BBC Micro is 40

[Argonia]

Makes me feel old. Remember with great fondness.

10 PRINT "Hello"
20 GOTO 10

RUN

BBC Micro: How it inspired a generation of coders

Launched in the 1980s the Computer Literacy Project helped people understand the world of computing.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Anyone who wants to experience BBC BASIC...

Owlet BBC BASIC Editor

bbcmic.ro

ETA: with the "share" link you can even export your program as the audio file that would go on a tape

 

[farmerbarleymow]

I remember some kind of game we used to play on the BBC machine we had at primary school (one PC in the whole place) - not sure whether it was a BBC pet if that was a thing? The game was something like an adventure where you had to make decisions on what you wanted to do at each stage - I can't remember much more than that, but think it involved some text input or possibly selecting Y/N sort of thing. Does anyone remember this?

This would have been around 82/83 or so.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I remember some kind of game we used to play on the BBC machine we had at primary school (one PC in the whole place) - not sure whether it was a BBC pet if that was a thing? The game was something like an adventure where you had to make decisions on what you wanted to do at each stage - I can't remember much more than that, but think it involved some text input or possibly selecting Y/N sort of thing. Does anyone remember this?

This would have been around 82/83 or so.

There were a lot of games that could fit that description!

 

[farmerbarleymow]

There were a lot of games that could fit that description!

Vaguely think it was something about farming or ensuring food supply in some kind of rural setting. It's one of those things that I'd love to find out what it is now and ideally play it again, but as you say it's virtually impossible to identify which one it was.

 

[moochedit]

I remember some kind of game we used to play on the BBC machine we had at primary school (one PC in the whole place) - not sure whether it was a BBC pet if that was a thing? The game was something like an adventure where you had to make decisions on what you wanted to do at each stage - I can't remember much more than that, but think it involved some text input or possibly selecting Y/N sort of thing. Does anyone remember this?

This would have been around 82/83 or so.

Text adventures. There were loads of those at that time. No idea which one you mean though.

Edit - is it any of these?...

List of text-based computer games - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[8ball]

I remember some kind of game we used to play on the BBC machine we had at primary school (one PC in the whole place) - not sure whether it was a BBC pet if that was a thing? The game was something like an adventure where you had to make decisions on what you wanted to do at each stage - I can't remember much more than that, but think it involved some text input or possibly selecting Y/N sort of thing. Does anyone remember this?

This would have been around 82/83 or so.

Are you thinking of Turtle? There were games you could play using simple instructions to move it around, and there was also a robot you could get that could physically be controlled with the same language if I recall correctly.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Vaguely think it was something about farming or ensuring food supply in some kind of rural setting. It's one of those things that I'd love to find out what it is now and ideally play it again, but as you say it's virtually impossible to identify which one it was.

Kingdom was the one that came on the Welcome tape.

Yellow River Kingdom

Published by BBC Soft in 1981

bbcmicro.co.uk

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Doesn't seem to be any of those ^^ but thanks anyway. My quest continues...

 

[Septimus Rufiji]

could have been Oregon Trail?

 

[farmerbarleymow]

could have been Oregon Trail?

That does look more familiar - it could be that, although I think I remember it had some pictures (but I might be imagining that). Cheers.

 

[NoXion]

There's an emulator for the BBC Micro that has been around since 1994, and you can get the latest version free here. That site also has a copy of Elite that you can grab and run on the emulator. Even more games can be found at another site here.

I also did some reading of the Wikipedia article for this hardware, and I came across this interesting little snippet:

"As with Sinclair's ZX Spectrum and Commodore's Commodore 64, both released later in 1982, demand greatly exceeded supply. For some months, there were long delays before customers received the machines they had ordered."

Does that sound familiar to anyone trying to get their hands on a PS5 or an RTX 30 series GPU? The more things change, the more things stay the same.

 

[wayward bob]

I remember some kind of game we used to play on the BBC machine we had at primary school (one PC in the whole place) - not sure whether it was a BBC pet if that was a thing? The game was something like an adventure where you had to make decisions on what you wanted to do at each stage - I can't remember much more than that, but think it involved some text input or possibly selecting Y/N sort of thing. Does anyone remember this?

