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Vintage computer fun

SteveG said:
Just had a better look at the two I have and they both do power on and seem functional. I'd originally thought they were model-B's but turns out they're BBC Master's.
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Excellent. Masters are rather interesting, though until recently not as much fun for gaming as they weren’t fully compatible with the B. Thankfully the retro community being what it is that issue is now fixed and you can get this switchable OS ROM and boot it as a BBC B should you wish to play Chuckie Egg or whatever!
 
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gavreid said:
Most of the technical base in the universities is long gone now
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really?

ours are still doing stuff, innovating, building equipment. Technology might have moved on, and the spirit of entrepreneurship might have dimished a little, but it is alive and kicking in my department.
 
There's some remaining clearly, but the large mechanical and electronics shops of the past are either away or very much diminished. The funding system doesn't provide for these baseline costs any longer, both the cost of the space and of the salaries, as everything is tied to specific research contracts of limited duration.
 
Tony L said:
Excellent. Masters are rather interesting, though until recently not as much fun for gaming as they weren’t fully compatible with the B. Thankfully the retro community being what it is that issue is now fixed and you can get this switchable OS ROM and boot it as a BBC B should you wish to play Chuckie Egg or whatever!
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Your next port of call should be an Arc.... 8-]
 
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Tony L said:
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FWIW here is what I learnt from the tentative first boot before stripping the computer down, i.e. this is the contents of the now-removed ATPL Sideways ROM board (I’ll take a pic of it tomorrow). I’ve rebuilt the BBC to the minimal factory spec of just the OS and Basic ROMs, plus put the digitiser ROM (whatever that is) back as it had been transplanted to the APTL. As I understand it I don’t even need DFS as the SD card system comes with its own I/O ROM which provides file-handling etc. Once I’ve got the SD card etc sorted and everything working I’m tempted to install Wordwise for the hell of it, not that I’d ever use it! I assume ‘Interchart’ is some kind of spreadsheet and I’ve no idea what the Watford Electronics thing is, I’ll google it at some point.

I was actually rather nervous about doing this as amazingly I’ve never installed/removed any chips from sockets before. The slightly later IT-era I worked in had moved beyond EPROMS etc. Anyway I just went really slow and nudged each end until they popped out so thankfully it went without any hitch.
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Dumpout was a screen dump utility. An interesting PDF from Watford Electronics here:

https://www.4corn.co.uk/archive/showpdfs/05 Acorn User July 1985 - Barbican/Watford Electronics - Micro Catalogue July 85.pdf

and something about the company itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watford_Electronics
http://alanwinstanley.squarespace.c...15/the-legacy-of-watford-electronics-ltd.html




I am sure back in the day I bought stuff from them
 
gavreid said:
There's some remaining clearly, but the large mechanical and electronics shops of the past are either away or very much diminished. The funding system doesn't provide for these baseline costs any longer, both the cost of the space and of the salaries, as everything is tied to specific research contracts of limited duration.
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we have a thriving and growing base of workshops and technicians in mechanical, aerospace, automotive and electronics. In fact we have recently taken on three apprentices to keep the growth going. And none of this tied to research contracts.
 
Jim Audiomisc said:
Your next port of call should be an Arc.... 8-]
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They are very interesting machines and given the enormous historical significance of ARM possiby quite wise to have a mint boxed one stashed away! There was someone flogging boxed NOS A3020s on eBay a while back, which looked great, but they were too dear (£400) for me to take a random punt on as I’ve no knowledge or emotional connection to them. I’ve never even been in a room with one, though I have got as far as making a RISC OS SD card for my Raspberry Pi (which I can’t currently used as I haven’t got a middle mouse button!).

