[pie314isi]

Oh yeah, I remember that the battery was an odd size and expensive. I think it was 4.5V(?). We had a battery holder for some AAs hanging out the side.

I feel like our 16k bee had more than one ROM in it. I think you could boot into word bee by doing <reset>W and basic with <reset>M

I dont have the 16k bee to check. I kinda wish I did. The disk ones were more serious computers at the time, but I'm strangely more nostalgic for the tape ones. I think there's less magic associated with the tapes.

[smackeyacky]

Ugh those tapes. At one point I set aside the tape player that came from the chemist (Hanimex?) and purchased a special "computer tape player" from somewhere (may have been Tandy) that was supposedly optimised for computer use. It was worse. Trying to fiddle with the tape head azimuth to read some 3rd party tape using a set of headphones was not the ideal way to spend an afternoon. I don't miss cassettes as data storage.