10-11-2019, 11:56 PM
Hi, great to see a new forum for the microbee,
I got my first microbee in the eighties, it had 32k with tape dive and amber screen. I took so long to load games for a 12 year old. Eventually i got it upgraded to a Computer-In-A-Book with the 3.5 inch drive and 64k. Now we were moving. I used to get the "Online" mag and had the "Wildcards" books to help me. My school also got a microbee network, i was the only student allowed to touch the 128k network master. In the nineties i went to uni to study electronic engineering and had to get an IBM clone to use the word processor and play DOOM!. The microbee CIAB followed along and was used in uni projects, one was an Analog to Digital and Digital to Analog convertor which i used the Z80 PIO to control and wrote BASIC software for.
At the end of my studies i returned to my family farm to work and the microbee got packed away as ever more dazzling computers and gaming platforms took its place. Years past and a couple of years after my first child i got it out again. turned it on and (BLUE SMOKE) blew the power supply capacitors. After repairs i managed to program for a while until the second child came along and took my office. The microbee was packed away again for years until a new office was built. Finally a year ago i got it out again , turned it on and (BLUE SMOKE) different capacitors this time, after more repairs i got programming again and even started dabbling in assembly language. I had to relearn a lot of stuff, but had lost the "Wildcards" books, so i decided to search online. This was when i discovered that vintage computing was a thing, and that other microbees still existed. After all these years i am still probably a newbie, but that's OK, cause i still get a thrill from getting a game to work that i've programmed, even if it doesn't impress my 9 year old son!
Thanks
Matthew Carr
I got my first microbee in the eighties, it had 32k with tape dive and amber screen. I took so long to load games for a 12 year old. Eventually i got it upgraded to a Computer-In-A-Book with the 3.5 inch drive and 64k. Now we were moving. I used to get the "Online" mag and had the "Wildcards" books to help me. My school also got a microbee network, i was the only student allowed to touch the 128k network master. In the nineties i went to uni to study electronic engineering and had to get an IBM clone to use the word processor and play DOOM!. The microbee CIAB followed along and was used in uni projects, one was an Analog to Digital and Digital to Analog convertor which i used the Z80 PIO to control and wrote BASIC software for.
At the end of my studies i returned to my family farm to work and the microbee got packed away as ever more dazzling computers and gaming platforms took its place. Years past and a couple of years after my first child i got it out again. turned it on and (BLUE SMOKE) blew the power supply capacitors. After repairs i managed to program for a while until the second child came along and took my office. The microbee was packed away again for years until a new office was built. Finally a year ago i got it out again , turned it on and (BLUE SMOKE) different capacitors this time, after more repairs i got programming again and even started dabbling in assembly language. I had to relearn a lot of stuff, but had lost the "Wildcards" books, so i decided to search online. This was when i discovered that vintage computing was a thing, and that other microbees still existed. After all these years i am still probably a newbie, but that's OK, cause i still get a thrill from getting a game to work that i've programmed, even if it doesn't impress my 9 year old son!
Thanks
Matthew Carr
We would be interested in your games that you programmed, just to archive them here and to make available to other Microbee enthusiasts.