I have a feeling I’ve now pretty much got what I want. The only things missing are either very bulky, very expensive, or both, e.g. I’d love an IBM 5150, early IBM ‘luggable’, or even a PS/2, but being honest I’ve nowhere to set it up even if I found a real bargain! The beauty of the ZX Spectrum, Beeb, Electron etc is they are all pretty small, self-contained and I can just plug them into my TV when I want to have a play (I converted the Spectrum to composite out and have a RGB to SCART lead for the Beeb and Elk).
 
gintonic said:
Dumpout was a screen dump utility. An interesting PDF from Watford Electronics here:

https://www.4corn.co.uk/archive/showpdfs/05 Acorn User July 1985 - Barbican/Watford Electronics - Micro Catalogue July 85.pdf

and something about the company itself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watford_Electronics
http://alanwinstanley.squarespace.c...15/the-legacy-of-watford-electronics-ltd.html




I am sure back in the day I bought stuff from them
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I can recall some calling them "Whatfraud". 8-]

And I did buy three ARM3 CPU 'upgrade' chips from them... which all failed because they couldn't be upclocked as they'd arranged.
 
Tony L said:
I have a feeling I’ve now pretty much got what I want. The only things missing are either very bulky, very expensive, or both, e.g. I’d love an IBM 5150, early IBM ‘luggable’, or even a PS/2, but being honest I’ve nowhere to set it up even if I found a real bargain! The beauty of the ZX Spectrum, Beeb, Electron etc is they are all pretty small, self-contained and I can just plug them into my TV when I want to have a play (I converted the Spectrum to composite out and have a RGB to SCART lead for the Beeb and Elk).
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Elite? 8-]
 
Jim Audiomisc said:
Elite? 8-]
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The game? I remember my BBC-owning friend back in the early-80s raving about it, and I have it for both the Beeb and Spectrum (Beeb version is much better). I’ve never played it, but now I have a way (once I learn how to do it!) of saving data I might well have a play. It is way too big to play in one ‘go’.

There is actually a ‘Tube enhanced’ version on the SD card I got today that was designed for a Beeb with the 6502 co-processor, but can actually be played by sticking a Raspberry Pi Zero into the ‘Tube’ port with appropriate Pi software etc. I’m half tempted to do this for the hell of it as you can get the Pi to emulate any of the available BBC B co-processors (Z80, Intel 80186 etc) and it would be rather amusing to run MS DOS on a BBC! I’ve seen people on YouTube get the Digital Research GEM windows environment running in mode 0!
 
The BBC B is where it started, it is viewed by many as the Beeb’s defining game. The Spectrum and Electron ports both look like rather less and run a bit slower. I’ve seen later versions on more powerful computers (Amiga IIRC) that look far more polished and slick than the sparse vector frames of the original, but for me the crude and chunky graphics is half the 8bit appeal. The thing that astounds me is just how bloody hard so many of these games are! I really am hopelessly bad at them and die way, way quicker than I do in say Doom, Quake etc, where I’m always good for a fair few levels on an easy/moderate setting.

There is something very odd/remarkably clever about the way the original Elite on the Beeb was coded in that the screen is in multi-modes simultaneously, the top ‘space view’ being one of the higher res graphics modes, the bottom with the dials, maps etc in a chunkier colour mode. The Elk obviously couldn’t do this as that is just monochrome, as IIRC is the Spectrum version. I don’t understand anything like enough about BBC programming to understand how they did this, but I suspect they are literally chaning mode two-thirds the way through each draw cycle!
 
Tony L said:
There is something very odd/remarkably clever about the way the original Elite on the Beeb was coded in that the screen is in multi-modes simultaneously, the top ‘space view’ being one of the higher res graphics modes, the bottom with the dials, maps etc in a chunkier colour mode. The Elk obviously couldn’t do this as that is just monochrome, as IIRC is the Spectrum version. I don’t understand anything like enough about BBC programming to understand how they did this, but I suspect they are literally chaning mode two-thirds the way through each draw cycle!
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It is explained in great detail in this book, which is well worth a read: https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571214976-backroom-boys.html
 
Just discovered my Beeb is rather sick! It is corrupting/crashing/misbehaving when warmed up. I’d deliberately not run it for long until the MicroSPI board turned up to give the old caps a few short runs before really working them, so hadn’t detected it. After listening to advice from those who know it is likely one or more 6522, so I’ve ordered some replacements and a few other bits and bobs. Looks like I may have to learn how to desolder chips at some point...
 
easiest way is to snip the pins close to the body of the chip and then pull them out one at a time. Then clear the holes with braid.

I have a desoldering station but would still do it this way unless I needed to not destroy the chip.
 
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