This would have been around 82/83 or so.

xanadu adventure? Xanadu Adventure

 

[farmerbarleymow]

xanadu adventure? Xanadu Adventure

That has some promise of being the thing - cheers.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

DP

 

[wayward bob]

i lost fucking years to that game

 

[ska invita]

Which is the computer from this time that had an owl on it?

 

[moochedit]

Which is the computer from this time that had an owl on it?

BBC micro (made by Acorn)

 

[ska invita]

BBC micro (made by Acorn)

Getting to play "Taxi" (not sure the proper name), a maths game about taxi fares was a highlight of my life
I got a bit excited the other day watching 7UP Series, 28 UP and the kids were playing, sorry learning, on exactly this game
footage right here! 2mins 30


Screenshot:

 

[pseudonarcissus]

e

BBC micro (made by Acorn)

we had an Acorn Atom when I was a kid,. which I think was the cheap and cheerful version

 

[starfish]

I remember some kind of game we used to play on the BBC machine we had at primary school (one PC in the whole place) - not sure whether it was a BBC pet if that was a thing? The game was something like an adventure where you had to make decisions on what you wanted to do at each stage - I can't remember much more than that, but think it involved some text input or possibly selecting Y/N sort of thing. Does anyone remember this?

This would have been around 82/83 or so.

Not that game but i can remember a teacher pointing out a mistake where a game scored you 1 points. Was either 82/83.

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

I still have our old BBC master somewhere.
Nice crunchy keyboard. Great warm-up sound when you booted it too.

 

[moochedit]

e

we had an Acorn Atom when I was a kid,. which I think was the cheap and cheerful version

Yeah i think the Atom was Acorn's first computer. They also made another cheaper computer called the Acorn Electron a few years later. The BBC Micro was origanally going to be called the Acorn Proton before the BBC deal.

 

[stavros]

I remember some kind of game we used to play on the BBC machine we had at primary school (one PC in the whole place) - not sure whether it was a BBC pet if that was a thing? The game was something like an adventure where you had to make decisions on what you wanted to do at each stage - I can't remember much more than that, but think it involved some text input or possibly selecting Y/N sort of thing. Does anyone remember this?

This would have been around 82/83 or so.

The only two I remember, slightly later than the dates you mention, were on the Basic. One was Space Invaders and the other was Chuckie Egg.

 

[A380]

ZX81 rules....

 

[Argonia]

Was the BBC tapes or was it 5 and a quarter inch disks? My first home computer was the Commodore 64 and that was tapes which took ages to load.

 

[gentlegreen]

When I went to work at Bristol Poly in 1982, I actually started working for the supporting programme to the BBC micros that were going into schools .. mostly setting up demos at schools and exhibitions, but also building interfaces - I got half way through making a working model lift ...

Years later I found myself working in a Language faculty and had to edit cassettes - where I had to insert a gap of 1.5 times the length of the segment of text for the student to interpret ... my musician colleague could do the calculation in his head and never missed an edit, but I struggled ...

So I dug out the Faculty BBC micro and hooked up emitter followers and relays to all the available outputs on the I/O port - plus I had to use the cassette relay - and connected that to our two domestic solenoid-operated cassette decks.
I wrote the procedures to operate the electronics and handed over to a creative colleague who wrote the editor in Mode7.
We knocked it up in a couple of days ...

Sadly this was long before digital cameras so there's no record of it - I should have rescued the whole assembly from recycling ...

 

[gentlegreen]

Was the BBC tapes or was it 5 and a quarter inch disks? My first home computer was the Commodore 64 and that was tapes which took ages to load.

5 1/4 inch - single sided - 100kb I think - I wrote a video cassette database and had to do weird shit to numbers to cram everything on one disc.

The Faculty I was in at the time had loads of Commodore PET hardware lying around, so we ended up with the ridiculous situation of connecting a monster PET dual drive to a BBC Micro - the PET drive had TWO 6502s in it and the interface was IEEE

 

[Argonia]

I remember playing Granny's Garden at primary school. It's truly amazing how far graphics and gameplay have come in 40 years.

 

[stavros]

Was the BBC tapes or was it 5 and a quarter inch disks?

From my memory, when I was about 5, I think Space Invaders was on tape and Chuckie Egg on the floppy disc, back when they were actually floppy.