TECHNOLOGIES TIME FORGOT: THE BBC MICRO (II)
A personal viewIan Jones writes:
My own experience was with a BBC Model B, which my parents bought for the whole family. I remember the electric anticipation as my dad and I drove to Watford Electronics to buy the fabled machine. The journey home took a lifetime but finally we plugged it into the telly, wrestled with a tape recorder lead which seemed to have far too many connectors, and finally flicked that reassuringly solid black switch on the back of our very own BBC B. What followed was a perfect introduction to computers that has been with me ever since. It didn't work.
The machine powered on OK but it took a while to realise that loading the 'Welcome' tape required a superhumanly sensitive touch on the tape player's volume control. Finally I managed to get it to load and enjoyed such pleasures as Biorhythms, which told me exactly what phase of physical and mental health I was in.
Strangely it never understood the fact that I had a dead leg from sitting on the floor for too long and a headache from a combination of tape recorder grief and irradiating my brain for six hours in front of a 24-inch TV screen.
Almost a year later, I had pleasured myself to the delights of Killer Gorilla, Defender, Arcadians, Escape from Moonbase Alpha and of course the text-only and insanely hard Acornsoft adventure classic, Philosophers Quest.
But now it was time to quite literally take the lid off the true potential of the BBC Micro. We spent a small fortune on a double disk drive from Viglen and an Opus Disk Operating System. Once back at home, the lid was off, and my dad and I were sawing away at one of the main circuit board chips after realising it was only 'plug and play' if you didn't mind cutting processor legs and soldering wires to them.
This was computing at its most raw and I will be forever thankful for the experiences it gave me. It didn't just give me computer games, it gave me my first steps in BASIC, Pascal (we bought the Computer Concepts chip) and machine code programming. And now, looking back almost 20 years, I can still hear that special symphony - the unbelievably noisy 5 1/4 inch drives competing with the hammering of the Epson LX86, only bettered by the reassuring 'ber... beep' of the good old Beeb powering up (which, incidentally, took approximately 1.5 seconds - quicker than your monitor took to warm up - PC makers please take note).
The BBC B was followed up - somewhat belatedly - in 1985 by the BBC B+ and eventually the BBC Master, which both added extra graphics and extra memory. However, despite the fact these both achieved healthy sales, the zenith of the Beeb's influence had undoubtedly passed.
Acorn tried to combat falling sales by launching the high-powered Archimedes in 1987 but this also floundered because of lack of software. However, the RISC chipset it had spent millions creating for it became the basis for another great success, ARM, which was spun off in 1990.
Acorn itself was bought by Olivetti and limped on until 1999, nearly two decades after the first BBCs were built. For many who remember the original BBC machines it was an ignominious end for the company that created the most influential UK computer of all time.
I dare you to disagree.
Follow-up by Silicon.com:
The Grandaddy of them all? The opening line our two-part Technologies that time forgot article on the BBC Micro had you reminiscing fondly and disputing hotly in roughly equal measure.
Those speaking ill of the dead included GP Dresch, who said: "The BBC Micro - a third rate copy of the Apple II. Doomed to eventual demise and obscurity because it was not compatible with anything."
Peter Barnes went further, saying the widely adored BBC B was really just a cheap copy of the Pet. "MOS6502 and 6510 were the main processors at the back end of the 1960s. It is interesting to muse that the education system of the 1980s went for a system almost 20 years old at the time. In computing terms not a lot better than an abacus," he added.
The naysayers may have their point, but regardless, you proved to use that widely adored the beeb indeed was.
Take David Taskis for example, who remains so enamoured with his Beeb, he still uses it. "I guess there can't be many still earning a crust, but my BBC Model B (heavily ROMed though it is), is still putting in good service rendering weather images from low earth orbiting satellites."
Taskis also waxed lyrical about the reliability of the machine, claiming he heard a story from a colleague about a University of London BBC Micro which was considered the only piece of kit solid enough to poll a Cray supercomputer to make sure it was still functioning.
Stories of Beebs being used in scientific applications were commonplace too.
Richard Olearczyk said: "My first experience of it was programming it at our university's Space Science Unit. We produced a real-time data analysis system for the ESA Halley's Comet probe Giotto on a suite of them - all shipped out to Germany alongside all the other universities VAX computers! And they featured our screen shots live on the BBC and ZDF."
Olearczyk went on to say many city banks used them too, as financial graphics terminals, making it the first really serious PC as far as he was concerned.
Colin Robertson agreed, claiming he used a variant of the original BBC Micro right up until 1996, when - and here's one in the eye for those who were critical of its compatibility - he successfully transferred all his Beebug Masterfile records to PC without a single character being lost.
As if to display the diversity of the BBC Micros appeals though, many of you commented that our article failed to mention the absolute all-time classic BBC Micro game - Elite.
silicon.com can do nothing more than offer it's sincere apologies for this - the original article did refer to that wonderful electronic synthesis of shoot-em-up and adventure games, but the section slipped into the wastebasket during the editing process.
So to right that wrong, let's begin with Lee Mayhew, who said: "Elite is simply the best computer game ever in my opinion. The original black and white game run off the tape should be required study for anyone wanting to write efficient code. If modern games writers had to produce an equivalent it would take up how much room? 10 to 50Mbytes I reckon."
Other comments included: "This was the most fantastic, mind blowing game I had ever played," and, "My father bought himself, er, I mean of course his children, a BBC B. By the end of the second weekend, he, his friends, their wives, and (when I was very, very lucky) me and my own pals, were playing Elite in shifts around the clock with the same commander. I can still hear the sound of a Military Laser in my dreams sometimes."
Nigel Greensitt added: "I spent hours and hours on that game, probably more than any other and it has nothing to do with me 'growing up' I haven't!" Well this author is with you all the way, having served enough time in front of that magical beige box to finally make it all the way from Harmless to Elite. 'Happy Memories' as one reader said.
For one machine to have given pleasure as a games console, encouraged children into careers in programming, and to have been crucial to so much scientific research must surely be proof of the Beeb's rightful place in computing legend.
But perhaps we'll leave the last work to Mark Harold, who echoed the feelings of many.
"Name me a current project as visionary or utopian as the BBC Micro. Can you imagine the current government, the current BBC, British manufacturing and BT ever getting together like that again? Broadband Britain could have put us ahead again, like the BBC did, but no, we've stuffed it into a hat and we just argue about hospitals and go round saying 'after the events of 11 September'.
Right on Commander!
This article appeared on Silicon.com on Friday 25th January 2002.