from the back shed

[FarmerSteve]

Hi All,

So - apart from 'I had a microbee once' - I haven't thought about this for a really long time - turns out when i bought my Amiga, dad stashed all our Microbee stuff away, and it's resurfaced in the current cleanout.

I was a bit surprised to see such a community around them - and I'm not sure what to do.

I guess my concerns are - 
I don't want to destroy/break/etc eg let the smoke out.
If I have anything that hasn't been preserved somewhere what is it & how should I go about that.

I'm not really a retro computer enthusiast - not sure I have space for that in my already busy and erratic hobby schedule... but it would be pretty cool to have it up and running? 

So I think I have

128k premium edition (we traded up from the one that used the tape drive - the receipt reminded me) 
Green monitor (with original branded stand!) 
Dual 3 1/2 disk system 
PRIMUG software & magazines 
CMUG magazines Aug 86-April89 (most of) 
Misc Manuals/software genuine & copies, receipts etc.

Cheers Steve.

   

[ChickenMan]

Welcome to the forum Steve

What a great collection of Microbee hardware, software and documentation very similar to what I ended up with in the 80's.  Some of your documentation we dont have in our Repository and would love to be able to scan all the PRIMUG material, the Geograbee manual and the test certificate, receipt, letter, etc.  I cant read the titles of the tapes in the photo, can you post a close up of those ?, if Primug programs would be very interested in those also. If you cant scan or record them yourself, is it possible that you post them to me for scanning & recording and then I will post back ?

We have a complete collection of CMUG Newsletters from issue 1 to 86.  We also have all the 3.5" disks in the photo imaged as well as all the manuals except the Geograbee one.


Thanks, Alan

[FarmerSteve]

Looks like the #2 tape from that primug series is in the tape player.

   
   

So I probably have the bits i would need to rip a tape to mp3 - but is there a best practice? and a way to verify it worked?

[ChickenMan]

Thanks for that, yes the 3 PRIMUG tapes would be good. A good tape player, try the Microbee one, and record on a PC via sound card in and save as a 16bit WAV file, not MP3. Just record the whole side from start to end. Clean the tape player head with IPA or Metho on a cotton bud and best to always fast forward & rewind the tape first before recording. Thanks.
Scanning the docs, scan at 300dpi minimum, greyscale or colour and save as a PNG or TIFF file is best practice.

[someone]

Welcome aboard!

Also (if not mentioned already), someone finds it prudent to clean the capstan and pinch roller because they too can accumulate the tape oxide.