22-08-2026, 05:31 PM
G'day Paul and Welcome
Sounds like we'd be roughly the same age(ish) as your experience is much like mine. I'm in Perth and used a Bee from Year 8 High School to leaving in Y12 - and also had a 128k Small business system at home.
Many like to repair their own Bee's but when I got a Premium machine, I found the challenge of replacing so many keyswitches to be a bit of a challenge since my soldering is a bit shaky these days. I send my Bee to Ewan (Microbee Technology) to do a keyboard replacement kit for me.
With regard to your disk system, you can probably find a 3.5" replacement drive relatively easily these days for the B drive and consider the use of a Gotek for the A: Drive - that will allow you to use images from the repository.
I have a 56k CP/M Bee (Project for repairs) and a 128k Premium with a project SBC01 Disk enclosure, as well as a Microbee badged Mitsubishi Amber monitor. I use my Premium on a vga screen using one of Ewan's CGA to VGA Upscaler's - We all love to see eachother's kit so do post pictures when you get a chance.
Sounds like we'd be roughly the same age(ish) as your experience is much like mine. I'm in Perth and used a Bee from Year 8 High School to leaving in Y12 - and also had a 128k Small business system at home.
Many like to repair their own Bee's but when I got a Premium machine, I found the challenge of replacing so many keyswitches to be a bit of a challenge since my soldering is a bit shaky these days. I send my Bee to Ewan (Microbee Technology) to do a keyboard replacement kit for me.
With regard to your disk system, you can probably find a 3.5" replacement drive relatively easily these days for the B drive and consider the use of a Gotek for the A: Drive - that will allow you to use images from the repository.
I have a 56k CP/M Bee (Project for repairs) and a 128k Premium with a project SBC01 Disk enclosure, as well as a Microbee badged Mitsubishi Amber monitor. I use my Premium on a vga screen using one of Ewan's CGA to VGA Upscaler's - We all love to see eachother's kit so do post pictures when you get a chance.