unexpected encounter with 8bitguy

[Chuckie]

I found myself at the end of some trash talk with 8bitguy regarding the BBC Micro capabilities of producing a working Rise of the Petsci robots. He referred to The Beeb as 'niche' ofcourse it wasnt created by a US company so it doesnt count in his eyes. Any comments?

[Cruxinc]

I found myself at the end of some trash talk with 8bitguy regarding the BBC Micro capabilities of producing a working Rise of the Petsci robots. He referred to The Beeb as 'niche' ofcourse it wasnt created by a US company so it doesnt count in his eyes. Any comments?

imo, the 8 bit guy is an excellent youtuber.
i can see how he thinks that, as an american, that these british machines are niche(this is not the case). however, it does not mean its okay to downplay the importance of the beeb.
maybe try to educate him on its importance in the role of creating the arm chip and the general computer industry?
have a good day

[jgharston]

Niche? With 15 million machines built?

[paulb]

I found myself at the end of some trash talk with 8bitguy regarding the BBC Micro capabilities of producing a working Rise of the Petsci robots. He referred to The Beeb as 'niche' ofcourse it wasnt created by a US company so it doesnt count in his eyes. Any comments?

Well, what was the nature of the conversation? I guess nobody bothered to port his game to the Beeb, despite some Facebook posts that were referenced on here at some point, so maybe he believes that there is either no interest in his game amongst Beeb users, which might be fair comment, or that the Beeb can't manage it, which would be quite absurd.

As far as I remember, he got burned out making "physical" game releases and complained that people who had ordered them were costing him time and losing him money, at least unless they bought some premium edition or other. That made a lot of people, who had only ordered such boxed copies to show their support, feel like they had done a bad thing. Some people got quite upset, accusing him of abusing his customers. I think suggestions were made that he might partner with companies in different regions who would do all this merchandising activity for him, given that shipping costs and paperwork were the primary cause of diminished revenue, but he seemed disillusioned with the whole business. Last I heard, there were some extra ports of his game coming in, but these are all pretty much downloads that he doesn't do anything more than offer on his site, if that.

As for his focus, I think he stays within his comfort zone, covering the things he knows or grew up with. After a while, though, there's a risk of running out of things that can be said, or at least meaningful things. Part of the attraction with this hobby or interest should be the discovery of other things, that other people did things differently, and to appreciate other systems and technologies. I think a lot of his audience would appreciate his "take" on a variety of other microcomputers including the British ones, even if this coverage gets reduced to a feature comparison and the expression of a certain level of self-reassurance that he, or his audience, weren't missing out back in the day.

There is a bit of a contrast here with Adrian Black who has been quite open to looking at systems that are new to him. Obviously, he does odd things from time to time as well, like replacing the power supply in the Electron, and quite often works through a problem at length when the nature of the problem is well known and documented, but some of his investigations have nevertheless been informative, perhaps because he bothered to do a lot of mundane troubleshooting which led him to take a different perspective than the one we are used to.

So, it is difficult to comment precisely here. The 8-Bit Guy is in a bit of an odd place, perhaps running out of new angles on the retro content he likes to make, and thus leaving people a bit unhappy about the amount of new content he is producing. He invested a lot of time, effort and money in his own computer which is finally coming through, but the experience plus some of the feedback must have taken away a lot of the satisfaction. And having done a couple of things in restoration efforts that upset people, he seems to be unenthusiastic about doing computer restoration videos, which was the main draw for a section of his audience. However, he is doing restorations on the Time Rift Arcade channel, as he follows the lead from Nostalgia Nerd and goes into the whole arcade/pub ownership business.

I see that Elliot came in with another observation while I was writing all of that. I like watching the guy's stuff, too. But I'm not sure we need yet more people out there putting out practically the same line about "the BBC Micro is what brought us the ARM that is in all of our phones!" I think that would make me grumpy after a while, too.

[Elminster]

I found myself at the end of some trash talk with 8bitguy regarding the BBC Micro capabilities of producing a working Rise of the Petsci robots. He referred to The Beeb as 'niche' ofcourse it wasnt created by a US company so it doesnt count in his eyes. Any comments?

I guess it's perspective. I would have to think hard before saying the Apple II was a popular computer, which, of course, it was, just not in the UK.

[Elminster]

I found myself at the end of some trash talk with 8bitguy regarding the BBC Micro capabilities of producing a working Rise of the Petsci robots. He referred to The Beeb as 'niche' ofcourse it wasnt created by a US company so it doesnt count in his eyes. Any comments?

There is a bit of a contrast here with Adrian Black who has been quite open to looking at systems that are new to him. Obviously, he does odd things from time to time as well, like replacing the power supply in the Electron, and quite often works through a problem at length when the nature of the problem is well known and documented, but some of his investigations have nevertheless been informative, perhaps because he bothered to do a lot of mundane troubleshooting which led him to take a different perspective than the one we are used to.

