MicroBee (or Micro Bee) was a series of networkable home computers by

Applied Technology Applied science is the use of the scientific method and knowledge obtained via conclusions from the method to attain practical goals. It includes a broad range of disciplines such as engineering and medicine. Applied science is often contrasted ...

, which became publicly listed company MicroBee Systems Limited soon after its release. The original Microbee computer was designed in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

by a team including Owen HillSecret of project Granny Smith
By Gordon Laing, July 12, 2005 - theage.com.au and Matthew Starr. The MicroBee's most distinctive features are its user configurable video display (capable of mimicking the displays of other computers and devices including the TRS-80, Sorcerer and SOL20 with later colour and graphic models 40 and 80 column terminals, Super-80, ZX Spectrum, early arcade machines, Amstrad CPC 464) and its battery backed non-volatile RAM and small size allowing it to be powered off, transported, and powered back on and resume activities on the currently loaded program or document. It was originally packaged as a two board unit with the lower "baseboard" containing all components except the system memory which was mounted on the upper "core board".

Components

The original main board consisted of: *

Z80 The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples were ...

CPU * Z80 PIO * 6545 CRT controller * 2 KB Screen

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

* 2 KB Character

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * R ...

(128 characters) * 2 KB Programmable Character Graphics (PCG) RAM (128 characters) * Keyboard * Speaker * Tape Input/Output * Video Out * Serial Port * User Parallel Port * Power Connector The original coreboards consisted of: * Either 32KB capacity or 56KB capacity 6116 battery backed Non-volatile RAM * Either 16KB BASIC ROM or 4KB BOOT ROM * 50 way System Expansion port * Provision for 8KB Expansion ROM on 32KB Max capacity version A floppy disk drive unit and S-100 Bus expansion unit were available. They connected to a microbee by a 50 way ribbon cable to the System Expansion port. The microbee had two networking options - BeeNet and StarNet. The BeeNet was a low cost low speed LAN (Local Area Network) for 16-32K ROM Models and the StarNet was for the 64K and larger DRAM models. The BeeNet uses a bus topology that uses synchronous serial transfers. The StarNet uses a single Star topology using dedicated 8 bit parallel data bus connections between the central hub and its remote spokes.

Ancestry

The microbee was the integration, simplification and modernisation of the following S-100 cards sold by Applied Technology, Microworld BASIC and DGOS Monitor for their System Z.A.T. chassis. * DG680 CPU - Z80 Single board Computer designed by David Griffiths * MW640/DG640 VDU - Visual Display Unit designed by David Griffiths. (The DG640 VDU was itself was based upon the Processor Technology VDM-1.) * TCT-PCG - Programmable Character Generator for the DG640 VDU designed by Craig Barratt * MW864 - MEGAMEMORY 64K Static RAM Memory board designed by Owen Hill * MW2516 - 16K ROM 16K ROM Card designed by Owen Hill * MW6545 - User Programmable VDU designed by John Wilmshurst The removal of the S-100 bus support and configuration hardware and some other features made the microbee much simpler and cheaper than its ancestors. Examples: # The VDU Attribute RAM of the DG640 VDU was not employed in the original microbee (but was reinstated in a modified and extended form for the Premium Series Microbee) # Z80 CTC (Counter Timer Counter) # Tape motor on/off control # 8 bit input sense port # Configuration DIP switches The utilisation of higher density memory devices made also the microbee smaller. HM6116 (2K x 8 bit) were instead of the earlier 2101 (1K x 1bit) and 2114 (1K x 4bit) static RAMS and 2732 (4K x 8 bit) ROMs instead of 2516 (2K x 8) ROMs as program ROM. Subsequent models used the even denser HM6264 (8K x 8 bit) static RAMs, 4164 (64K x 1 bit) dynamic RAM and 27128 (16K x 8 bit) 2764 (8K x 8) program ROMs.

Kit beginnings

The computer was released as a kit, with assembly instructions included in Your Computer magazine, in February 1982. After a successful bid for the

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Department of Education computer tender, the computer was repackaged in a two-tone beige and black case, and sold pre-built. The

held the MicroWorld

BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...

interpreter written by Matthew Starr and DGOS (''David Griffiths Operating System'') compatible System Monitor. In addition to the there is additional ROM socket for optional programs such as WORDBEE (

Word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Word processor (electronic device), Early word processors were stand-alone devices ded ...

