Thank you for watching, please also see the video description for links to further viewing and reading on the story of this fascinating machine. What are your memories of the BBC Micro, did you have one at home or at school and can you remember what you did with yours? I'd love to hear your stories. Neil - RMC
ALAS! I've never had the opportunity to use a BEEB computer; they were quite rare here in Denmark. As far as i can tell, we mainly used Sinclairs, Amstrads, and Commodores here - plus a few obscure and little known machines like the Lambda/Power/Marathon chinese ZX81 clones which weren't that good.
I had an Electron in my early teens as a BBC B was too expensive for my Dad to buy me, but luckily my school had a newly-built computer suite with around 20 BBC Masters, although not using Econet but did have dual disk drives. Therefore, game piracy was rife as I had a lot of dual-format Electron/BBC games and so could duplicate them and swap disks around with kids. I bought my own BBC Master in my 20's as I'd kept a lot of software I'd written, and still have it now that I'm well into my forties. It has had it's battery changed but I'm interest in your Part 2 as I haven't re-capped anything PSU-wise if that's where it might be going. I have a career in IT thanks to Acorn, the BBC and my school for promoting computer usage.
I did my GCE O level in computer studies on a BBC Micro at school and a Electron at home. I remember the programme i wrote was a Pub Quiz type thing, I kept running out of RAM, hitting the end of the 32k space. So had to keep going back and simplifying things and creating more subroutines to slim things down.
My father was involved in the computer club at the school where he taught, and frequently brought a BBC Micro home with him for the holidays, so I got to use it then without needing to buy one (a bonus, as they weren't cheap). The only drawback: games were banned. Unless I wrote them myself. Talk about a motivator... when I did eventually get to school, with a network of BBC Masters running off an Econet file server in a locked booth (a good thing as the 20MB Winchester had a squeaky bearing and it screamed constantly), I ended up using a good half of that disk with my own stuff. Sadly, before I had a chance to make backups it got struck by lightning.
What I find completely grotesque is I had more opportunities to learn how computers really work in the late 80s than schoolkids do now. School PCs are now completely locked down, and in many schools, if you attempt to write a program on one you'll get suspended. School lessons that teach wordprocessing and spreadsheets are not computer lessons, they are office skill lessons and more akin to teaching kids how to touch type in past decades than what the computer literacy project achieved.
That's appalling! I was fortunate to begin learning about computing in high school considering that I graduated in 1974. One of the math teachers browbeat the school's administration into letting her build a "math lab" and create a for-credit math class called "Computer Analysis." She started with an (write this down) Olivetti-Underwood Programa 101. It's sometimes called the first Personal Computer, but it's really a programmable calculator and the predecessor to the TI-59, the ultimate programmable calculator which came out later in the 70's while I worked at Texas Instruments.. Her lab also had a Model 33 teletype, a telephone and a110 bps acoustic coupler along with user id's on the dual CDC 6000 series system at the University of Texas. I really envied what the BBC did for British kids back in the day, but at least I could afford to shell out the bucks for an Apple II (which I still have). It cost me about $3000 in 1978 but it was worth it. You might have thought I would have bought a TI-99/4, but no! It was appallingly bad at introduction.
it was 93 or 94 i got to use a computer at school for the first time ever ofc running windows 3.11. and you can guess i felt duped when i get to know kids back in the day really got to use and even program on computers. its like people got lazy
Yeah, we had one in primary school (1987-90 at that particular school) but we just use the games, whatever they were, unimpressive usually (I was used to better on the Acorn Electron at home since 85) when we were in secondary school it was RM Nimbus's and Windows 3x and we only got to learn Excel : ( we had the classroom with PCs as a form room so we sat there often and were able to play Worm (a Snake clone) and TAXI and Solitaire)
I managed to acquire a 128 Master from my first school along with the monitor and disk drive. I remember my teacher at the time jumping with joy when she was told it was a 128 Master the school was receiving and not a model A or B. No way to know if the BBC Micro I have was that very one. They only had two so it's 50/50. Lots of time playing Granny's Garden and Pod Can on that thing.
