Microbee 3rd Party Systems

In addition to the standard systems and add-ons offered by Applied Technology / Microbee Systems, a number of other 3rd party organisations or individuals also released complimentary products that worked with or were based on the Microbee.

Dreamdisk

The Dreamdisk system is an add-on circuit board and software package that provides floppy disk (and later hard disk) functionality for ROM-based Microbees. The first known Dreamdisk advertisement appeared in Your Computer magazine in March 1984. At that time, the supplier was listed as "Dreamcards" and the RM001 controller board is also etched with this name. By January 1985 the supplier name had changed to "Dreamdisk Pty Ltd" and then, by January 1987, the supplier name had changed again to "KARM Systems". All 3 suppliers appear to have been based in Melbourne.

There are at least two major versions of the Dreamdisk system. The early version provides floppy disk functionality only and uses the RM001/RM001A controller board. All known corresponding ROMs and documentation for this version are identified as v2.x. Later, by January 1987, Dreamdisk v3.x was released together with an upgraded controller board that also provided hard disk functionality. A variation of the Dreamdisk v3.x system was also available for the Exidy Sorcerer.

The Dreamdisk system supported many different CP/M disk formats, including all standard Applied Technology Microbee formats (DS40, DS80, SS80) and it's own Dreamdisk format (DS82).

Dreamdisk v2.x
The Dreamdisk v2.x controller board was supplied fully built and tested and attaches to the Microbee via the 50 way Expansion port. It provides both 5.25"/3.5" (34 way) and 8" (50 way) Shugart floppy drive interfaces. The board is intended to be housed in a separate case from the Microbee, together with the floppy drive(s) and power supply. The system is compatible with both 2MHz and 3.375MHz Microbees and automatically adjusts to both the detected clock speed and available screen resolutions (ie 64*16 and 80*24 characters). It was supplied with two EPROMs for installation into the Microbee's NET ROM socket. Each ROM provides a different functionality option and the user then installs whichever is preferred.

• BeeDOS ROM. This ROM works with 16K or 32K ROM based Microbees and provides the ability to load and save disk files without having to run CP/M. The system supports a variety of file types, including Microworld Basic, WordBee, EDASM, Machine Language and Mytek Word Processor. It uses the same on disk format as CP/M so any content written by this ROM can be readily exchanged with a full CP/M based system. Disk operations are performed by either executing the BeeDOS ROM and then entering the associated command line options, or the same functions can be accessed from within Basic by simply pre-pending the "NET" statement (eg NET LOAD "filename"). This allows disk operations to be embedded within Basic programs.

• ZCPR 1.6 ROM. This ROM works with 32K or 64K (56K RAM) Microbees and provides a machine language monitor with the ability to boot an enhanced version of CP/M (ZCPR 1.6) from floppy disk, thereby providing a fully functional CP/M machine. CP/M itself (ie CCP, BDOS, BIOS) is loaded into the top 8K of RAM in each case which, for 32K machines, means that Basic programs are then limited to a maximum size of 22K. On a 64K (56K RAM) system, this ROM becomes the system Boot ROM. It has ROM entry points that have been designed to be compatible with the Applied Technology Boot ROM as found in factory built 64K machines.

Dreamdisk v3.x
The Dreamdisk v3.x system came with an upgraded controller board that adds support for hard disks and real time clock (RTC). This version is primarily intended to run CP/M on 64K (56K RAM) systems running at 3.375Mhz, but users could still request the alternative BeeDOS ROM for use on other systems if required, however this ROM was no longer actively supported by the supplier (KARM Systems). The v3.x manual includes partial instructions for upgrading an early Microbee from 2MHz to 3.375MHz as well as instructions for increasing RAM to 56K on both type 1632 REV D and MB1732-x Core boards. The controller board was available as a kit or fully assembled and tested.

Two CP/M system images are supplied with the Dreamdisk v3.x package - long and short. The long version supports all Dreamdisk features but will not run Microworld Disk Basic or Telcom as the BIOS is too large and CP/M extends too far down the memory map. The short version is the same size as the Applied Technology 64K (56K RAM) system so can run those utilities but support for some Dreamdisk features has been removed, including all RTC handling code and support for some disk formats.






 

Beeboard

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BETI terminal

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