) or EDASM (a Z80 Editor/Assembler that was written by Ron Harris). Original MicroBees ran at a

clock speed In computing, the clock rate or clock speed typically refers to the frequency at which the clock generator of a processor can generate pulses, which are used to synchronize the operations of its components, and is used as an indicator of the pr ...

of , with a video dot clock of , which was sufficient to display () on a modified

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

composite monitor A composite monitor or composite video monitor is any analog video display that receives input in the form of an analog composite video signal to a defined specification. A composite video signal encodes all information on a single conductor; a ...

. The original machines were supplied with of

static RAM Static random-access memory (static RAM or SRAM) is a type of random-access memory (RAM) that uses latching circuitry (flip-flop) to store each bit. SRAM is volatile memory; data is lost when power is removed. The term ''static'' differen ...

, and stored programs on

cassette Cassette may refer to: Technology * Cassette tape (or ''musicassette'', ''audio cassette'', ''cassette tape'', or ''tape''), a worldwide standard for analog audio recording and playback ** Cassette single (or "Cassingle"), a music single in the ...

, using 300 or 1200

Baud In telecommunication and electronics, baud (; symbol: Bd) is a common unit of measurement of symbol rate, which is one of the components that determine the speed of communication over a data channel. It is the unit for symbol rate or modulatio ...

encoding.

The IC model

The IC model was released in 1983, increasing the clock speed to and allowing (through use of a video clock) display of (), again on a modified television or composite monitor. It also included a "Telcom" terminal emulator

Disk machines

A floppy disk based machine was also released in 1983. Early disk machines used of

, with a

BIOS In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization during the ...

. They ran

CP/M CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initial ...

2.2. The

disk controller {{unreferenced, date=May 2010 The disk controller is the controller circuit which enables the CPU to communicate with a hard disk, floppy disk or other kind of disk drive. It also provides an interface between the disk drive and the bus connect ...

, based on the

Western Digital Western Digital Corporation (WDC, commonly known as Western Digital or WD) is an American computer drive manufacturer and data storage company, headquartered in San Jose, California. It designs, manufactures and sells data technology produc ...

WD1793

Floppy Disk Controller A floppy-disk controller (FDC) has evolved from a discrete set of components on one or more circuit boards to a special-purpose integrated circuit (IC or "chip") or a component thereof. An FDC directs and controls reading from and writing to ...

chip was contained in an add-on card that connected to the core board. The machines uses 5.25"

floppy disks A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

Dynamic RAM Dynamic random-access memory (dynamic RAM or DRAM) is a type of random-access semiconductor memory that stores each bit of data in a memory cell, usually consisting of a tiny capacitor and a transistor, both typically based on metal-oxide ...

disk machines with followed soon after, with a WD2793

incorporated on the core board. Later disk machines used .

Colour

A colour machine was also released in 1983, called the "32K Personal Communicator". This added a second byte of RAM for each character position, allowing each character to have 2 colours. The foreground colour has 32 possible values (5 bits) and are determined by the contents of the 82S123 PROM located on the colour board. Not all foreground colours combinations are unique with only 27 being possible. The background colours were made up from the remaining 3 bits of the colour RAM byte (8 colours) and another 3 bits on a colour control port that controlled the RGB background intensity level. This allowed the intensity of each of the RGB colours to be set to full or half intensity but only 7 different values could be in effect at any one time and changing the intensity value would affect the entire display. The extra colour circuitry required an additional board mounted under the main board, with numerous messy connections to the main board. The Premium, 256TC and Teleterm models released in 1986 incorporated colour on the main board and used a different colour design compared to the earlier model and was not compatible for the resultant colours that were produced but application and system software will work on either hardware designs. The later colour design was largely compatible with the

Color Graphics Adapter The Color Graphics Adapter (CGA), originally also called the ''Color/Graphics Adapter'' or ''IBM Color/Graphics Monitor Adapter'', introduced in 1981, was IBM's first color graphics card for the IBM PC and established a de facto computer display ...

used on the

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team ...

where 4 bits were used for the foreground and another 4 bits for the background colours.

The B-ETI Serial Terminal

The B-ETI was a Microbee-based serial terminal. It could emulate either an

ADM-3A The ADM-3A was an influential early video display terminal, introduced in 1976. It was manufactured by Lear Siegler and had a 12-inch screen displaying 12 or 24 lines of 80 characters. It set a new industry low single unit price of $995. Its "du ...

Televideo TeleVideo Corporation was a U.S. company that achieved its peak of success in the early 1980s producing computer terminals. TeleVideo was founded in 1975 by K. Philip Hwang, a Utah State University, Hanyang University graduate born in South Kore ...

