Advanced Master Reference Manual [Remastered PDF]

[dv8]

Here is a completely remastered PDF of the Advanced Reference Manual for the BBC Master by Watford Electronics.

• The look and layout of the original book has been preserved.
• A large number of error corrections have been applied to the text.
• All diagrams have been redrawn in vectors.
• There is extensive hyperlinking - click on any reference to a page, chapter or section to jump directly to the relevant page.

Advanced_Master_Reference_Manual.pdf

Second revision (April 2023)

(1.05 MiB) Downloaded 401 times

Other remastered user guides in this series:

Master Reference Manual Parts 1 and 2
Advanced User Guide
New Advanced User Guide
BBC Micro User Guide (Model B and B+ editions)

[Kecske Bak]

Many thanks for this - I have your entire collection on my PocketBook and I'm currently reading through Ian Birnbaums's 6502 book and cross referencing the User Guides and Advance User Guides as I go through. It simply amazes me the amount of work you are putting into this project. I assure you that I am putting your hard work to good use!

[leenew]

Thank you.
Amazing work once again!

Lee.

[Lardo Boffin]

Nice! Many thanks.

[TobyLobster]

Excellent work as always, it's great to have this. (Errata: P215 "0.5μ5 on a BBC model B" should be "0.5μs" I guess.)

[dv8]

It simply amazes me the amount of work you are putting into this project. I assure you that I am putting your hard work to good use!

Thanks. It's always good to know that people find these books useful.

Errata: P215 "0.5μ5 on a BBC model B" should be "0.5μs" I guess.

Yes it should be μs. I should have caught that one during proof reading.
Sometimes I wonder what on earth the OCR is thinking when it does stuff like this.

[BeebMaster]

Looks great, thank you so much. It's always annoyed me with this manual that Watford made such an effort to keep the cover style consistent with the two Acorn Master Reference manuals but they never bothered to match the font!

[SteveF]

Another amazing effort, thanks! I didn't even know this existed until now.

Errata: P215 "0.5μ5 on a BBC model B" should be "0.5μs" I guess.

Yes it should be μs. I should have caught that one during proof reading.
Sometimes I wonder what on earth the OCR is thinking when it does stuff like this.

Am I missing something, or is there another error - the next line suggests the cycle time is 0.33us on a Master. Surely the cycle time is 0.5us on a Master, just like on a BBC B? 0.33us would apply to an external Acorn 6502 copro (whether connected to a B or Master).

[BigEd]

I think I spotted a factual error too - but what to do? These are not OCR problems...

(The manual says that there are two custom chips in the Tube, one at each end, and that's not so, for Acorn second processors.)

[cmorley]

I think I spotted a factual error too - but what to do? These are not OCR problems...

(The manual says that there are two custom chips in the Tube, one at each end, and that's not so, for Acorn second processors.)

It is on the Master because the Tube is buffered (& switched internal/external)... For the external Tube IC21 sits in the way between the CPU bus and the external Tube on the Master & INTUBE/EXTUBE are generated by IC15.

[BigEd]

Well, I suppose one could read it that way, and the EBC is described earlier on, but these two paragraphs a bit later read to me as misapprehension:

Each processor runs independently of the other and is provided with its own clock and memory chips. The two systems communicate with one another over a 2MHz asynchronous bus, known as the Tube, which is controlled at each end by a custom interface.

The Tube provides the means for the language and I/O processors to communicate with each other. The Tube comprises a pair of proprietary chips coupled to the respective processors and communicating with one another over a 2MHz asynchronous bus.

It's true to say that "The Tube chip" is always singular and related to a single second processor, and it's true that the Master can have two second processors connected, one internal and one external, but to me those paragraphs still don't read right.

However, if that's an objection, it's an objection to the original document, not to the excellent and helpful remastering of the document!

[TobyLobster]

One more... P.87: "4) USERV has been included in the MOS sub-section because it is used to pass the unknown OSWORDs &E0 to &FF the user." this should be "...*to* the user." I would imagine.