Some of his debugging is great, although on the acorn ones, as soon as they came out, I would put on the comments when he would ask if anyone knew X, it's all on the Stardot forums, and you do occasionally see him pulling stuff from there, but as you say he would do some odd things at times that I remembered were covered on various posts. But like a lot of YouTubers, they never seem to ask questions directly on the relevant forums, only in their own discords or youtube comments.

But I do admit I watch most of the 8-bit guy and Adrian's stuff. They are easy watching.

[Ramtop]

I found myself at the end of some trash talk with 8bitguy regarding the BBC Micro capabilities of producing a working Rise of the Petsci robots. He referred to The Beeb as 'niche' ofcourse it wasnt created by a US company so it doesnt count in his eyes. Any comments?

The sheer scale of the market for US computers gives Americans a different perspective, I think. The beeb's 1.5m sales is very significant by UK standards, and indeed pretty much anywhere else in the world, but is small beer to Americans. Commodore's 264 family is regarded as a major sales flop, but between them the C16 and Plus/4 still sold almost 1m units.

Even with that, the 8-bit guy seems to be quite insular in regards to what he covers. He mostly ignores the Spectrum, but will do an entire video on those weird Timex-Sinclair machines that sold in miniscule numbers. Some of this is, I believe, down to lack of enthusiasm making him reluctant to do the necessary research to make videos about machines outside his comfort zone. His output has declined notably in the last year or so in terms of both quantity and quality.

[algenon_iii]

Niche? With 15 million machines built?

I think you've missed out a decimal point. It's widely regarded that about 1.5m were made (from A to Master), based on serial numbers it's estimated about 1m were made https://bbcmicro.computer/how-many-made

For the US 8-bit machines you have: Apple II - 6m, C64 - between 12.5m and 17m, VIC-20 - 2.5m , C16 - 1.26m

For the other UK 8-bits you have: Spectrum - 5m, CPC - 3m, ZX-81 - 1.5m

It's a very weird situation because every Brit over a certain age knows the Beeb and has used one, but very few ever had them as a home computer. More people had the humble Elk than the Beeb at home, out of my friends back in the 80s one had Beeb and three of us had Elks.

Niche? Yeah it's a fair comment.

[Cruxinc]

Niche? With 15 million machines built?

I think you've missed out a decimal point. It's widely regarded that about 1.5m were made (from A to Master), based on serial numbers it's estimated about 1m were made https://bbcmicro.computer/how-many-made

For the US 8-bit machines you have: Apple II - 6m, C64 - between 12.5m and 17m, VIC-20 - 2.5m , C16 - 1.26m

For the other UK 8-bits you have: Spectrum - 5m, CPC - 3m, ZX-81 - 1.5m

It's a very weird situation because every Brit over a certain age knows the Beeb and has used one, but very few ever had them as a home computer. More people had the humble Elk than the Beeb at home, out of my friends back in the 80s one had Beeb and three of us had Elks.

Niche? Yeah it's a fair comment.

funnily enough, both my dt and food tech teacher had beebs in their childhood...

[algenon_iii]

Niche? With 15 million machines built?

I think you've missed out a decimal point. It's widely regarded that about 1.5m were made (from A to Master), based on serial numbers it's estimated about 1m were made https://bbcmicro.computer/how-many-made

For the US 8-bit machines you have: Apple II - 6m, C64 - between 12.5m and 17m, VIC-20 - 2.5m , C16 - 1.26m

For the other UK 8-bits you have: Spectrum - 5m, CPC - 3m, ZX-81 - 1.5m

It's a very weird situation because every Brit over a certain age knows the Beeb and has used one, but very few ever had them as a home computer. More people had the humble Elk than the Beeb at home, out of my friends back in the 80s one had Beeb and three of us had Elks.

Niche? Yeah it's a fair comment.

funnily enough, both my dt and food tech teacher had beebs in their childhood...

Funny you should say that. My one mate who had a beeb (and an Archie later on), well his dad was a school teacher...

[paulb]

It's a very weird situation because every Brit over a certain age knows the Beeb and has used one, but very few ever had them as a home computer. More people had the humble Elk than the Beeb at home, out of my friends back in the 80s one had Beeb and three of us had Elks.

That's how the Electron kept the games market going, as noted previously. Maybe someone should ask the 8-Bit Guy for an Electron version of PETSCII Robots in order to change the commercial considerations.

Niche? Yeah it's a fair comment.

Only in terms of machines sold, but not in terms of cultural significance. Well, at least if other people's cultural experiences matter, of course. I think Ramtop's remarks about comfort zones and a lack of enthusiasm to explore other cultural and technological phenomena are probably a fair summary.

[1024MAK]

Do the number of units sold actually mean anything or is it more about how well known the machine/model is? That will depend on where you are in the world and the timeframe.

The sales of the various 8 bit home computers varied enormously depending on which country you lived in.

And there were plenty more models than mentioned so far. We all know about the Acorn machines here, obviously.
But with the Sinclair machines, these were sold in various other countries than the UK.
And in the USA, a version of the ZX81 was sold by Timex Sinclair as the TS1000 (small numbers of ZX81 were also sold in the USA by Sinclair themselves).

