Microbee Premium Plus+

Anything to do with New Zealand Classic or Vintage Computing not covered in the other forums

Microbee Premium Plus+

Postby ChickenMan on Thu Nov 01, 2012 11:37 pm

I just picked up my Microbee Premium Plus unit from Microbee Technology. Just thought I would mention about this new Microbee which is made from old and new parts. The base board and case are 1980's originals (Microbee 128k Premium) while the top Core board is a new design with a Coldfire processor, Ethernet connection and an SD card reader. So I can now boot from a Microbee image file stored on the SD card or I can boot to uClinux also on the SD card. I had the Floppy Drive controller option fitted so I can also boot from real floppies as well. This also allows me to do a Backup from disk to an image on the SD card :) Images are compatible with the ubee512 emulator as well.

I took the easy way out and just had a new Core board fitted to my old Premium 128K, there were a few problems initially but now all resolved. I've bought a few SD cards and have put all my Games on one so now having a great time :)

Now to have a play with uClinux and see if I can connect it to my home Lan and to an FTP site, which I understand it can do. Does anyone here have any experience with uClinux ?
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Re: Microbee Premium Plus+

Postby ChickenMan on Wed Feb 06, 2013 10:56 am

Just thought I'm mention, there are still a couple of these units available, so I have been told. A couple have already made it to NZ as well.

Cheers,
Alan
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Re: Microbee Premium Plus+

Postby tezza on Wed Feb 06, 2013 11:09 am

I'm always been intrigued with the Microbee. It's interesting in that it's one of the few micros I know that found a niche in education, but running CP/M which I'd always associated with the 8-bit S-100 hobby or business market.

I did check out the kits. They look great but at $399 the desire is outweighed by the price.
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Re: Microbee Premium Plus+

Postby ChickenMan on Wed Feb 06, 2013 11:27 am

Most Microbee sold into the Educational system were the 16k & 32k ROM based models, they plugged into the Beenet or later Starnet. The "server" was either a dual floppy drive 64k or 128k unit with or without a 10meg Hard Drive. The server would run CP/M but the other units just used it to draw the programs from. The CP/M it ran was also somewhat advanced (ZCPR2) with a graphical "shell" and icons, there was simply nothing like it at the time.

Yes, the the new PP+ can be a bit expensive (its all relative though), I took the easy way out and just got my old existing Premium 128k upgraded with the new Coreboard at substantially lower costs. The whole purpose of the PP+ was to get people engaged with the electronics side of computers, rather than just buy a Raspberry Pi and know nothing about how its made or run but just write software for it. There is simple nothing like this kit around anywhere.

Cheers,
Alan
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Re: Microbee Premium Plus+

Postby tezza on Wed Feb 06, 2013 11:34 am

Yes, I'm thinking I really should have a microbee in my classic computer collection....one day maybe.

It ranks below a Mac 128 though, which is the top priority at the moment. Unfortunately the people that want these units have deeper pockets than me :(
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Re: Microbee Premium Plus+

Postby ChickenMan on Wed Feb 06, 2013 11:45 am

Darn, there was a complete Microbee 128 system recently given away to a new home for zero (well postage only). I will keep you in mind if any more come up :)
Cheers,
Alan
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Re: Microbee Premium Plus+

Postby ChickenMan on Thu Jun 13, 2013 1:54 pm

tezza wrote:Yes, I'm thinking I really should have a microbee in my classic computer collection....one day maybe.

This guy has a couple to give away http://www.microbee-mspp.org.au/forum/v ... ?f=3&t=851
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Re: Microbee Premium Plus+

Postby tezza on Thu Jun 13, 2013 7:56 pm

Thanks for letting me know!
Tez (Terry Stewart) (Administrator)
Collection: https://www.classic-computers.org.nz/co ... /index.htm
Projects and Articles: https://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/index.htm
Twitter: @classiccomputNZ | YouTube: Terry Stewart
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