Discussion Forum for all things Microbee - Microbee Software and Documentation

the solar system, galaxys and universe explained.

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 20:12:00 +1000

In the beginning was Microbee, and it created a program and spiral galaxy formed and years and years and aeons passed.

10 HIRES2
20 C=256
25 D=127
30 FOR N=16 TO 1 STEP -1
35 K=0
50 FOR T0=0 TO 94.2 STEP .1
60 R0=T0*1.348
70 K=K+1
75 IF K 77 K=0
80 SET INT(R0*COS(T0)*2)+C,INT(R0*SIN(T0))+D
90 NEXT T0
95 K=0
110 FOR T0=94.2 TO 0 STEP -.1
120 R0=T0*1.348
130 K=K+1
135 IF K 137 K=0
140 SET INT(R0*COS(T0)*2)+C,INT(R0*SIN(T0))+D
150 NEXT T0
160 NEXT N
170 FOR N=16 TO 1 STEP -1
175 K=0
190 FOR T0=0 TO 94.2 STEP .1
200 R0=T0*1.348
210 K=K+1
215 IF K 217 K=0
220 RESET INT(R0*COS(T0)*2)+C,INT(R0*SIN(T0))+D
230 NEXT T0
235 K=0
250 FOR T0=94.2 TO 0 STEP -.1
260 R0=T0*1.348
270 K=K+1
275 IF K 277 K=0
280 RESET INT(R0*COS(T0)*2)+C,INT(R0*SIN(T0))+D
290 NEXT T0
300 NEXT N

It would appear that the universe is currently around the 220 mark.

Otherwise a neat screen saver

uBee512 with 56k not formatting diskettes?

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 15:20:04 +1000

Hi Folks,

An obscure one, but I have been using the ubee512 emulator to check a few things out and found that using 56k model with 56k master images, he ddformat utility doesnt seem to be able to format the B drive sucessfully - it completes without error but doesnt erase the virtual diskette..

Does anyone have the same issue with the emulation or the real thing?

AI running on the Microbee

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 22:19:01 +1000

Hi all,

With all of the talk about AI lately, I wanted to prove that machine learning was not a new concept. My question, can I build a learning algorithm on 40 year old hardware (emulated).

It started out with a perceptron, which was a little underwhelming.

Then I settled on build a maze solver. A simple problem, the bee needs to find the exit. with no prior knowledge of its map, the bee uses Q-learning to learn the pathway to the exit. I have programmed imperfection into this so it always will choose to explore a little even if it has mastered the map.

I have wasted a lot of time on this, and it works, so i would love to share. If anyone would like to try it out the code is in the .txt down below the images, or if someone want to tell me how to get cp/m tools working on my mac where I wrote this I'll be happy to share the .mwb file.

I am especially interested in seeing this run on actual old hardware, though its written for premium 512 becuase it uses HIRES2.

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' BEE BASIC emulation in the browser(local)/on the desktop

Sun, 28 Jun 2026 18:21:36 +1000

vibe400.jpg (Size: 177.01 KB / Downloads: 116) I have spent the last month working on an BASIC emulator that works locally.

UBEE512, MAME, NANOWASP all meet certain needs. I wanted something to quickly access BASIC that can LOAD and SAVE .mwb. Also quickly access MBUG collection etc.

Vibedrone400 is nearing completion. Written as a html/.js file it incorporates the 5.29e ROMS. The Z80 emulation was ZEXDOc tested to exhaustion(i hope) over 3 days.

Colour implementation was a huge issue and almost defeated me.

It's truly amazing what modern AI can achieve when prompted accurately and concisely.

However, ask it to write a program in Microbee BASIC to hold an array of 100 items and it immediately produces DIM A1$(100) day after day, week after week.

I am exploring the various wrapper models atm and will hopefully have the final product ready for the repository in early July. As always ChickenMan has been a great bug finder, thank you!

A tool for BEECATSE

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 06:53:55 +1000

BEEVIEW — Microbee .MWB Library Catalog Tool

BEEVIEW is a standalone HTML-based application designed for managing and viewing the descriptions in MBEECATSE ( now includes ftp .omen .mwb files). Bonus feature can view external .mwb files in modern OS folders / rcpmfs folders.