It is still around, many of the gaming companies founded on those micros are still churning out praised games today (Rockstar North anyone?). Never mind that ARM powers most of the world outside of the desktop PC (though actual production happens anywhere but UK). The basic thing though is that unless you wear your nation's flag on your chest, it is hard to tell that you are not US based when all your marketing and such is in English.
A few years ago someone on RU-vid was talking about their favorite computer movies and ,mentioned Micro Men. I went ahead and watched it, being here in the states, we hear about the Bill Gates/Steve Jobs story all the time, it was cool to see a similar thing going on over there.
Ah, here is my childhood, and the start of my lifelong obsession with computing. 33 years later, still going strong in IT. I owe it all to the BBC Micro. I should get myself one.
There are a lot of people like that. I think its safe to say that this project is one of the reasons the UK is the center for lots of software development (Were one of the leaders in games development for instance)
Same here! Learnt to code on one of these and still work in software development today. The closest I've come to buying one, is just picking up a manual from ebay to read the code.
Same here. I’m still shocked how small and fast emulators are for the bbc. Computer power is so powerful these days, kids have no idea their iPads are more powerful than super computers back in the bbc micro days! 🤡🤡🤡🌍🌍🌍
Yep Me as well . never thought i would ever see a bbc micro again. and has a lot of others it started my life long learning and yearning for all things computers. led to collage and a job as a programmer for BP and my love affair with the best programming language COBOL
As a german pupil in that days i just envied the english/british for the many companies making computers and then even bringing them into the schools. We had nothing like that. Even worse, society and politicans were discussing if young people should have any contacts with this devil computers at all. Greetings from a RISC-OS user - even nowadays.
I must have gone to an affluent school as we had a couple of rooms full of Model B's, they were all connected to ECONET and we also had a Watford Electronics 30MB Winchester hard drive - I also really enjoyed the drama 'Micro Men'.
We had 3 rooms on a Second floor of a building with massive steel gates and the classrooms had multiple locks, ah the heat of 25 machines plus 30 school kids just after a PE class it hummed, Then the noise of the 9 pin dot matrix epson printing continually for 15-20 minutes
A freak accident put me out of PE for several months. Off-PE class was in the same room that housed the school's Beebs. That was the first time I sat in front of a computer and typed things. I probably wouldn't have had the same friends or my career if it wasn't for that moment.
My parents bought A BBC model B in about 1982/3 (I was 10/11) and as I got interested in it also bought pretty much every accessory for it (2nd processor, all the ROMs, Teletext adaptor, floppy disc drives (dual) .... 35 years later I now have a comfortable life working as an IT engineer for an international company and I thank my parents for that start I was given.
dual drive - as if that's more - well yes it was. We have a dual drive too but it's more than that. Both drives are 40/80 track switchable and 'm pretty sure it'd access both sides of the floppy. We also have the teletext adaptor but not 'all the ROMs' just the TFS ROM and a 'colour dump ROM' which would dump the screen display to a colour printer. Impressing the local gliding club by dumping the day's weather forecast from Ceefax and taking the print-out to the club in the morning.
Top shelf video. Very interesting story. Here in Australia we are always in lock step with the USA and so we did not have the BBC micro. My kids had an Apple II in their classroom. I’m from the Stone Age - slide rules morphing into calculators in the early 1970’s.
The BBC Micro were actually very common in a lot of Australian schools, at least government schools. They certainly were in Tasmania and I’ve read that WA, SA and some other states were in lockstep to pool software and teaching strategies in the mid-1980s. Tassie stuck with the BBCs and later Archimedes systems well into the 90s… I was doing CAD classes on an A410 in 1995.
My folks couldn’t afford a full fledged BBC Micro at the time so I got an Electron. Finally got my hands on a BBC when my Middle School threw them all in to a skip in the early 90’s and a friend who lived near by let me know about it. I already had an Amiga by then but finally having my own BBC was still special.
Yes, it was my first computer, and I made the trip from France to London back in the days (no, the tunnel didn't exits yet). In my opinion, it was far more advanced than Comodore and Apple. Thank you for this review.
In France we had the Thomson TO5 and TO7 models (I wasn't born at the time but I found one randomly in an attic the other day...along with an Amstrad) These days I feel like we've stepped back when it comes to all that, we don't teach the young how to use their devices for work anymore, we instead forbid them from using them on school ground, what a waste.
