Wow awesome intro for this Nabu John. Just got mine a few days ago and so looking forward with hacking into this monster. I'm so much like you in that I want to make it a personal home/lab system and not follow the hcca archetecture that a few Nabu-ers are doing. Along with understanding z80 stuff (I'm an old retired 6502 guy) and knowledge of the 9918 from my ti99/4 days, this is gonna be fun! Thanks also for the schematic overview as well. This was a fine review of my hardware days back in the 70s and 80s. Mostly code stuff since then. Thanks :) -Tony

Excellent John! Sounds like a perfect opportunity to get out and exercise the Z80-ICE some. Looking forward to the next installment.

Not heard of these. I am Canadian and have lived in the Ottawa area for years, keeping my eyes open for old computer tech, and this one has passed me by. Very interesting bit of history. Thank you for sharing it.

Fascinating, after watching Adrians channel I thought this sounds like fun and surely somebody will make a series out of getting an OS on this thing, and I think your the first. I have never seen or used that much stuff around a crystal before I use a couple of load caps about 20pF and be done with it, however I have never used IC's from this era so that may be it. Sadly my VIC 20 disappeared years ago, but I look forward to where you go with this...cheers.

Also saw this on Adrian Black's channel. He wondered if it might be similar hardwarewise to MSX.

Thanks for making the video, lots of good info. The guy that was on the picture that said Magic (the person you called Disco Stu) is magician Doug Henning.

I have one of these on order and was thinking "this is the sort of thing that John's Basement needs to take a look at." I've read some of the ROM routines and they sound like they could be useful. I was thinking an ICE wuold be very helpful to investigate what code is already extant and possibly reusuable. I'm looking forward to everything/anything you have to say about this little beast!

I'm tearing up with all the memories, and am reminded of another Canadian "computer" from the era. Back in the early 80's, after the Apple II and PETs were all the rage, but prior to the Macintosh, the Ontario Ministry of Education realized that computers were going to be needed in education, so they made plans to standardize. However, (very Canadian), rather than use an off the shelf commercial product like everybody else, they decided to design and build their own. This was considered ridiculous even back then, though they did this for all the B.S. political arguments such as: being 'Canadian', keeping the jobs local, adding French, etc. I also think there is something to the argument that they didn't like the one thing which made computers popular ... games. No, they wanted to do with computers, what they had done with all other educational disciplines ... make them boring. Anyway, they came up something called the ICON, but which everyone else called the 'Bionic Beaver', based on the Intel 80186 and running QNX (an early Unix-like os.) Notable features: the machines were networked to a central file server, used 8" floppies, had a sort of graphical interface, and used a trackball instead of a mouse. Not surprisingly, it was way over due, way over budget, painfully slow, extremely expensive (even with massive government subsidies), and universally hated. In short ... it was an ABYSMAL failure, as everyone knew it would be. According to Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICON_(microcomputer)): "A 1992 article on the topic complained: Bette Stephenson (Minister of Education) favored top-down decision making and as a result got trapped by her tunnel vision. Her ICON computer fiasco drained millions from the provincial treasury and created a white elephant scorned by boards and shunned by teachers.... Computer resources were forced upon the school system as a result of a top-down government decision that was taken precipitously and without research. The Ministry ceased all support for the ICON in 1994, making it orphaned technology, and the Archives of Ontario declined to take ICON hardware and copies of the ICON software, which were destroyed." Wow ... that sucks! Even their own Archives thought it had no value. I actually had the opportunity to try one of these. I was taking a computer course back in the 80's, and had arrived late for class. Everyone else had their machines up and running, but I turned mine on and nothing happened. "Don't worry ... it takes some time to boot up", I was told. Seriously, it took over 25 minutes to boot. This class held was in a university lab. Significant, since I don't ever recall seeing one in a school where they were intended to be used. I doubt that it's even possible to buy one of these today ... but if you could, I'm pretty sure it would be real cheap ;-)

DJ Sures seems to be making great progress in communicating to the NABU. Check out their KZfaq channel. :) Got "Hello World!" printing to the screen. So before you tear this apart it might be worth seeing the outcome of his and others progress. They're talking about developing a server for it so you could get them connected to the internet and running software from the server. Even discussing getting CP/M running on it.

