Why This Monitor is Seared into your Brain | Nostalgia Nerd
Get (sponsor) Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/NostalgiaNerd – Enter promo code NostalgiaNerd to get 83% and 4 extra months for FREE during Black Friday! ~ Back in the 1980s, the Computer Literacy Project and the government’s campaign to get Micros in schools, turned the UK upside-down. As children, no longer were classrooms a place of paper and chalkboards; now we had technology in the corner, namely, the BBC Micro (for most schools, at least). But along with the iconic, sturdy lines of the BBC Micro, there was another piece of kit ever present, and that was the Microvitec Cuc 452. Where-ever the BBC went, the Microvitec Cub went, and so, UK kids in teh 80s were brought up, in part, by these screens. Learning to type through them, learning to game through them, and learning to develop through them. We really spent a lot of time looking at them, and for that reason, they’re incredibly important.
Here then, is the story of Microvitec and their Cub monitors.
Thank you to the voices. Please check out their excellent channels;
Re-enthused: https://www.youtube.com/c/ReEnthused
RetroBytes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBp33nQRejZkmujCMtnPJTQ
0:00 Introduction
0:49 The BBC Micro
4:57 The Microvitec Cub Story
14:26 Is it a Good Monitor?
16:26 SurfShark
17:46 Microvitec After the Cub
19:22 Credits
🔗Video Links🔗
Microvitec’s Website: http://www.microvitec.co.uk/
🏆 Ad Free 🏆
Support my channel, get exclusive videos & perks, as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/nostalgianerd from just $1
🏪 NN Shop & Affiliate Links! 🏪
My eBay Shop: https://nnerd.es/NerdShop (Now Re-open!)
My Retro Tech book: http://nnerd.me/HVFtSB (2nd edition is out!)
Desk Shelves for Retro Computers: http://nnerd.me/RetroShelves (Because you’re worth it)
🍻 Share/Like 🍻
If you wish to share this video in forums, social media, on your website, or ANYWHERE else, please do so! It helps tremendously with the channel! Also, giving a thumb up or down also helps with visibility on Youtube. Many thanks!
📟 Subcribe 📟
Click to Subscribe: https://nnerd.es/2K4TYvX
📱 Join me on Social Media 📱
🐥 http://www.twitter.com/nostalnerd
🎮 http://www.twitch.tv/nostalgianerd
👱🏼📘 http://www.facebook.com/nostalnerd
📸 http://www.instagram.com/nostalgianerd
🌍 http://www.nostalgianerd.com
🎥 Equipment 🎥
Panasonic Lumix G5
Rode NT-1 Mic
Corel Video Studio Ultimate 2020
Corel Paint Shop Pro 2020
📜 Resources 📜
In video links and references are provided where possible. If you believe I have forgotten to attribute anything, please let me know (drop me an email via. the about page on Youtube or send me a tweet), so I can add it here. Apologies if I have missed anything out, it takes time to make these videos and therefore it can be easy to forget things or make a mistake.
Errors and omissions excepted.
Some material in this video may be used under Fair Dealing / Fair Use. Where under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 (UK: Sections 29 and 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988), allowance is made for purposes including parody, quotation, criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, education and research. Fair Dealing / Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.
@Nostalgianerd
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Apologies to my non UK viewers. This monitor may not be specifically seared into your brains (although Cub monitors did make it to various countries). But I hope you enjoy the story, nevertheless.
If I can obtain an Apple II and a Sanyo monitor in the future, then maybe I can address the balance for those across the Atlantic.
@anticat900
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Great video, i spent many hours looking into one of these while at school. Plus you've now got a whole line of monitors to review next, I'd like to see a RGB Phillips 8833mk2 vs that Checkmate LCD? To see if it's worth spending £500+ on such a screen?
@NibblyPig
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Another iconic pairing was my Amstrad CPC 464 and its Green Screen monitor, I genuinely didn't even realise it could output colour until one day I was allowed to connect it to the TV, it blew me away!
@chriswoods562
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
I thought the bouncing was only on my monitor… Won't bother trying to fix it then 😂
@fiddley
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Can you imagine todays government, red or blue, attempting anything as audacious as a public literacy campaign? And can you imagine any of today's brexit britain population being even remoteley interested? Sigh.
@EgoChip
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
I stared at one of those Cub monitors at school more than the weird kid stared at me.
@lovemadeinjapan
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Loved the video, but in the end it is just a BFU computer marying a BFU monitor. I'm happy I live on the other side of the Northsea, where design was important, although, what was that Sinclair dude trying over there?
@ElectronicWitchcraft
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Shout out to the Bradford massive.
@theretrogeek2281
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Just got a pair of these,am glad I wouldn’t have bought either without the other..
@tommykruesofficial
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
God i wish we could get a new run even limited vintage collection on crt tv's again.
@peanutnutter1
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
At school I learned one important thing about the CUB, if you touched the screen an touched your friend at the same time you could give them a static shock.
@robtaylor4462
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
This monitor in my school's was hooked up to the research machines 480z never saw any bbcs
@Savagetechie
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Does anybody know of a paint the will match the cub finish? Ive got a few of them and a couple are really badly school marked.
@mortarn
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Could you please do a video about the MicroBee computer that was in Australian schools in the '80s?
@pabblo1
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
If you'd hop over the iron curtain to Poland, the counterpart combo would be Elwro 800 Junior/Timex Sinclair 2048 (both ZX spectrum clones) and Neptun 156/Elektronika 409D (One is a Polish-made monitor, the other a Soviet-made monitor)
@LeeFall
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Our school had a BBC Micro with a turtle roamer.