I was in school back in the days you see through rose-tinted glasses now. Most of the time, the computers that were bought and shipped to the schools by the government stayed in their boxes well past their expiry date unless a Minister of some kind had a visit scheduled, and a computer room had to be proped like a film set for showing off purposes. Teachers had no time, no money and no credit to learn computing for themselves, and even less of those to build lectures around and with them. So unless you had an exceptionally selfless and motivated teacher, your chances to use a computer in school in the mid-late eighties were close to nil. In France, the "Plan Informatique pour Tous" was a ploy to inject public money into Thomson to save the semi public company from keeling over. Pupils were never a front and centre concern.
@@ordinosaurs I have come across that name before but being British I have never seen one in the wild as it were. In fact hasn't RMC done a video on Thompson?
Listening to you, it was like Ian McNaught-Davis was back with us. Wonderful start to the series, seems like it's going to be a great journey. If you wanted to be an ARM developer (ARM 1) in the early days, you would have bought the ARM "co-pro" for your beeb. It is a real credit to the OS that anything can be plugged in and use the beeb for all user interaction and access to storage, leaving the co-pro to get on with some heavy lifting.
I always remember my secondary school's computer room fondly. It was on the 4th floor and had a huge iron door for security. Like something from a bank. We must have had a few dozen BBC Micros in that room, all hooked up to a main computer controlled by the teacher. I never had much interest in computers back then (total tech nut now and the past 25 years, thanks to the Playstation I think) but I did get a slight twinge of interest when I saw someone had replicated Bomb the Bass's Into the Dragon album cover on a sheet of A4 on a Dot Matrix printer. I was like "woah, you can make your own posters". Wish it had got me more interested back then, although I was almost ready to leave school not long after. Pure nostalgia just looking at the machine though. Built like a tank to boot.
I remember my first student exchange in the late 80's, being welcomed in the family of a very British school teacher whom had custody of the school's BBC micro for the duration of the Easter holidays... My taste for the language was already high, but it really kicked my interest for computing into high gear, it was miles ahead of whatever we had in France at the time.
We had Tandy TRS 80s as first computers at school. So valuable, during the Christmas holidays, the teachers took them home - so if the school was broken into, they'd not get nicked. For info, it takes 6 hours to defrost a TRS 80 before it'll boot up having been left in the teacher's car over the holidays !
And the ARM architecture and launched the careers of huge numbers of programmers and large software houses. These machines were the launch pad. To a certain extent the Speccy was the rocket.
Interesting item.. I loved the BBC micro (I never could afford one here in Australia) but I had a Australian made microbee 128 as the first computer and I did use it with a modem to a telephone bulletin board and this was Omen and they had a TRS80 as the main computer there and the guys had lots of hard drives and it even auto-answered the modem calls.. Pity I never had a film camera on me then.
My primary school had one. My year 4 teacher used to code his own basic games and test them out on us so this micro was literally my introduction to gaming. Havent played one since so id love to get my hands on one
@@Lbf5677 i think a lot of it is down to the luck of getting a teacher who is into that kind of thing. I think my teacher did it because he genuinly enjoyed doing it, not because it was part of the job. If there was any kind of tech curriculum my school definatly didnt follow it as he was the only teacher who ever made an effort with that kind of thing
I never had one of these in my school. I was in the first year of secondary school when they came out. I fell in love with it the first time I saw it on TV. It just looked such better quality than any other home computer in the market. I was desperate to get one for Christmas, but we didn’t have much money and my mum told me they couldn’t get me one. Maybe next year if they could save up. Imagine my shock when I unwrapped my one Christmas present to find it was a BBC Micro Model B!! To this day, best present I ever had. Anyone remember the Welcome tape? That was brilliant! It had a teletext game at the end called Twin Kingdom Valley. After I played that all I wanted to do was learn to program. That machine didn’t just teach my BBC Basic, it taught me how to code and set me up for a future career as a software developer and consultant. Brilliant, brilliant computer!