Grabbed one also… and installed the z88dk C compiler & assembler on my MacBook Pro yesterday. The expansion slots look like they’re really easy to interface to, so I figure that I should be able to whip up a SD card module for it.

Have you looked at the TI 99/4 Video circuit schematic for reference yet?

As suggestion for what to do with it, you can assemble DYI "modem" network card actually (instead of bulky set-top adapter) of modern RF modulator + RF switch (same as in NABU PC) and modern microcomputer with WiFi module ("ARDUINO UNO WiFi REV2" or likewise) with embedded CP/M v3.0, which will emulate connection to cable network. And then try to connect to internet by WiFi (microcomputer will take care of connection to router and data transmission).

B in NABU stands for Bi-directional (search for "NABU Network" on the internet), so it is bi-directional by design. In fact internet says that it failed and bankrupted because cable system infrastructure wasn't ready for bi-directional communications. ...

The name reminds me of the Star Wars Naboo, so that's how I pronounce it. This device is a treasure chest, a great find for those who can get one!

"A 4K byte ROM contains ... ... software which can communicate with the HCCA or a floppy disk to allow for bootstrapping". For me it seems that this thing is able to boot from a floppy. Am I right? And if so, how an end user will connect the floppy? May be an external one like C64 had? Seen the DIN adapter connector, I think that there one could connect an external floppy disk unit. Have you checked the pinout? A remote possibility is that it may be compatible with the C64 floppy.

Where can i download the pdf from Greg starks

I have one of these on the way as well. Can you post a link to that "manual" please?

I’ve had recently built stuff that didn’t have the bag on the power cord show up with styrofoam melted into the insulation. Recently built as in less than 6 months before I opened the box.

This gentleman ( www.youtube.com/@DJSures ) has been working on a "Network Adapter" software replacement and has just got a "Hello World" on the screen. He uses the RS422 adapbter (He has a recommended one on Amazon) to communicate directly with the un-modified NABU Computer. I've been watching his series of NABU videos because, like you, I ordered one which should arrive today. I'm eager to see where you take this project! You have drummed up the teenager in me and have me wanting to learn Z80 Assembly. Hopefully it's not too late for this 57yr old brain to grasp... but hey, I like a challenge. Thank you so much for your great content.

Hello John I have ordered one from eBay mellpill listed some more As i am from the Netherlands we use 230 volt here Is it possible to set the power supply to 230 or must i use a converter I hope you or someone else can give me some tips Greetings herman

Can’t find them anymore. All these 8bit channels snatched them. Isn’t the finish on that metal of the case considered to be a known carcinogen?

nabu is all over youtube now----haha---do you nabu hahaha

Heard about these when Adrian of Adrian's Digital Basement did a video on them this weekend. Checked the auction listing and it sad that they still had plenty available at the time, so I bookmarked it so that I could come back to it when I got paid in a few days. Unfortunately I just checked and it looks like the seller has taken down the listing. I'm not sure if it's because they ran out, or if it was for a different reason. (I sent them a message on eBay but so far have not heard back from them.) My understanding from what I've heard around the Interwebs is that they had pallets full of these things available, so them running out in the span of a weekend sounds rather farfetched to me. Pity, as I am a sucker for these kinds of weird/obscure/forgotten hardware things, and I was looking forward to hacking it.

you could use the chips as replacement/original parts

I don't think there is a back Chanel to the "server" for sending the software. There is also the "NABU Adaptor" listed on ebay. It looks almost like the NABU itself but only has connections to cable wire and to the NABU. I wonder how long you must been waiting at for software deployment back in the days. Seems no one has used it in the 80s or is not aware of what's going on right now with the NABU getting selled and explored by youtubers. I have read somewhere that cable speed was 6.5 mbit transfer speed was actually high. So maybe you didn't need to wait that long. Hope more gets explored soon. I would buy a NABU myself, but taxes and shipment is high to Germany.

the adds»! nothing on tv that tell a lot

I've seen a couple of these going around YT. Look for MyGeekyHobby and DJ Sures

Adrians Digital Basement did a review on one of these computers, maybe you might find that interesting.