a shieled 2 wire cable that went from the coreboard to the Serial port on the main board. The coreboard had "mf Made in Australia MN1c" on a corner of the coreboard -
One unit powered up to this screen, "a CIFANET BEE v2.00 UNo 48", while the other unit was dead. Changing the blue 8 DIP switch changed the UNo when booted -
The ROMs (27128) was dumped and was identical in both units. However, the ROM only contained 4.2k of code. A RESET M jumped to a Monitor, CIFANET BEE MONITOR c86. I only checked for the E option and that worked the same as in a normal Microbee -
The dead unit was given to Microbee Technology for his archives and will repair it in time. This unit was shown to Owen Hill late last year for comment and he had never seen it or heard of Microfusion. A google search found nothing except Computer Interface Australia P/L had received some research grants from the government. So whatever network it may have been connected to remains a mystery. If anyone has any further information, please let us know.
So in the MbeeTech Repository in the Microbee\Documentation\Pictures\Microbees folder we placed
microfusion_microbee.jpg <-- the coreboard also included in the zip file
microfusion_microbee.rom <-- in the Microbee\Software\ROMs\Miscellaneous folder
The sticker underneath indicated they were originally a Microbee PC85 and designed and manufactured by Computer Interface Australia Pty Ltd in Tullamarine, Victoria. A date on a sticker inside one of them said it was assembled and tested on 7-5-1986.
The units had a new coreboard fitted and basically the same in both with 64k fitted, but sockets for another 64k. There was a shieled 2 wire cable that went from the coreboard to the Serial port on the main board. The coreboard had "mf Made in Australia MN1c" on a corner of the coreboard -
One unit powered up to this screen, "a CIFANET BEE v2.00 UNo 48", while the other unit was dead. Changing the blue 8 DIP switch changed the UNo when booted -
The ROMs (27128) was dumped and was identical in both units. However, the ROM only contained 4.2k of code. A RESET M jumped to a Monitor, CIFANET BEE MONITOR c86. I only checked for the E option and that worked the same as in a normal Microbee -
The dead unit was given to Microbee Technology for his archives and will repair it in time. This unit was shown to Owen Hill late last year for comment and he had never seen it or heard of Microfusion. A google search found nothing except Computer Interface Australia P/L had received some research grants from the government. So whatever network it may have been connected to remains a mystery. If anyone has any further information, please let us know.
So in the MbeeTech Repository in the Microbee\Documentation\Pictures\Microbees folder we placed
microfusion_microbee.jpg <-- the coreboard also included in the zip file
microfusion_microbee.rom <-- in the Microbee\Software\ROMs\Miscellaneous folder
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ChickenMan
ChickenMan