Nicely made video! I am looking forward to the next instalment. The BBC Micro is my favourite computer, it really could do anything. I found a use for it in all my studies (both GCSE and A-Level), primarily as a word processor (Acornsoft VIEW and AMX Pagemaker), but also as a data capture device Physics/Chemistry/Biology (BBC & VELA), a tool to learn languages (both computer and human), exploring mathematics, art and music, creating control systems in Electronics (MEP/MFA/Unilab 3 Chip Plus) etc. I still have mine, yup the metallised paper filter capacitor exploded, amusingly the computer just carried on as the room filled with smoke :o
When I first got to secondary school, there was a room of Acorn Atoms, very forward looking school I think in hindsight. They got the upgrade to BBC Basic (rather than the more limited Atom Basic). Because of this we were late getting BBC Micros, but got them about half way through my school life. Did not matter, Computer Science teacher took the 380Z home, added Econet to it, and wrote some software to share the 2nd floppy disk over the Econet port. We had a floppy disk for each class. Amazing stuff for early 80s, even more amazing was the Computer Science teacher. He sold the solution to a couple of other schools for the school coffers. The 380Z ended up being replaced by a BBC Micro with Acron Winchester Drive (10GB Harddrive I think that was the size -why were the call this?). when I left in 1988 the school had just got their first Archimedes. All the success I have today I owe to that school, and that very clever Computer Science teacher.
Love it, we upgraded the crap out of our model b. First with disk drives then dual disk drives making 3 in total, side ways ram then on the sideways ram icebox then eventually an acorn tube expansion (RISC I think not a legit BBC one custom built) essentially turning it into a supercharged BBC master. Very nearly got an Archimedes but instead went for a 086 very very briefly (like 2-3 months) before getting a 286. I loved that BBC i owe my career to it, i was programming from the age of 7. My dad would go mad at the amount of times i knackered an eprom playing with the sideways ram. We also had an RF/UHF card so i could download programs from teletext, take that internet :) As for the school bit one day sat in some lesson i can't remember what, a student from another year knocked on the door and said the headmaster wanted to see me in the library. I didn't think i had done anything wrong (or been caught) but was excused from my lesson and went down to the library. Turns out they could not get the BBC's to network and asked if i could do it, I did. Me and my 5 year older brother then went on to write 3 programs for the BBC (wells lots more really). Mathman (a pac man clone with maths) which was stolen and commercialised and then a bromine gas experiment simulation used to show vacuums and one where you would watch smoke particles bounce off air particles i forget the name of the experiment. The school used them for years even after the rise of the RM nimbus. I loved my BBC
Very interesting and well presented start to another trash to treasure. I never got to touch the beebs at school but did get to use them on a network on my YTS course. An interesting fact about that two tone beep is that the sound chip used starts up with all channels at full volume playing three tone levels though you generally only pick up on the low sound. The second beep is there to stop this and the same technique is used on other micros using the same Texas instrument chip. I have ZX81 sound card that uses the same chip but it doesn’t have any initialisation code so when you first switch on you have to type pokes to shut each of the channels off. I also have an MTX512 which has died so the three tones play with a black screen when turned on. Another trash to treasure?
Brilliant stuff! I first used a Beeb in 1982 at school, and first got my own in 1992 (I'd had to make do with ZX81, Spectrum, Aquarius and MSX before then). Since 1992 I have always owned at least one Beeb, and at one point I adopted an entire primary school's worth that was otherwise headed for a skip. Numbers are gradually becoming sensible, as I slowly sell them off on ebay. I shall keep a B and a Master for sure. Eagerly awaiting the next episode!
Strange how memories are triggered - as soon as I saw the Cub monitor, "Microvitec" came to mind, plus remembering one of my friends had one and I seem to recall it played awesome music while waiting for Elite to load? I had the Atari 800XL, and another friend had the Texas Instruments TI99/4A, and our secondary school had Research Machines 380Z & 480Z. We often went to each other's houses to play on whatever the latest cool game was. Truly a time where no one really cared about compatibility, you just got whatever computer you liked, or could afford.
1st computer at my sec school was an Exidy Sorcerer. For teacher use only ! TRS 80 I-2 became the pupils' machine. A ZX80 and a 380Z appeared as well. Of course Microvitec and econet came to mind with the CUB monitor but not at my school ! The BBC B was our first home computer - and we still have the computer desk dad made for it built out of old caravan furniture !
