Product requests

[mjelic]

mjelic

 and put inside a sexy new case like Owen showed off at the March of the Microbee

> First off, I know it's a bit confusing having Microbee originally owned by 'Owen' and now 'Ewan'

My mistake Ewan. I actually do know you're the owner but my brain typed an E while fingers press O.

> In regards to the sexy new case, I assume you are referring to the right most one in the picture below:



Correct. I love that style of case!

>While both these models have some parts integrated into an FPGA, there is very good reason for it.
Making original Microbees and even the Premium Plus has to rely on obtaining 30-40 year old parts :
in particular, the SY6545 screen controller (along with other items) which presents problems in sourcing
the components, and possible reliability problems / higher failure rates.
This is one of the reasons I've moved the video section into an FPGA. I don't want to be held at the mercy of
redundant parts suppliers.

>And while it doesn't appeal to absolutely everyone, I am adding newer features to give people something to 
play with, program, investigate and learn with rather than just replicating an old model.  You don't have to have 
any knowledge of FPGAs to make use of the new features, and you can ignore them completely if you want as it 
still runs all of the original software. 

Fair enough... Are you adding any graphic modes to it? (I believe I read you are, but I missed the details.) If in the affirmative, then will any of these new modes be compatible with other computers of the time? As in, if you are adding some colour mode that say the MSX2 standard had, then it could be easier to port software from some other platform to add to the Bee's library.

>It's still a regular Z80 based machine, it's just that some circuitry has 

So it will still have a fair dinkum Z80 at it's heart? (It sounds like it will. That is important, for me.)

Hope this formatting works. See comments above.

Mark