Happy 40th Birthday to the Acorn BBC Micro!

[Carvaged]

my first experience with modems and email being on the BBC

Haha, reminds me of this fab clip. Her GP was already online and my aunt still doesn't have proper online GP services :

 

[Carvaged]

Those RM Nimbus computers were bad but they were my first intro to an early version of Windows, and both school and college tended to have them networked. And they tended to have a BBC emulator app on them for running some awful old departmental educational software on them. Someone used the BBC emulator and BBC Basic to exploit a bad security flaw on the Nimbus network, which enabled anyone to access the entire server hard drive with full permissions. We had a field day with that at college. RM never patched the flaw while I was there, and the college resorted to desperate measures such as a program that could scan the network drive for any copies of the malicious BBC file. But we had printed out the code and coud just type it back in again, and the college didnt want to remove the BBC emulator because then the awful educational apps a few departments still used wouldnt run. Fair to say we ran rings round the authorities and indulged in activities such as subverting the default cv word processing document that the college used to show off on open days, and introducing blasphemous alterations to the text of a religious studies BBC emulator app. Eventually they had to rely on non-technical methods such as punishing us by banning us from the computers for a time. Others were banned entirely from entering the 'computer suite' but they couldnt give me that bit of the punishment since it was also my form room. The computer technician was also not impressed when we drew a beard on whatever woman it was that featured in his personal choice of desktop wallpaper for his account.

The only time the RM machines really impressed me was when used with laserdiscs and the BBC Domesday discs, but that was a setup where the actual computer wasnt providing much of the power, the impressive stuff was just video and images from the laserdisc being overlayed and so there was also a BBC Micro version of that setup available (but I never got to try that version as thats not what my Dads school were supplied with). Actually thinking about it that RM Domesday disc machine was my first experience with PCs and DOS (The RM Nimbus wasnt fully 100% IBM-PC compatible but it was somewhat close), and I remember not initially knowing what the command was for listing disk/directory contents, I was used to typing cat on the BBC and was flummoxed for some time before discovering the 'joys' of dir.

Interesting! I remember seeing the Master System version of the Domesday Laserdisc, but I didn't know they had an Nimbus version as well.

 

[xenon]

I had a ZX Spectrum but my parents were teachers and my Dad used to do their computer stuff because most of the other teachers at his school lacked confidence with computers back then. He used to get to take one home some weekends and during school holidays, so I spent plenty of time with the BBC.

I I dont know if it was Repton 2 or 3 that I played, I know it had a level editor but I used to mess around with such things without actually taking the time to make good levels myself.

I know I was impressed with the momentum of the weapons trails in Starship Command, and that there was something quite satisfying about blowing ships up in that game, probably because it took more than one shot to kill them.



I think there maybe another thread where I already went on about this and my first experience with modems and email being on the BBC, and how I look back with amusement at quite how exciting the teletext adaptor seemed at the time. I think Grannies Garden and Podd got a mention on that thread too, if it even exists.

Quite a bit later in the history of schools and the BBC, my Mum started to get into using the Concept Keyboard to try to help fairly young children who were starting to get left behind educationally, I've chatted to her about that more recently when she got her first modern tablet device.

These days I am really impressed with the Apple Macs that use ARM processors, and I get quite a bit of pleasure thinking about the Acorn origins of ARM. Not that I was wildly in love with the Acorn Archimedes when that arrived, not enough software, so its relative power seemed impressive but went largely to waste. Im really quite happy I dont have to use x86 CPUs and windows these days, never really loved the long era of the IBM-compatible PC despite all that it offered and still offers.

Grannie's Garden, that was the game.

Concept Keyboard. That's a blast from the past. I saw one but not plugged in and working.

First witnessing a of a modem was a neighbour's older son who had a C64 accessing BBSs and some weather channel thing. I was blown away. This was War Games shit... Some time later the same neighbour downloaded those fake alien autopsy stills and UFO hyroglifs. Though I think that was when he'd graduated to an Amiga. But I saw those pics at their place long before the dodgy video came out.

 

[elbows]

Interesting! I remember seeing the Master System version of the Domesday Laserdisc, but I didn't know they had an Nimbus version as well.

RM Nimbus - BBC Domesday System

RM Nimbus Fansite & Museum, detailing the BBC Domesday System

www.thenimbus.co.uk

I think the version I got to use may have involved a slightly later RM computer than the one shown there, not completely sure.

 

[elbows]

I probably will fire up a BBC emulator in the next week to briefly celebrate the anniversary. Partly because there was a crappy Yosser Hughes animation on a BBC micro disc my Dad had that also contained much worse (naked donkey kong and a cartoon animation of a man fucking a pig if I remember correctly) and whilst that disc is thankfully long gone and I have no interest in seeing the things I mentioned in brackets again, I think I have tracked down the Yosser animation! I will report back on this when I've given it a go.

 

[elbows]

View attachment YossaBBC.mp4

Yes I found it all right. Slightly messed up the cropping of this video but it should be good enough to get the idea. Hadnt seen this for decades!

 

[elbows]

By the way this is the emulator I used.

Releases · tom-seddon/b2

BBC Micro emulator for Windows, OS X, and Linux. Contribute to tom-seddon/b2 development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

And this is where I found the disk image for that and other animations:

Pernod's Animation - stardot.org.uk

stardot.org.uk

 

[moochedit]

RM Nimbus - BBC Domesday System

RM Nimbus Fansite & Museum, detailing the BBC Domesday System

www.thenimbus.co.uk

I think the version I got to use may have involved a slightly later RM computer than the one shown there, not completely sure.

At my school they had these old "green screen" things in the computer room called "RM links". Nobody ever touched them. We just used the bbc model B's.

 

[elbows]

At my school they had these old "green screen" things in the computer room called "RM links". Nobody ever touched them. We just used the bbc model B's.

I'm certainly glad I never experienced any of the RM's that came before the Nimbus, the Nimbus was bad enough although it wasnt all their own fault, CGA graphics really sucked and IBM clones often came across as soulless compared to the 8 and 16 bit home computers many of us had a soft spot for.

I'd forgotten quite how shrill and hideous the sound was on the BBC Micro. The Spectrum was nothing to write home about in terms of audio but at least people squeezed stuff out of it that wasnt too offensive. OK the Manic Miner intro screen was rather in your face.

I seem to remember the BBC version of Chuckie Egg had a better feel to it than on the other platforms of the day.

 

[elbows]

I remember this animation too but I havent bothered to run it on an emulator myself, even though its probably on that disk image I got.

 

[tep]

My parents, after taking sage advice from the salesman, opted for the...Lynx 48k - turned out that there was only three games available for it. All my mates had the zx81.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Complete BBC Micro Games Archive

www.bbcmicro.co.uk