My parents never had much money. We took a holiday away twice in my childhood, both times in the UK. We had a black-and-white 10" TV until I was 13, and it only had two channels, ITV and BBC1. I had to go to my best friend's house to watch _The High Chaparral,_ because it was on BBC 2. _Thunderbirds_ was my favourite childhood TV show, one of the first UK TV series in colour... but I had to take their word for it. But after I passed all my A Levels (Maths, Add. Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology), a few months before my 19th birthday in November 1981, I was STUNNED by my 19th birthday present from my parents: A BBC Micro, Model B 32k. My father, who worked in British Aerospace, had asked a friend in the computer department what the best home computer was for a technically-minded boy. The sacrifices my parents must have made to afford this... it still brings tears to my eyes. I learnt to write programs and games in BBC BASIC, but this showed its limitations when you had large iterative subroutines, so I learnt 6502 assembly language so I could talk directly to the silicon. Later, at college, I did a unit on coding. We had these machines called EMMA (I never found out what that stood for). At they were was a hex keyboard and some I/O, and a 6502 processor. I remember the first week we had to do a program to simulate the UK traffic light sequence (Red, Red & Amber, Green, Amber, Red). The lecturer came round after about quarter of an hour and asked me what I was doing, and I said I was doing the flowchart. He said, "You need to get a move on, some of the other students have started to write the code." I said, "I've already written the program, and it works," and I showed him. Baffled, the lecturer said, "But you're supposed to use the flowchart to help you write the program," and I said, "I didn't need one." As it was, instead of coming into the lesson and writing a program each week, I made a deal that I would come by every three weeks and write three programs. I ended up with a distinction. This was all thanks to the marvellous BBC Micro that my parents so generously bought me.
We got one because my mum was a teacher so you got a discount. I believe I was about 4 at the time, taking a tape to my dad too load a game, asking him to get it out for me (only one TV so we had to unpack and set it up) At 10 I learnt basic? Wrote graphics demos and, like, simulating a ball bouncing using the formula for acceleration in gravity. I also got the 6502 assembler manual, learnt it, but I couldn't figure out what it was for. Load reg 1 and 2, add, lshift and rshift. ... At the time I couldn't map it to draw, move, input, etc. Still haven't _actually_ learnt assembler, not practical assembler anyway.
@@MostlyPennyCat The main use for assembler is to speed up routines that are run over and over again, and take forever in BASIC. As an example, LDA# $10 means load hex 10 (16: in hex base 16, 1 x 16 + 0 x 1) into the accumulator. In hex, the actual language the processor speaks, if I remember rightly, LDA# is A9 in hex. So you would write A9 $10 on an EMMA. There are some good resources online if you're interested in learning 6502 assembler.
I wasn't very interested in computers at school, mostly because they only arrived in the last couple of years I was there. I do remember seeing some Commodore PETs in one of the classrooms (as that was around 1979-80 I'd guess it was pre BBC Micro). I've never seen a BBC Micro IRL.
Attended Oundle school in the 80s and we had some kind of connection with Cambridge which meant we had a couple of labs full of these wonderful machines (alongside Electrons, Research Machines 380Zs, 480Zs and other curios). Towards the end of my time they were connected to a 20MB Winchester drive over an Econet network. But in the early days the network had a dual double-sided floppy disk drive with (I think) 800K storage. My school life revolved around the computer lab (to the detriment of social interaction and some grades!). This machine was responsible for my career. Well done Acorn, the BBC and the government of the time. Maybe today’s government could get past its ideological idiocy and get behind projects like this and remember the unique power that the BBC has to reach a nation.
We got a Model B in 1986, that was my first computer and I loved it! The RS423 port could also be used to connect two BBC Computers together and I even remember making up my own cable to connect mine and a friends to transfer programs! Also had to replace the Parallel printer driver chip when it failed; try that on today's computers!!
I have one I've recently refurbished (those old RIFA caps blew, of course)... it's absolutely the best machine of the 80's.... The expandability, the open nature of the hardware and it's adaptability, the various I/O that offered so many options, and a BASIC interpreter that included an in-line assembler... A real triumph of British computing.
The 16k BBC Basic Rom had a great assembler, they packed a lot into that 16k. I remember the first proper Machine Code program I wrote was to Unlock protected cassette based games so I could copy them to disk, and I was very proud of it LOL. All the information I needed was in the Basic Manual, a very unsecure copy protection.
