Microbee Repair: Part 1 - New keyboard
20The Microbee was an Aussie-designed & built Z80 machine, popular in schools.
This is a bit of a tediously long video.
I started off just building a new, replacement keyboard kit for one of my Microbee's that had a few faulty key switches, but then realised I'd need to actually test the keyboard ... so might as well try to get the machine working as well. I dismantled the keyboard quite some time ago in anticipation of getting a new keyboard kit, so I can't quite remember the original issues.
Ran into some issues adapting the keyboard kit to my particular Microbee (Rev. I board) but Ewan at @MbeeTech (Microbee Technologies) helped me sort it out.
The main two issues were:
[1] No holes on the metal keyboard frame that lined up with the new frame ... I just drilled the missing 3mm holes into my metal frame,
[2] The spacer pins didn't line up with the original keyboard ... my keyboard revision is missing additional holes (ahhh) ... most important were the two RESET holes as this key isn't scanned normally, so the action needs to sent via the original keyboard circuit
This is a work in progress.
Other videos in this series:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5pwokf56wMJI_jgcV5jsnfFk9N5yBTJH