[Edzard]

Thanks! Very impressive indeed.


Edzard

[lovebug]

nicely done thanks

[DutchAcorn]

This is (again) an amazing piece of work, beautifully done. Thank you for the hard work and sharing it.

[dv8]

Am I missing something, or is there another error - the next line suggests the cycle time is 0.33us on a Master. Surely the cycle time is 0.5us on a Master, just like on a BBC B? 0.33us would apply to an external Acorn 6502 copro (whether connected to a B or Master).

When I first read that line I took it to mean an external 2P on either the Master or Model B. Looking at it again, it does seem to imply the Master without a 2P so I'll re-organise this part to make it clearer.

I think I spotted a factual error too - but what to do? These are not OCR problems...
(The manual says that there are two custom chips in the Tube, one at each end, and that's not so, for Acorn second processors.)

Factual errors are welcome too. I would like the remastered books to be accurate and have already fixed loads of mistakes in this one.

My initial interpretation of "a pair of proprietary chips" was a Tube ULA on the parasite and the PBC on the host. I see what you mean though, the two quoted paragraphs could be read as a Tube ULA on each side.

I'm still undecided whether to change this or leave it as is. Anyone care to offer an alternative, less ambiguous, wording?

However, if that's an objection, it's an objection to the original document, not to the excellent and helpful remastering of the document!

No worries, I didn't take it that way!

The whole book really is quite shoddy and feels like it was put together in a rush. It's not much more than a collection of sloppily copy+pasted text from other sources with little attention given to quality control.

One more... P.87: "4) USERV has been included in the MOS sub-section because it is used to pass the unknown OSWORDs &E0 to &FF the user." this should be "...*to* the user." I would imagine.

Agreed. I'll change this in the next release.

Finally, a big thanks to all the other commenters for your kind words.

[dp11]

Excellent work. A few possible improvements

Page 12 : The mega Rom is 128K not 262K

Page 14: the capacitor that holds the charge while you change the battery is 100uF, not 10mF. there should perhaps be a footnote to say the battery charging circuitry is only fitted on early issue 1 machines.

Page 40 : Keyboard table The row labels are in the wrong order. The top line should be R0 onwards to R7 at the bottom.

Page 224: BIT immediate ( &89 ) only sets the Z flag and not N or V. This is a very common mistake.

[tom_seddon]

Looks like its description of the addressable latch hardware scrolling bits (p 47) has the same problem as the one in the AUG: viewtopic.php?f=42&t=17242&p=344467#p344467

--Tom

[dp11]

Page 20
Should be
Display Mode 7 is a Teletext mode implemented by an SAA5050 (IC32) Teletext character generator. IC21latches the information coming from the RAM prior to the SAA5050. When using this mode, only 1K of RAM is devoted to the display memory and the characters are held within it as ASCII bytes. The SAA5050 then translates these bytes into a standard Teletext/Prestel format display.

[dp11]

Page 219/Page 220 BBR/BBS take one extra cycle if the branch is taken.

[Deleted User 13996]

p74, Page FD description, "Data latched into the paging register will provide the top eight address bits to the Eurocard back plane. These top address bits are referred to as the ‘Extended Page Number’. Any peripheral designed to locate in page FD without using an expansion back plane". Aren't Eurocards just used by the System devices?

Should "disk" become "disc"? (pages 169, 185, 193, 202) "When fitted, the Disk Filing System (DFS)". etc.

p224, BIT description,"This instruction is used to test whether various bits are set in a memory location by performing an AND instruction. It does not however effect either the accumulator of the memory location". Should the "of" be an "or"?

[BigEd]

p224, BIT description,"This instruction is used to test whether various bits are set in a memory location by performing an AND instruction. It does not however effect either the accumulator of the memory location". Should the "of" be an "or"?

Certainly 'effect' should be 'affect'!