Nicely put together video on an important computer. I bought the Acorn Atom as my first venture into computing and its sat in its orginal box upstairs, must dig it out one day soon. It started with 2K ram using 2114 ram chips which have metal top for heat dispation. I did add more ram but over 4K the supply line ripple became so bad producing a hum bar moving continuosly down the screen. What amazes me is the flexibility of the BBC micro runing on only a 2Mhz 6502 8 bit processor, running basic and driving a video generator chip, quite an achievement.
I remember we figured out that if you flicked the tab up on the floppy drive while a game was loading it would break with an error. You could then type "LIST". Which is how we got the password for Granny's Garden Pt 2. Cracked.
I had a Model A, 16k serial number 000072. Yep the seventy second ever made. I built it up over the years with conceivable option. My one true regret in life, selling the entire system to a doctor. If only I could go back in time.... much sadness
We had the econet setup in an Australian School back in the early nineties. It was slow but had modules which stored games, programs and more. However... the network would work sometimes and it always crashed after 15+ students used it simultaneously, I had very little time using them but heavily wanted one. Too bad people sell these way out of my budget. But it’s a real surprise of how awesome technology was rapidly becoming more connected as we grown older
Once again you made some impressive progress, be it in an editorial sense or the presentation with you on screen during the educational, historical bits - looks almost like a professional documentary from a small TV station, well done mate! Merry Christmas and all the best for 2020 now that you are doing YT full time, cheers from Germany, Peter
i grew up in this era lol, i still have my BeeB in cupboard behind me witha 40/80 track floppy drive, loved it, best keyboard ever and the BBC B Basic was so good, enjoying this
I lived in Germamy at the time and never recognized the BBC micro. I did know the sinclair maschines which I perceived as inadequate. In the last couple of month I am looking at a lot of emulators of machines from the time and I recognized how much better the BBC micro was, compared to Commodore and even Apple or Sinclair. That is a cool piece of kit.
I benefited from the French equivalent of this plan, which you already covered (Thomson MO5's, Goupil PC server, nanoreseau and 'plan informatique pour tous'). I discovered computers thanks to it, became instantly obsessed and it eventually became my lifelong profession. It's hard to imagine than in the early 80's, politicians and the media were visionaries about micros and did something for the good of the people.
A computer i always wanted, and my friend got one for christmas, it cost £400 in 1985, a walk down memory lane, i had an acorn electron, which i still have in the box up in the loft. A good video very interesting, obviously being a kid then i had no idea what went on behind the scenes.
My memories of the BBC micro may have started in middle school in the mid 80s. We had a computer at the back of the room and the teachers weren't great with it so they used to ask, I forget his name, a kid in our class to set it up for them. He'd do everything for them, printing out as well. But I can't really remember if it was a BBC or not. However a very clear memory was late 80s in high school. Gunnersbury Boys School. 1st year we had a room full of BBCs with the monitors. I wasn't fully into computers back then but enjoyed the lessons but it was 2 to a computer. And whoever I was ever with would always take over so I'd never get a proper go. All we had at home was a zx81 and I never really liked it. Hated the keyboard. Would of loved a BBC but there being 4 of us mum & dad could never afford one & they knew I'd get bored. Now I love computers and the history of them. Will always have a fond memory of the BBC despite never owning one.
Great video. I used to have one of these plugged into a dial-tune black and white TV. Can honestly say I wouldn't be where I am today without it. One very very minor point - I don't think that there was ever an econet blanking plate. I remember the one we had was brand new and always had that hole. I remember thinking it was really scary and unsafe as a child!
Another great video, Neil. My school had a room of Beebs, all connected to Econet. Then we decided to write 2nd level password programs on our few KB of hard disk space... Until the computer studies teacher asked us to remove them as he couldn't circumvent it! Those were the days!!
