Around 1978, Owen Hill teamed up with an electronic components company, Applied Technology of Hornsby (Sydney), to build a small computer he had designed. Applied Technology had been previously producing kits in Australia for S-100 boards. The Microbee was released as a kit in 1982 on the cover of Your Computer magazine, the manual was included free with the magazine. They were an immediate hit, being quite a powerful little system given the cost.

They were available in two forms, one with 16k and the other with 32K.

It was manufactured by Microworld PTY Ltd which was part of the Australian company "Applied Technology". Other companies in the group include Microbee Systems and Honeysoft. Applied Technology eventually changed their name to Microbee Systems, and sold ready-made versions. Their main market (especially for the 32k) were Australian schools, which had the Microbee recommended as the preferred system.

Over the years there has been several versions of the Microbee. The early ones (PLUS series) had monochrome display and clock rate at 2 Mhz. Later ones (Colour/IC series), from June 1983, included colour and 3.375 Mhz clock rate.

Manufacturer: Microworld PTY Ltd
Date: 1983

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH757. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.

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