@jimbotron70
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
In early to mid 90s Microvitec also made a range of multisync (able to show 15 and 31 kHz video modes) monitors for the Amiga, they were rather top of range and costly.
@TheAlchaemist
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
If only Jen would have watched this programme, she would not be wondering what IT means…
@cocothefatpriest1935
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
just got one at school today, and two bbc master series micro computers
@maximumjesus
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
In the U.S. we didn't have that. We had the Apple 2e instead. This was the early 90's which was way after the apple 2e was new.
@TVperson1
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
If only Commodore computers had had someone like Tony Martinez instead of those short sighted idiots they ended up with.
@GeeDaddyFlex305
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
BBC Micro. What an oxymoron. 🍆
@sma7530
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Good research in checking how to pronounce Microvitec 👍
@sma7530
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Just bought my second working Cub monitor.
(BTW You forgot to mention that the Cumana floppy drive was synonymous with the trifecta –
so I had to get one ! Got Sentinel, Thrust and Elite too)
I have 2 x Amstrad (colour) CTM644s, 1x CBM 1085-D2, 1x CBM 1084S-D1,
1x CBM 1701 (the brown one), 1 x Philips CM8833 Mk II,
and the 2 Microvitec Cub 1431S4Cs (and 7 CRT TVs for my light gun and other games).
No other display can take me back to 1985/86 (my Computer Science class) just by showing the micro's boot screen.
Going to try and re-cap them all to preserve them till my last days.
I had to buy a second Cub as I would have been heartbroken if I had lost my only one.
@disdroid
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
At our school the micro was locked in a room so that none of the children could go near it 😅
@mapesdhs597
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
I have three of those CUB monitors, love them to bits. 😀 Fascinating tale, I didn't know anything of the monitor side of the Beeb history. Mindblown btw you have a CUB with its original box, and in such good condition too, awesome! I have various other models of monitor aswell, but the CUB reigns supreme.
@aperinich
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
I was an 80s kid, and this is not recognisable to me whatsoever. Let alone "seared into mind". UK-centric on a global platform .
@sodapopz2932
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Not this specific monitor since I'm not fron the UK, but seared into my brain, even as a noughties baby… My highschool even wheeled a CRT with a VHS hooked up into classrooms… Though not an unpleasant experience because it definitely reminded me of the CRT I watched cartoons on in my bedroom when I was little, it surely looks a little out of place in a modern highschool…
@SteveMacSticky
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Robert The Bruce wrote a book about IT? Woah man
@DAVIDGREGORYKERR
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
If only Acorn had used the TMS99105A would have allowed Acorn to produce a 16bit personal computer with native floating point execution and no emulator required.
@dysnuts17
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
ur old
@kold666
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Very nice video! I remember in the middle of 90s the 14” multisync model was simply the best monitor on the Amiga. Too bad in Italy was impossible to find. I eventually bought it few years ago.
Btw you CUB needs a recap, it is trembling very much 😉
@eldraque666
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
acorn electron, my first computer🙂
@EsperPinion
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
I thought this will be about the strange featureless 1st person maze on the thumbnail. I have never seen the monitor itself. And you didn't even answer what that screen is or show it in the video
@baronvonschnellenstein2811
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Why this monitor is seared into your brain … because it was a good monitor in its day 🙂
@SomePotato
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Certainly an iconic machine/monitor combo, but the most iconic? A C64 with a 1701/1702 or an Amiga 500 with a 1048 is just as iconic!
@theemjay
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Just don't run your finder across the screen then tough the metal screen surround! 😖
@SharpblueCreative
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
I was there when all this happened. My parents even went out and bought a BBC micro in 83. The only thing it was used for was playing Frak and Ghouls amongst other games.
@mattyfrommacc1554
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
I had my own Beeb B in the early 80s, as well as our school having 1 or 2, my Dad was a teacher so he brought home the cub monitor and 5" disc drives/ games at the weekends, That monitor used to give a right powerful static shock and weighed an absoulute ton!
@vanguze
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Make arcades great again!
@thomasfuchs78
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Just realized now, 40 years after the fact, the pun in “Computer Programme”
@Foebane72
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
I have a couple of memories of the Microvitec Cub monitor from using them:
1. We used them with BBC Micros at school, and one Saturday we moved a couple of computer sets to the other block for some fete or something, and I was trying to carry the monitor in my arms, and at one point I felt like resting it on a balcony rail. I never did so, because I then had horrible thoughts about the Cub monitor toppling off the rail and smashing on the floor below!
2. I had an Amiga 500 at home and was still using Cub monitors with the BBC Micros at college, and asked the computer technicians if it was possible to have a Cub show Amiga graphics. They said no, because of the TTL connector only permitting 3-bit RGB for the BBC Micro at most. But they did say it was possible to adapt it to do so.
@c5liveuk
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
Superb monitor! The quality was (is) amazing! I really need one for my collection!!!
@william2william
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
What is the game being played on the BBC Micro at 13:26 ?
@AppliedCryogenics
April 30, 2026 at 2:43 pm
The most iconic monitor for me in U.S. schools from 1983 on, was the Apple Monochrome green, always attached to Apple //e's. Prior to that, my schools had few machines, mainly two Apple // plus (with B&W 9-in television), a TRS-80 Model I with built-in B&W. In 1988, there was an exciting development. My school got two COLOR Apple //gs . That was a scintillating new platform on which to play "Oregon Trail". I did see only one Commodore at school in this time. It was a Commodore 64 that the Guidance Counsellor has brought from home, to run a poll of the upcoming presidential election between Ronald Reagan / George Bush v.s. Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro.
Comments are closed.