We've got 3 of them and I totally agree. There is something very special indeed about this machine! Probably one of the reasons I love watching "Micro Men" so much. I have such very find memories of using a Beeb when they came out at school,. Then a friend had one at home, so I spent time using his playing Elite and Starship Command, then later on there was one at my work experience placement that controlled a dynamo test rig! Awesome machine and kick started so many careers. :)
our school had these i allways used to give shit to the teacher and say my amiga blew it away, but it was a good gateway at the time, specially with the basic
These videos with the more solemn documentary style are so awesome. I love how you manage to instill such a sense of quiet reverence for the subject matter.
When I hear the words "racing pigeon" and "catchy theme tune" put together in a sentence, I can't help myself from singing the theme tune to Look and Read's 'Geordie Racer'.
I've only just discovered your channel - and this video series in particular is wonderful! Professional quality, the BBC should commission this for a BBC Micro 40th Anniversary series 😀
Excellent start, Neil. Looking forward to the rest of this series. Best computer of all time. So versatile and well thought-out, all those marvellous ports! I got to use Beebs at college, along with various contemporaneous machines, but there was no way I could dream of owning one. We had just about managed to afford a ZX81, and eventually scraped together enough for an Electron. About 15 years later I finally obtained a recased BBC B, with a pair of 5¼" drives, from a workmate clearing out. Lost none of its magic - planning some stargazing with astronomy software (can't remember what it was called, came with a book by the brilliant Heather Couper), experimenting with my own circuits connected to the analogue port, mastering Elite. Time for a loft rescue mission...
One of the great things about the BBC Micro was that it had an actual operating system. Most other micros of the day were essentially CPUs in a box --- there would be a simple I/O layer with Microsoft Basic bolted on top, bodgable in various ways to allow access to devices, but once you outgrew the terrible Basic you ended up coding for the bare metal in machine code. The BBC Micro had pluggable filesystems, application ROMs, a proper system call interface, an administration shell, and all the abstraction layers needed to isolate the application from the actual hardware. If you used a Tube with the 6502 second processor, that system actually ran a completely different OS --- but it presented the same system call interface, so (well behaved) software would run on it just fine. The built-in Basic, which was superb, was just another application ROM; the Econet software just another file system (giving access to all your files on a remote file server).
I do wish we had a project like that out here. The BBC is so far ahead of our ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). I feel like we are living 50 years behind with old Aunty (Nick name for the ABC) not keeping up with the times.
An awesome thing with the bbc was that as you started to outgrow basic you could inline code assemble directly in your program! Something I needed the expert cartridge for on the c64.
I somehow managed to get a free place at a 'posh' high school in Cambridge which got about 12 of these in 1983. The school year below me was the first to be offered 'computer studies' as an o-level, so our year had no actual education on them. They were networked together though, and I remember lunchbreaks where one boy would be at the door keeping lookout while some early game like pac-man loaded on all machines at once from a single tape drive. Ah, the amount of detentions we got, lol. One of my closest friends was rich enough to have one at home, though, and he showed me how to get started programming in BASIC - something that would prove to be a life-long hobby for me.
Can’t say my old school was posh but we did do pretty well when it came to computers. It got fitted out with a similar set up in about 1982/83 with BBC model B machines and my brother was in the first o-level class in 83-85 and then A-level class 85-87. I started in 84 and after a couple of years we got upgraded to BBC masters and then just before I left we got upgraded again with Archimedes machines which at the time seemed light years ahead of the old BBCs . Did you have a Winchester hard drive by any chance? It was the pride and joy of our computer studies teacher because of its huge capacity.
My primary school had a total of 4 BBC Micros, when I started secondary school they had about 20 of them. I owe my entire career to the lessons I learned on this wonderful machine.
I must pause and commend you for exercising such great care to avoid the clunks and bangs that often mar videos of this type. Thank you also for including some sociopolitical context as you told the story of the BBC Micro. As a boy your age growing up across the pond, I was oblivious to all of this at the time (and truthfully, for most of my adult life as well).
The programme about racing pigeons and the catchy theme tune... ...that wasn't _Geordie Racer_ by any chance? The programme that introduced a generation of kids to Magic E!
I see what you did there. Acorn continued with the Archimedes range based on their new RISC CPU which, to cut a long story short, we now know as ARM. It's quite the success story
I'm looking forward to this series. The whole BBC Micro thing passed me by completely. My middle school didn't have any computers and my secondary school had jumped down the Commodore road, so although I knew of the machine I have yet to even touch one.