912 terminal. The display format was monochrome and it supported communication at either 300 or 1200

baud In telecommunication and electronics, baud (; symbol: Bd) is a common unit of measurement of symbol rate, which is one of the components that determine the speed of communication over a data channel. It is the unit for symbol rate or modulatio ...

. An advertisement for a "special introductory offer" with an asking price of appeared in the December 1983 issue of

Electronics Today International ''Electronics Today International'' or ETI was a magazine for electronics hobbyists and professionals. Originally started in Australia in April 1971, ''ETI'' was published in the UK in 1972. From there, it expanded to various European countrie ...

magazine. Introduction, BETI Users Guide: The BETI was designed as a low cost serial terminal operating at speeds of up to 4800 baud (1200 baud without handshaking). The BETI also provides optional automatic code conversion to and from the baudot 5 level code used for RTTY and TELEX applications. Specifications: * Codes supported: US ASCII and CCITT BAUDOT. * Baud rates: 45.5, 50, 75, 110, 300, 600, 1200, 2400, 4800. * Default settings: 4800 baud US ASCII full duplex. * Emulation: ADM-3A and TVI 912C (except for attributes). * RS232 port: Configured as DTE with 0-12V swing. * Parallel port: Connects to Centronics printer with adapter. * Internal buffer: 1800 bytes. * Power supply read: 9 - 12 V at 800 mA. * Video output: Composite video: negative sync, 1V p-p into 75 ohms, 50 Hz frame, 15625 Hz line frequency. * Screen format: 80 characters by 24 for lines, 64 by 16 lines for setup mode. * Attribute: Reverse video, enabled by escape sequence. * Keyboard: Full size, 60 key QWERTY layout, positive travel. Two shot moulded key tops. * Microprocessor: Z80A at 3.375 MHz. * Control program: 4k 2532 EPROM. * Sound generation: Built in loudspeaker for BELL. * Case: 342mm W × 239mm D × 42mm H. Injection moulded ABS.

The Premium Series MicroBee

In 1985, a new mainboard was introduced. The resulting machine was called the "Premium Series" model. The new mainboard had of screen

, of "attribute" RAM (raising the possible number of PCG characters to ), of colour RAM, and up to ( installed) of PCG RAM. PCG RAM was sufficient to allow full mapped displays with a limited colour palette. These machines were typically sold with dual-floppy drives (or a 'Winchester' disc) held in a monitor stand that connected to the main unit.

Physical coding for tape storage

Standard MicroBee Tapes are encoded at using its own variation of Processor Technology's SOLOS/CUTER Tape protocol that consists of a 300 baud metadata header followed by data payload blocks encoded at the desired transfer rate using CUTS (Computer Users Tape System). Th
wav2dat
software converts audio data into Microbee files.

Books

A few books were written about the Microbee, including: * ''Wildcards'' - By Robert Alan Burt, Peter Terence Ford, and Ash Nallawalla * ''Wildcards 2'' - By Robert Alan Burt, Peter Terence Ford, and Ash Nallawalla * ''Wildcards 3'' - By Robert Alan Burt, Peter Terence Ford, and Ash Nallawalla * ''Wildcards 4'' - By Robert Alan Burt, Peter Terence Ford, and Ash Nallawalla * ''Getting started on your MicroBee'' - By Petr Lukes and Tim Hartnell * ''Shake hands with the Microbee'' - By Pam Kelly-Hartley, Joy McKneil and Tony Melius * ''The Penguin book of Microbee games'' - By David Johns and edited by Tim Hartnell * ''The Winners'' - compiled by the Sydney Microbee User's Group

Games

Games for the MicroBee include both original titles and clones of pre-existing games, including: * ''Asteroids'' * ''Emu Joust'' - a ''

Joust Jousting is a martial game or hastilude between two horse riders wielding lances with blunted tips, often as part of a tournament. The primary aim was to replicate a clash of heavy cavalry, with each participant trying to strike the opponent w ...

'' clone * ''Halloween Harry'' * ''Hoards of the Deep Realm'' * ''Microspace Invaders'' * ''Robotman'' - a ''

Pac-Man originally called ''Puck Man'' in Japan, is a 1980 maze action video game developed and released by Namco for arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. Th ...

'' clone by Paul Wilmhurst * '' Wumpus'' * ''

Cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

'' * ''Toady'' - a word guessing game * ''Lemonade Stall'' - a game for budding business entrepreneurs. * ''Underworld of Kin'' - By Andy William Farrell * ''Sword Quest'' - a ''

dungeons and dragons ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (commonly abbreviated as ''D&D'' or ''DnD'') is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (TSR). ...