Main Features:

Catalog Management
- Loads and displays the complete MBEECATSE from I.js
- Shows program ID, name, disk number, and description in a searchable, retro-styled interface
- Allows easy editing of program descriptions
- Saves changes back to I.js with automatic backup (I.bak)
.MWB Program Viewer
- Detokenises and displays the original tokenized Microbee BASIC programs (.mwb files)
- Renders a LISTING with keywords, line numbers, strings, and numbers includes handling for colour POKE commands (POKE 156, POKE 157) — displays them as COLOR, COLOUR, COLORB, COLOURB for improved readability
- Can load .mwb files directly from disk or extract them from the embedded ZIP inside MBEECATSE2.html
User Experience
- Fully offline, single HTML file (no installation required) - requires MBEECATSE and I.js
- Authentic retro CRT aesthetic with amber/green terminal styling
- Keyboard navigation and search support
- Copyable BASIC listings

BEEVIEW serves as both a catalog editor for maintaining the BEECATSE software collection and a convenient detokeniser / viewer / exporter for exploring classic Microbee BASIC programs.

Instructions: >>Click OPEN FOLDER to select the folder containing your I.js and MBEECATSE2.html files — the catalog loads automatically (a file request warning may appear depending on your browser.)

Search by program name or index number; results update as you type.

Select any entry to edit its description, then click SAVE to write I.js and a backup I.bak directly to the same folder.

To view a program, select an entry and click ▶ SHOW PROGRAM — the .mwb file is extracted from the embedded ZIP and detokenised into a BASIC listing.

Click 📂 LOAD .MWB to view any .mwb file directly from disk.

Use ⧉ COPY to copy the listing to the clipboard.

_____________________________________________________________________________
I hope these modern tools enable people to explore the legacy held in the MBUG and other collections.

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Revisiting Wordmaster

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 22:23:47 +1000

Before Wordstar word processing there was Wordmaster text editing. Available in the Repository with a patchy manual.

Whilst wandering down the back lanes of the internetz, as one does on a cold and windy Canberra evening I came across a full version of the manual, with user guides.

Final pages (missing from the current repository copy) provide a concise reference layout containing the complete Word-Master Command Summary and Video Edit Summary tables for quick diagnostic checks.

It was a big pdf, so I have compressed it and provided it to Chickenman to add to Repository.

If you are familiar with ed.com, Wordmaster is a jump up to a full screen editor with some shared commands.

introducing MBUGDISKS

Sat, 23 May 2026 12:27:05 +1000

MBUGDISKS is a companion catalogue to MBEECAT, extending coverage beyond the  MBUG MicroBee BASIC programs to the full breadth of the MBUG software library.

Where MBEECAT indexes the 1,199 MWB program files across 74 discs, MBUGDISKS covers the remaining 3,940 non-BASIC files — utilities, applications, data files, and CP/M software spanning 186 discs.

Presented in the same CRT-styled interface, it allows users to browse, search, and view file contents directly in the browser, with support for plain text, WordStar documents, LBR archives, and binary hex dumps. A comprehensive extraction download system has been implemented even allowing saving .png format "screenshots" from the file viewer.

Together, MBEECAT and MBUGDISKS form a comprehensive archive of the MBUG collection allowing fast access to all the data.

A technical note has been provided to explain CP/M compression complexities and other information.

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Looking for an old Boulderdash clone

Mon, 18 May 2026 08:05:19 +1000

Hi All!

My dad had a Microbee back when I was a kid, and we actually really enjoyed playing games on it. One that really stuck in my mind was an old Boulder Dash clone, which I can't remember the name of.

I haven't been able to find any screenshots of it, all I really remember is the diamonds/emeralds, and being chased by a kind of star-like object when the timer ran out. After doing some research I'm guessing it was possibly a clone of Emerald Mine for the Atari, but seeing as our Microbee was using a monochrome monitor it still doesn't quite look right. So I really just don't know at this point.

If anyone can point me in the right direction it will settle a question I've been trying to figure out since I remembered playing it all those years ago

MBEESQL.MWB - Connecting a microbee program to the world

Sun, 10 May 2026 16:03:55 +1000

(SQL, or Structured Query Language, is the standard used by database systems for over 20 years worldwide, to store, retrieve and manage structured data.)

Originally I wrote a SQL demo program and then thought why not make it actually do something useful.

MBEESQL is a relational database engine written in MicroWorld BASIC for the MicroBee Z80 running CP/M. It implements four fundamental SQL database operations known as CRUD — Create (INSERT), Read (SELECT), Update (UPDATE) and Delete (DELETE) — along with WHERE clauses for filtered searching, primary key management, and a VACUUM command to compact the database by removing deleted rows. MBEESQL brings these concepts to the Microbee, emulated using UBEE512. The BASIC program stores its data in DBMWB.DAT — a plain comma-delimited text file cataloguing the MicroWorld BASIC programs from the MBUG disk library by name and disc nos. RAM constraints prevent listing what each program does.

