Mornin' folks,
Courtesy of a nice chap in Ireland clearing out his shed I'm now the proud
owner of:
Grundy Newbrain AD
Newbrain Disk Controller
Newbrain Expansion Interface
Newbrain Expansion Interface (x2) that looks like a disk controller but I
haven't opened 'em up yet :)
3 PSUs but 2 have been robbed of parts.
4x Microbee II by Microworld.
Unfortunately the Newbrain is toast (garbled message on the flourescent
display and nothing on either the composite or RF outputs) but maybe with
Tony's help I might be able ro resurrect it; I've also found someone who
admits to being one of the technical troubleshooters of the 3 wire-wrapped
prototypes, which may be handy. Said troubleshooter also worked on the
Enterprise 64, so THAT might be handy too :)
The Microbee was one of Australia's more popular micros, particularly with
schools, before the Apple ][ stomped all over its market. It also sold well
in Sweden, which is apparently where these units came from. Z80 based with
32K RAM and, surprisingly, a non-microsloth BASIC in ROM along with a word
processor called WordBee. This model also apparently has limited graphics
capabilities, but it wasn't until later that models featured colour, decent
graphics and CP/M compatibility.
In a pre-Amscrap fashion, the video, cassette AND power all came from one
5-pin DIN plug and a wiring harness that resembles a cat-o-nine-tails,
according to the pic on the back of the one boxed unit I've got, and I don't
have any, or PSUs. Shouldn't be too hard to find out what goes where though,
and I've got feelers out on aus.* newsgroups to see if anyone's got spares.
The hurriedly-assembled Newbrain page is already up and I'll do the Microbee
one today, if anyone wants pix.
cheers
--
adrian/witchy
www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the online computer museum
www.snakebiteandblack.co.uk - monthly gothic shenanigans
Received on Mon Mar 17 2003 - 12:16:16 GMT