'' style game by P Jepson and C Temple * ''Scrambler'' * ''Gorilla Maths'' - a mental maths challenge with inklings of Donkey Kong As well, numerous

adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or Puzzle video game, puzzle-solving. The Video game genres, genre's focus on story allows it to draw ...

s were written, mainly in

, plus educational software.

Final versions

The final version of the MicroBee, released in 1987, was the 256TC. This increased the memory to of

dynamic RAM Dynamic random-access memory (dynamic RAM or DRAM) is a type of random-access semiconductor memory that stores each bit of data in a memory cell, usually consisting of a tiny capacitor and a transistor, both typically based on metal-oxide ...

and had a new keyboard with numeric keypad. The computer had a built in disk drive supporting both (DSDD) and (SSDD) formats. Bundled software included "Videotex" (a

videotex Videotex (or interactive videotex) was one of the earliest implementations of an end-user information system. From the late 1970s to early 2010s, it was used to deliver information (usually pages of text) to a user in computer-like format, typi ...

terminal program), "Simply Write" (a word processor) and "Telcom" (a serial terminal emulator program). MicroBee Systems also designed a

PC clone IBM PC compatible computers are similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT, all from computer giant IBM, that are able to use the same software and expansion cards. Such computers were referred to as PC clones, IBM clones or IBM PC clones. ...

, called the "Matilda", or 640TC, which ran an NEC V40 (see

NEC V20 The NEC V20 is a microprocessor that was designed and produced by NEC. It is both pin compatible and object code compatible with the Intel 8088, with an instruction set architecture (ISA) similar to that of the Intel 80188 with some extension ...

chip), and emulated the MicroBee

systems in software. An advanced next generation model code named "Gamma", based on the

Motorola 68010 The Motorola MC68010 processor is a 16/32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1982 as the successor to the Motorola 68000. It fixes several small flaws in the 68000, and adds a few features. The 68010 is pin-compatible with the 68000, ...

and two

Zilog Z80 The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples wer ...

processors, was designed but never made it to the market. In 1992, after having undergone a number of ownership changes, the company ceased trading.

Legacy

After almost 20 years, the Microbee brand was re-launched in 2012 by Microbee Technology Pty Ltd, run by a Microbee employee from the 1980s, Ewan Wordsworth. The company produced a limited edition (100 unit only) kit, the Premium Plus. The new version was still Z80-based and followed the original two-board design. It had dual-processor architecture, with some enhancements such as floppy emulation of the SD memory card.

In popular culture

In the '80s parody movie

Kung Fury ''Kung Fury'' is a 2015 English-language Swedish martial arts comedy featurette film written and directed by David Sandberg. It pays homage to 1980s martial arts and police action films. The film stars Sandberg in the title role, Jorma Taccone, ...

, Hackerman is hacking the timeline with MicroBee computers (along with a

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as t ...

and a

Power Glove The Power Glove is a controller accessory for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The Power Glove gained public attention due to its early virtual reality mechanics and significant marketing. However, its two games did not sell well, as it was ...

) and Kung Fury himself also rides in the cyberspace on a MicroBee.

References

External links

The Microbee Software Preservation Project (MSPP) - Discussion Forum, File Repository & Photo Gallery

Discussion Forum for all things Microbee & extensive File Repository

MicroBee Documents, Projects, Software, Advertisements, Emulators And Resources

The PC Museum, Applied Technology page

Matthew Geier's notes and pictures, including a working "Gamma"

Microbee Documentation Project

The Powerhouse Museum (Sydney Australia) - K1431 Microcomputer, "Microbee" 16KROM, early Kit computer.

Alistair Shilton's "Archaic Electronics Labyrinth" including a page (Picomozzy - the Microbee 32k Emulator) with scans of Microbee technical reference manuals
https://web.archive.org/web/20060824042259/http://www2.ee.unimelb.edu.au/pgrad/apsh/microbee/ Archived version]
The Microbee Archive
https://web.archive.org/web/20070417055552/http://members.ozemail.com.au/~mikeleys/microbee.html Archived version]
The Microbee story

The Microbee Beeboard - Virtual Museum, Discussion Forum & File Repository

Australian Computer Museum Society Inc microbee page

OLD-COMPUTERS.COM's page dedicated to the Microbee systems
;Emulators
uBee512 MicroBee emulator

{{DEFAULTSORT:Microbee Z80-based home computers Home computers