The flag field in each record marks it as Active or Deleted, enabling soft-delete — records are never immediately removed but flagged for later compaction. All write operations implement ACID compliance: data is written atomically to a temporary file first, then renamed over the live database, ensuring a system crash at any point leaves the data intact and recoverable. On startup MBEESQL automatically checks for and recovers any interrupted write. Browsing a large collection can be sped up by using --clock-200 in UBEE512.

Local PC access is enabled by rcpmfs, which maps a Windows folder as a CP/M drive. DBMWB.DAT is stored in that folder and updated whenever MBEESQL writes it. The beesql.html web viewer, opened in any local browser, reads the file directly and auto-refreshes every five seconds — search, sort and scroll across all 1,199 records is instant. An Excel workbook accesses the same data with filtering and charting.

Internet access via ngrok requires a small Python watcher script on the PC that serves DBMWB.DAT over a local HTTP server. ngrok creates a secure public tunnel with a stable URL. The web viewer, with one line changed to fetch from that URL, becomes globally accessible — anyone with the link can browse the MBUG catalogue in real time, seeing updates within seconds of entry on the MicroBee.

The result is a three-tier system — emulated MicroBee for SQL data entry a BASIC program, a PC as the bridge, and any browser anywhere as the front end — all anchored by a 21KB plain text file written in 1980's Microworld BASIC.

Anyone interested? I only need to get my head around ngrok to complete the proof of concept. cheers G

Pomodoro Program

Mon, 04 May 2026 21:22:51 +1000

Here is a quick and dirty program for the Pomodoro Method.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

00100 REM pomodoro for the m'bee 2026
00110 CLSRINTRINTRINT,,"POMODORO for Microbee 2026"
00120 PRINT
00130 INPUT "press ENTER to begin 25 minute work session:"W1$
00140 S=0:F=S
00150 X=IN(12):IF(X AND 32)=32 THEN 150
00160 X=IN(12):IF(X AND 32)=0 THEN 160
00170 F=F+1:IF F<50THEN150
00180 CURS 960:F=0:S=S+1RINT 2210-FLT(S);:IF S<2210 THEN 150
00190 PLAY 8,4: PLAY 13,4LAY 16,8
00200 PRINT "Twenty Five Minutes Up, Have a Break"
00210 INPUT "press ENTER when break finished"G1$
00220 RUN
00230 SAVE "POMO"

Fun with HD18..rom compatible drives

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 12:39:51 +1000

I have been working on patching the ship, init, maintain utilities to allow the use of a 20Mb hard disk drive (612/4/17) - effectively the same geometry as the Teac SD-520.

I didn’t have access to the assembly source for any of the software so started by disassembling the executables and working with GPT to identify the routines that called

The ship.com utility was the easiest as it’s effectively a tiny assembly routine that performs a seek beyond the 612 cylinder and waits for power to be turned off or a keypress.

The init.com utility was a lot more complex - as there were values that weren’t as obvious as cylinder / head / sectors - the total # of cylinders was calculated and ‘guard-rails’ were used as validation - I could get the ship.com hard disk routine to format the drive to the size I wanted quite quickly.

What was more complex (and is still ongoing) is the partition definition - the logic within the init.com routine allowed a maximum of 10Mb to be divided up in 0.5Mb increments - this needed to be extended to 20Mb while maintaining a maximum partition size of 8Mb.

A minimum of three partitions is required on a 20Mb disk as it needs to fulfil the criteria of no partition can exceed maximum CP/M 2.2 size of 8Mb, and the remaining space is automatically added to the last partition if the full drive capacity has not been reached.

I have managed to get the interface to work correctly -but- what appears to be the final *Hopefully* issue is the calculations of the DPB and placement of the directory blocks with the right offsets from track 0 for the second and subsequent partitions - use of partition #3 causes the system to crash.

Fun with a 32mb CF image

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:58:34 +1000

using Grok and Claude I have managed to get a working 21mb image:

MicroBee 512k CP/M Compact Flash Image — Project Summary

Background
The MicroBee 512k is emulated here under the ubee512 emulator. The system boots from a Compact Flash card image, with the ROM BIOS (version 0.58/cf8) loading a secondary bootloader (BOOT.SYS) which in turn initialises the CP/M environment across multiple disk partitions. The starting point was a working 30MB image with four partitions — A: through D: — each limited to approximately 5MB, leaving roughly 11MB of the image completely unused.

