Microbee Computers are Back

The world has moved on from the early 80's. Can't imagine why anyone would bother. Nostalgic dust collectors?

Is there anything else around that the average joe blow could get their hands on and program? Has some interesting I/O option for projects.

Did you read the spec's Dual Microprocessors * Z80 microprocessor @ 3.375Mhz * Coldfire V2 (MCF52259) @ 80Mhz^ 2 Megabytes Ram (1Mbyte shared space, 1Mbyte exclusive to the Coldfire processor)

Hmmm - my original bee is still in the cupboard.

If they opensourced the hardware then it might be a good learning tool.

Regs Joey

That would be a question to ask. Also about software compatibility. No sense shelling out for a project kit and not being able to do anything on it,

Average Joe Blow's do not program. They have difficulty getting their minds around the TV remote control.

Since the OS is uCLinux, you could use any old PC and load up a flavour of Linux and start programming straight away.

As for hardware there are plenty of ARM, PIC, Atmel, Coldfire etc embedded dev boards around and dev tools to match.

The problem with this system is that if they are only making 100 of them, there isn't going to be much of a community to support and innovate with them, especially with the newer side of it (coldfire processor and its linux system)

There is the Maximite that is the same sort of thing, but does not have the coldfire processor (or similar) so is not Linux compatible or colour display.

Not Z80 though, but not much is these days.

The good thing with this is that it is fully open source, a shitload of them have been sold, built, and there is a solid community developing with them. Also VERY cheap, especially if you use an old keyboard/monitor with it.

Finally, if you come up with a project that you like and want to use full time, you only have to buy another kit for about $70 and use it for that dedicated purpose. If it only needs to be simple, you can just buy the chip and make up the hardware for a lot less.

soz, wasn't talking about the couch spuddies, but the bit more active. In the days of basic, plenty did.

You must be jesting. In C, absolute pox of a programming langage. Linux is not an easy language to learn yourself. It has two major camps of programmers, the elite(if you can not read my code, then you are not good enough) and the ones who want to sell you their pathetic program.

And the average bloke could use these?

on and program? Has some interesting I/O

Sure, MaxiMite & DuinoMite:

DuinoMite is a Maximite Compatible Basic computer, originally designed by Geoff Graham, with additional features and Arduino like layout. DuinoMite allows you to program in the BASIC language and have VGA and Keyboard interface, so you can develop and write your code in Basic without need of any computer. You can store your code on the SD-CARD and to execute it on power up through autoexec.bas main code.

Prices start at $33

Cheers Don...

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Rubbish. C is an excellent language to program in. If the best you can do is Basic then you probably need to learn how to program properly.

Linus is an OS, not a language. It's a simple to use and easy to program under. The toolsets are there as well as debuggers. It is also very robust.

Of course, why not? Most kiddies canuse a dev kit these days.

Err, Linus is a programmer, Linux is an OS

That is where I see the major limitation. 100 is a miniscule number but that may be just a number dragged out of thin air in order to test the water. If the unit is successful, they may continue with other production runs though there is no mention of that on the website.

I'd be more inclined to the Maximite to tinker with.

Typical comment I've come to expect. How did you learn it?

If C is so great, how come there was that security bug in randomisation for so many months. It was a basic mistake and in any other language it could have been picked up by a beginner reading te source code.

What a load of crap, that would be a problem with a particular implementation not the language itself.

C is not an ideal beginners language as it leaves so much to the programmer, there are no safety fences there, nothing stops you from reading a string as a long int for instance, and you can do a lot of "Interesting" things with pointers. However it, and its later derivative C++ are the basis of most large projects, virtually every operating system is written in one or the other.

Beginners are better off with strongly typed languages like pascal, C# or (yuk) java.

In 1983, at Sydney Uni.

A random function has nothing to do with the language, it would have been in someone's library. Unlikely that this library was widely used either, or it would have been found during testing.

It was actually a change made that wasn't picked up. My 2c is that in other languages the particular mistake would have been obvious, but in C, because you "can do interestig things" and its general obscurity, it wasn't.

Hence my argument that it isn't sutable for teach yourself.

The problem is that the language is so cryptic, you have to be well versed to spot a simple mstake. similarly, it makes it very difficult for people to teach themselves by reading the code.

My 2c is that if the language lends itself to faulty implementations, then it isn't such a great language.

Bring back COBOL.

The language is not cryptic, it is succinct. It removes a lot of the extra typing required in languages such as Pascal, and is certainly easier to work through the coding flow than something as horrible as Basic.

I learnt a great deal by reading the Unix SysV source code and using the K&R C book.

Poor programmers lead to faulty implementations, not the language.

So non-cryptic that no one spotted a simple sign problem in 18 months.

Shrug, your last comment is what matters "coding flow", not the language.

You learnt programmng or C? In any case, you and I are not the target audience I was asking about. I've worked with the Joe blow who walks in off the street to the local computer club and wants to learn programming. with old PCs, it was an easy matter of popping a prompt and editing a simple basic program that gave them a clue and they were off. No such ability these days.

That applies to any language.

Lol, reminded me of a Phd candidate(middile aged), with a successful commercial program under their belt, who said he had spent all weekend changing A CONSTANT. BLINK!

I learnt about global declarations the first week of uni by reading comments in discarded programmes in the terminal room (early Dec stuff) or the good old finger crunching ICL(?) teletype.