Talking of Timex Sinclair, they also produced the TS1500 (a TS1000 with 16K bytes of RAM built-in), the TS2068 (97% compatibility with the ZX Spectrum if an “emulator” cartridge was used, which just contained a copy of the ZX Spectrum ROM).

Meanwhile Timex in Portugal, sold the Timex Computer 2048 / TC2048 and the Timex Computer 2068 / TC2068 in Portugal and Poland. The TC2048 was very successful in these countries.

In Spain, the ZX Spectrum was popular. In Germany, the CPC machines were popular.

In the USSR, there were many ZX Spectrum clones. But no one ever estimates the number of these and adds it to the ZX Spectrum total.

Back to the UK and part of the reason that the Commodore 64 was not completely dominating the market is due to vast number of models available, here are most models:
Acorn Atom
Acorn Election
Acorn BBC A
Acorn BBC B
Atari 400
Atari 800
Camputers Lynx
Commodore VIc 20
Colour Genie
Genie I
Genie II
Dragon 32
Jupiter Ace
Newbrain
Oric-1
Sinclair ZX81
Sinclair ZX Spectrum 16K
Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K
Sord M5
Tandy TRS-80 model 1
Tandy TRS-80 MC-10
Tandy Color Computer
Texas Ti99/4A

Also, some of these were available before the Commodore 64 was released in the UK.

Another consideration is that sometimes the Commodore 64 was marketed and seen as a games console rather than a programmable computer. Again, this depends on where you were in the world and the year.

And of course, in the UK various manufacturers entered the market or existing manufacturers launched new models after the Commodore 64 was released. Most notable was Amstrad with their CPC464.

The QL from Sinclair being known for all the wrong reasons, but there was also the Memotech MTX500, the sleekest and sexiest looking computer of the time IMHO.

Rather late to the party, the various MSX models. But there were others that are not very well known now. Including the very late Enterprise.

With all this competition, in a market where many buyers knew very little about computers, it made for interesting times.

Mark

[jgharston]

You could probably say that there was functionally 15 million Beebs in existance, as all those in schools each one would be used by a dozen different pupils. Quick envelope scribbling: the 15 in Room 201 would be used by 2 pupils at any one time, there were 2100 pupils in the school, so we had 280 "nominal" machines. And that's before counting the half dozen in the Office Studies room, the one in the library, the one in the science block, the one in the tech block, and I'm such a couple of others somewhere.

[tricky]

Personally, my Vic-20 had put me off commodore, that and I hadn't even heard of the c64 when I got my beeb
When I went back to my school to help out, they had 2 Beebs for over 1k pupils but I expect they soon got more.

As for the orac, wasn't that on the liberator although a friend had an Oric

[1024MAK]

Whoops Best not confuse Orac, a powerful and sophisticated artificial intelligence that could take over and control nearly all other computers with the Oric-1, a British-designed and built machine, released in 1983, based on a 1 MHz 6502A CPU

Orac:


Oric-1


Mark

[vexorg]

Whoops Best not confuse Orac, a powerful and sophisticated artificial intelligence

Sarcasm at it's best, it really got Avon's back up.

I never knew until recently orac and zen were the same actor.

[sweh]

I never knew until recently orac and zen were the same actor.

And, later, "Slave".

[james]

And, later, "Slave".

Containing an Acorn System 1.

[julie_m]

British microcomputers of the 1980s seemed to do things differently from American microcomputers of the 1980s.

The Americans generally had character-mapped displays, upon which sprites defined by bitmaps could be overlaid with pixel precision, and natively generated composite picture and colour signals.

We generally had bit-mapped displays, like one enormous sprite, and natively generated RGB video signals.

[tom_seddon]

I think you've missed out a decimal point. It's widely regarded that about 1.5m were made (from A to Master), based on serial numbers it's estimated about 1m were made https://bbcmicro.computer/how-many-made

For some actual vague numbers from Acorn, see viewtopic.php?p=389556#p389556 - the January 1990 PDF mentions "over ten years of operation with more than 1,250,000 microcomputers sold". They're being a bit vague about which microcomputers they're referring to though. If you're going back to January 1980 then the period must surely include some non-BBC stuff.

Restrict yourself to BBC-or-adjacent 8-bit computers, and this total isn't actually massively out of line with the figures implied by the serial numbers thread. 649K (BBC A/B)+350K (Electron)+62K (B+)+6K (B+128)+263K (Master 128)+40K (Master Compact)+6K (Master ET) = 1,376,000. (Master 128 production didn't stop until 1992. Did they sell 125,000 in those last 2 years??! Who knows. It's all estimates at this point anyway.)

If you assume the rather lower figures from https://bbcmicro.computer/how-many-made, then >1,250,000 as of January 1990 is going to be a bit harder to reach. The serial numbers thread suggests that the pre-1990 Archimedes models didn't sell enough to make up the numbers, and if the 8-bit numbers there are an overestimate then the 32-bit ones might be too. Maybe the Atom sold a lot though.

--Tom

[vexorg]

Maybe the Atom sold a lot though.

Dont think so, and going by prices on ebay, there must be some very rich atom collectors.