Boards a here - FreeBee

 The boards finally came via a slow boat from China. Need to finish of the MSX then straight onto this.

Suzy's Microbee Freebee Build

 After reading Suzy's blog on redesigning the Microbee computer from the early 80's I needed to have my own. Her design uses mostly modern ICs but still in keeping with the spirit of the original design. As in no CLPDs or FPGAs or any other forms of magic. 

Part 2 - MSX Build Clock Circuit

Next stage is a little more interesting, the clock generation circuit is installed. The computer uses on crystal at 3.58Mhz to clock the CPU and then uses a flip-flop to divide the clock by 2 and that is used for the Programmable Sound Generator (PSG)

The clock circuit

And in real life 

Look we have a glowing LED!! Checked the frequency output with a CRO and good on both outputs. Next is the big stuff, CPU and the System Bus control ICs.

Part 1 - MSX Build Power and Reset

The guy who designed this board did up an excellent 68-page document for his board. It goes through theory of operation, design methodology and step by step instructions on how to build the thing. Most instructions for PCBs just say start with the low-profile stuff first and then go up from there. Which is fine but what Alvaro did was introduce a function at a time so will be will following his instructions which includes testing for each function. It starts with the Power and Reset This is the circuit for the power and reset simple. It doesn't use a regulator or have protection, so the power consists of a socket, couple of caps and LED with a resistor

See pretty simple

This is the reset circuit

And this is it in real life

WOW!!