Objective
To safely expand the D: partition to use as much of the unused space as possible, while keeping A:, B: and C: fully intact and bootable.

Investigation

The project required significant detective work before any modifications could be made safely. Analysis of the MBR partition table revealed the image geometry — 123 cylinders, 16 heads, 32 sectors per track — correctly decoded from the filename

Code:
cfboot_0_58_cf8_123_16_32

Early attempts at enlarging D: failed because the CHS fields in the MBR were being calculated against the wrong geometry (16 SPT instead of 32 SPT), producing partition table entries that confused the BIOS.

A key breakthrough came from the PART.COM utility output running inside CP/M, which revealed the BIOS was reporting 32 sectors per track — not 16 as initially assumed. Once the correct geometry was confirmed by reverse-engineering the original CHS values mathematically, partition table entries could be constructed accurately.

Further investigation uncovered a second constraint: an apparent signed 16-bit boundary in the BIOS or BOOT.SYS where any partition whose LBA start address exceeded 0x8000 (32,768) would become inaccessible. This explained why earlier 8MB attempts with incorrectly positioned partitions failed — D:'s start address was being interpreted as a negative number.

Testing Methodology

With the geometry corrected and D:'s LBA start address confirmed safe at 0x7600, a systematic binary search was conducted on D:'s size, testing incrementally in cylinder units (each cylinder = 512 sectors = 256KB):

20 cylinders (5MB) ✓ original
21 cylinders (5.25MB) ✓
24 cylinders (6MB) ✓
25 cylinders (6.25MB) ✓
26 cylinders (6.5MB) ✗
28 cylinders (7MB) ✗
32 cylinders (8MB) ✗

The ceiling of 25 cylinders is consistent with the compiled-in DSM value in the CP/M BIOS Disk Parameter Block — the maximum block number the BIOS was built to address for that partition. Exceeding it causes silent failure without any error message.

Result
The final production image retains the original filename for compatibility, with the following partition layout:
Drive A:4.73MB (unchanged, bootable)
B: 5.00MB (unchanged)
C: 5.00MB (unchanged)
D: 6.25MB (expanded)
Total
~21MB usable

All four drives are accessible, existing data on A: was preserved throughout, and files copied to D: during testing survived correctly. The expansion represents the maximum achievable without recompiling the CP/M BIOS with a larger DSM value — a significantly more complex undertaking.

UBee512 Launcher UI

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 19:07:07 +1000

Hi people, I am a nostalgic Microbee user who is infrequently using ubee512 and something I have found is that I am constantly having to relearn how to use it each time I get hit by a wave of nostalgia.

This is the reason I decided to build myself a UI launcher using tkinter that can scan my ubee folder for disk images and roms, and then builds the launch code. I can just hit the start button and get into whatever old game I decided to play or try writing some old basic code for a laugh.

Is anyone else interested in trying the launcher? If there is interest from other users I would be happy to share.

I have support for printing to a text file on the host computer from the microbee and I am working on integrating CP/M tools as well. But right now the launcher is working well for me on my linux host.

Novato - a macOS emulator compatible with the Microbee 32IC

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 18:20:23 +1100

All,

[ you might see the same post across different forums. I'm not sure if everyone has access to Facebook, MSPP or Microbee Technology Forums. Apologies if it seems like spamming ]

My previous attempt at a Microbee emulator (Abeja) turned out to be something of an architectural dead end.

So I decided to let the concept gestate for a while before coming back to try again last last year.

Introducing Novato ( Spanish for beginner, novice or newbie )

Completely rewritten from scratch using modern Swift concurrency, Novato is now at the point where it can boot BASIC 5.22e.

Of course, you won't get any further than that at this stage as I still need to :

Finish off decoding the z80 instruction set ( mostly flag affecting opcodes )
Restructure the emulator hot loop to count t-states and update 6545, audio and interrupt routines
Tie keypresses from SwiftUI into the 6545 class
Build audio output code
Build cassette load/save functionality.

You can find Novato at https://github.com/fatherdougalmaguire/Novato

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Tony

Did I miss a registration step somewhere?

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 01:42:51 +1100

At the risk of being an annoying noob...

I think i've done all the things I needed to get access to the various parts of the repository, yet I can't see some of the content referred to in threads here..

For example - the disk masters for the Microsoft Multiplan is referred to in the Applications folder of the Tech repository, but I dont see or seem not to have access?

I have been playing with the uBee512 emulator while my sister digs through the folks storage shed and wanted to have a look at the 128k SBC software I used to use many moons ago (40 years...)

Someone please let me know if I have missed a step