New Model Development Updates

[MbeeTech]

Hey Ewan,

Will the new Microbee output BeeThoven and BeeTalker sounds at the same time?

Short answer - No.
The BeeThoven and BeeTalker units (designed by Milan Hudecek of Robotron) needed to be used
via the Bee's parallel port, so if you still want to plug one of those into the parallel port and use it, you can.
The software for them talks to the PIO via Z80 I/O ports 0 & 1 (data & control) and has a special handshaking 
arrangement to talk to the 8910 and SP0256 (music & speech respectively).  So, they were never designed to 
be plugged in / usable at the same time.

There is a 8910 compatible FPGA core in verilog that I may add at some point, but I'm not committing to that because
it will need to use different I/O ports in the Z80's I/O space (not ports 0 & 1) and would not have the same software 
interface - ergo, the existing software would not work with it.  I know it wouldn't take much to write some new software
to get sound that way, but as I said, I'm not committing to it at this point.

I've chosen to go forward with dual sound FIFO's (IE: stereo sound output) instead.  I believe that to be far more flexible
and better quality.

For the few people that might want to play with BeeTalker, there will still be some kits available to build to connect to the 
parallel port.  I don't see BeeTalker as being a draw card.