Another Hello again! (From Northamptonshire)

[Neil]

Hello all,

I thought as I have gone through a change with my BBC’s that I would say hi again and describe the upgrades etc and just how amazing they are! There are a number of great people on this forum who have re-invented some of the classic hardware, most we couldn’t afford, I am just blown away by the quality and every item I have bought has just ‘worked’.

History:

I started programming and got the bug in 1978 on a Research machine 380Z at school. It had an old black and white TV, a massive teletypewriter printer and a crap tape player. I loved it. As part of the computer studies, we did Basic and Cecil. Cecil was a primitive assembler designed for school and I think it was loosely based on 8080, but I could be wrong. Anyway writing my first program was the start.
In the RAF, while training, I did a course on the 8080-8085 chip, that was classified top secret and I can’t tell you about that!
I started out with a Spectrum, then got the BBC B in 1984, when I could afford it. I also got a DSDD disk drive and controller (about 500 pounds then) and a 6502 processor (don’t ask that price). I could only get the hardware from a small shop in Norwich and looking back, they did mark up their prices. The best addition though was the volume control I added, I sourced the most perfect old wire-wound POT (it came from an old ship radio) and it felt so good when adjusting the volume.
Anyway times slips by and I unfortunately sold my BBC, however I did buy a few more. I sold them, and now I have just one, a BBC Master, that I love.

In 2009 I developed the now classic space invaders that we all play… LOL.. okay I play, it’s sparse invaders and source and binary were on RetroSoftware, many thanks for all the help then. However we all know Tricky’s Space Invaders is the one we all play.

Now -
BBC-Master:

So, it’s a BBC Master 128, and it now has the following -

Multi-OS 4 in 1 - Retro client
Internal Pi-second processors - Retro client
Compact Flash IDE - supporting 2 512Mb drives - Retro client
Econet board - Ken Lowe
PiEconetBridge - Ken Lowe
PiEconet Adaptor - for the PC - Ken Lowe
Compact-SD Cartridge allowing MMFS via SD cards.
EEPROM 12 rom switcher Cartridge
Gotek Drive - Retro client
5 1/4 inch drive - Retro client
3 1/2 inch drive - with internal PSU.

Mark at Retro-client is a great help, he put together the CF IDE kit and supplied the updated multi-Os board, replacing the old rip-off that I had. This is a major game changer, and I used the CF image that Mark supplied, containing games, doom etc and it works a treat. The Gotek drive is a must when using the various co-processors, I have most of them setup, and it’s great booting into dos on the 80186 processor.

Ken has been a star, with the setup for the Econet that I have just got working. I purchased the Raspberry Pi 3 B+ and Ken supplied the Econet mini-board for the Master, the ANFS rom, the PiEconetBridge with the Hub, and the PiEconet adaptor for the PC to connect. I did have a problem regarding the Econet not quite working, however I re-installed the raspberry pi OS and went through the installation again, and it worked, so pt that down to user error! I now have a Econet file server with a massive 63GB drive, and it cost a very small fraction of the original. It serious is a must, if you are a big kid and love to do everything on your Beeb, like me!

I will say the 3 1/2 inch drive, is a big step up from the 5 1.4 inch drive, it’s quiet and faster. But the Gotek is the king, it allows so many disk images to be read, including the larger hfe disks.

Plans for the future -

I am currently working on a side project that will be a IDE for developing 6502 applications/ disks to be run on the BBC. It’s in the early changes and I might approach Dave to discuss the possibility of embedding beebem in the IDE. I will say, I have just thought of that, so might be interesting having the emulation of all the hardware within the IDE.

I also need to write a game, I wonder, if I wrote a game that was for co-processor only, how popular would that be? How many people these days have one. Anyway, food for thought.

- many thanks again, to all that have had the patience’s etc when dealing with me,
- Neil

[tricky]

Welcome again
I had a rule that if there was a good beeb version of a game I wouldn't do another, but I started my Space Invaders for a BASIC programming comp and then got fed up with BASIC :O, I hadn't used it for nearly 40 years!
There is SWIFT (right name?) on the beeb, which was ahead of its time, but now there are some great IDEs for other platforms which do a great job of integrating debugging and development as well as leaps forward in VSCode intagreation.
I would love to see a great IDE for the beeb with all the modern comforts, although I might still stick with Visual Studio plus a .bat file
I would hope that more friendly IDEs would encourage more developers
I've noticed that nearly every machine has more games designers than coders, except the beeb where it seems to be the other way around! - This may just be my perception though! We do have some excellent music people on the beeb/misc x000/SN in general.

[flaxcottage]

That is a great Master setup, almost identical to mine.

The only thing missing is a beer mat on the floppy drive plinth to hold a pint.

[Multiwizard]

Welcome again...


Greetings from my little Dutch Atomic Attic, Wim...

[Neil]

Welcome again
I had a rule that if there was a good beeb version of a game I wouldn't do another, but I started my Space Invaders for a BASIC programming comp and then got fed up with BASIC :O, I hadn't used it for nearly 40 years!
There is SWIFT (right name?) on the beeb, which was ahead of its time, but now there are some great IDEs for other platforms which do a great job of integrating debugging and development as well as leaps forward in VSCode intagreation.
I would love to see a great IDE for the beeb with all the modern comforts, although I might still stick with Visual Studio plus a .bat file
I would hope that more friendly IDEs would encourage more developers
I've noticed that nearly every machine has more games designers than coders, except the beeb where it seems to be the other way around! - This may just be my perception though! We do have some excellent music people on the beeb/misc x000/SN in general.

Yes, I used Swift for the Sparse invaders, it was really good. I was speaking to Steve (sorvad) last year about assisting with his reboot of Swift, but that is still ongoing as I await a reply, hopefully all is good with him. So, I have started the IDE, it's runs in a console cross-platform , but it's early days, as I got side-tracked with upgrades for the Beeb. I will probably be the only one to use it, but it's good fun to write.
Anyway Tricky, I just want to say, your games are just fantastic! I am an experienced games coder, lots of titles for Disney, Core Design and Team 17 in the hay-day of gaming in the early 90s, I play your games and know you have set new standards for quality, play ability and that extra 1% of polish that makes my jaw drop. Any game I do, I will be using yours as a bench mark, from now on.

I am a big fan of Visual studio, and Code, there are so many bad IDE's that I have to suffer with for work (embedded stuff). I am using the 6502 plug in with Visual Code, however it just would be nice to have a dedicated development environment for the BEEB.

And, you are so right, there appears to be so many coders for the Beeb, it was a great machine to use. Also the emulators for the Beeb are so much better now, so much work goes in to supporting the various hardware. I personally feel that real coders are born that way, we are a rare bred, and from my experience, most of them had a beeb of one sort or another.

Cheers, Neil

[Neil]

That is a great Master setup, almost identical to mine.

The only thing missing is a beer mat on the floppy drive plinth to hold a pint.

please do not give me ideas! I did a google search and there is an opening for branded Acorn computer beer mats, please don't tell anyone, but I might get some printed!

[daveejhitchins]

Welcome (back?) to the forum, Neil . . . Enjoy . . .

Dave H.

[tricky]

Thanks, but I think my games are at most 1% polish but there are some really creative and beautifully polished games for the beeb.
Sticking to 50 FPS without flicker (not necessarily on my arcade ROM ports) and using mode 1 does restrict what can be achieved, but achieving it is what I enjoy the most.
If I didn't have to add lives, game over, score etc,I would probably have made 2-3X as many games, that should give some idea of where all my time and enthusiasm goes out gets sapped