'disk' vs 'disc' is certainly inconsistent, but that was normal in the day. I see 12 counts of disk and 70 counts of disc. Acorn's DFS guide notes:

The BBC Microcomputer uses 5¼" soft-sectored floppy discs for storing information. You may have heard them referred to as 'floppy discs', 'discettes', or ` mini-discs'; we will always refer to them simply as discs. (The American spelling is disk.)

and I see both *DISK and *DISC are accepted by DFS.

[Deleted User 13996]

'disk' vs 'disc' is certainly inconsistent, but that was normal in the day. I see 12 counts of disk and 70 counts of disc.

Indeed, but it was only suggested for the sake of consistency within this manual.

[BigEd]

Fair point!

[BeebMaster]

I don't think even I would ever use the spelling "discettes" you know, because that suggests a soft "c" or "sh" sound in the middle, that looks like it would be pronounced "dee-shett" instead of "dis-kett"!

[BigEd]

well spotted - that looks totally wrong to me!

I think for a modern audience DISK is always right. (OK, someone will surely think otherwise!)

[Deleted User 13996]

Looking at the other manuals dv8 has worked on I found a diskette but no discettes. Though the majority of the rest were discs (with few or no disks). So I (respectfully) disagree with BigEd and think disc for historical verisimilitude

Though, tbh, it doesn’t make any difference to the usefulness of the manual one way or the other!

Let me scratch that. It’s not really so very important

[dp11]

These remastered manuals are excellent. Something I've done in the past for error checking is to create a histogram of words it does mean typos stand out.

[BigEd]

They are indeed excellent.

Histogram challenge accepted!

Some of these are perhaps matters of Acorn house style or even personal preference. And some are very minor. And I'm afraid I've probably mixed up page numbers and PDF page numbers. There turned out to be more things to note than I'd expected...

p18 2Mhz should be 2MHz
p37-38 inconsistent MHZ1 versus MHz1
p37 pin22 should probably be pin 22
p48 co-ordinates should probably be coordinates as it mostly is elsewhere
p59 over-ride should probably be override as elsewhere
p65 Parametric-Specification should be Parametric Specification
p66 SA5050 should very probably be SAA5050 as elsewhere
p81 512kbit and 512k should be K to be consistent with 1Mbit nearby
p83 co-ordinates several times
p91 co-ordinates several times
p92 Look-up should be Look up (it's a verb here)
p115 256-transfer should be 256-byte transfer
p119 NMI-pin should be NMI pin
p129 RS432 should be RS423
p168 ROM ID's should be ROM IDs
p181 co-ordinate again
p181 nonbackground should be non-background for consistency
p182 nongraphics should perhaps be non-graphics
p188 NMI's should be NMIs as it is everywhere else
p189 Light-pen should very probably be Light pen as it is everywhere else
p189 Mhz should be MHz
p191 lCS should be ICS (lowercase letter L used instead of uppercase i)
p191 ROM's should be ROMs and EPROM's should be EPROMs
p193 6mS and three other mS should be ms
p195 tracker-ball should be trackerball as elsewhere
p197 several instances of top-bit probably should be top bit
p197 top-bit bit code should surely be top bit set code
p198 ISO-font should probably be ISO font
p201 Print Sever should be Print Server
p208 128k should be 128K
p208 op-code should be opcode
p212 16Mhz should be 16MHz likewise 8Mhz
p213 Light-Pen again should be Light Pen as elsewhere
p215 FFC8H should probably be 0FFC8H as it is twice nearby
p216 125nS should be 125ns

[baz4096]

I think for a modern audience DISK is always right. (OK, someone will surely think otherwise!)

Disc is the British English spelling of the word - Disk is the American English version.
Diskette is correct in both American & British English.
Interestingly, in America they have "Compact Discs"
I seem to recall that Acorn were a stickler for 'disc' in all their publications.


Google Ngram Viewer is also interesting here:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c ... moothing=3

All three forms (disc, disk, diskette) are less popular now (in published literature) than since the 1860s.