LGR - BBC Micro Computer System Review
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- čas přidán 15. 03. 2012
- The BBC Microcomputer was Acorn's follow-up to the Atom, and launched in 1981. Largely due to its BBC backing, the computer was quite successful in the UK, especially among schools and businesses. But is it still worth owning to a current collector of vintage computers?
This is an overview of the history, hardware, and software of the Beeb from the perspective of an American collector. How do the pros and cons stack up, and is it worth getting a Beeb over its cut-down sibling, the Electron?
Many thanks to Mark from the UK for the BBC Model B!
Also a big thanks to ImperialProductions for the Acornsoft software!
/ imperialproductions
For lots of great info on the Beeb, check out Stairway To Hell:
www.stairwaytohell.com/
Grab sweet PC games and help support LGR!
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donate.thebasingers.com/
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#!/lazygamereviews
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Photo credits: Wikimedia Commons and Phil Gyford, used under Creative Commons 2.0 attribution license. Also some from the excellent site, Chris's Acorns. - Zábava
"Do you want to enter the mountain?"
"No."
"Yes you do."
essentially my mom in a nutshell
“As you go to say no, you say yes.”
My sons David and Peter were original games programmers for the BBC Micro and wrote the ROM for the AMX Mouse.
I wish I was born in that time period. Everything from arcades to ZX spectrums.
+Ollie Taylor I was an electronics hobbyist and built a Nascom 2 computer which I expanded to a massive 32k. My sons learned to program it using an op code book and a scientific calculator to get the hex codes and wrote a few simple games. Eventually it had Basic. Then the BBC computer was announced and we ordered one. Soon they were programming it in assembly language and selling simple games through Micropower of Leeds. When the AMX mouse came out we were at the PCWorld Show in Earls Court, met AMX and David undertook to write the ROM for the mouse in one week and a week later we demonstrated the mouse running AMX art to them. The rest is history.
Douglas Elliot and my son who sexually identifies as an US attack helicopter made manic mansion
What on earth is all that about?
That is awesome!
It's crazy for me how watchable some of Clint's older videos are. Aside from the audio quality of his mic it's often hard to tell the difference between older and newer videos.
True!
clint has always had the same dedication to good writing and presentation since day 1, even when his equipment wasn't the best, but who really had good equipment on youtube that this time?
I know someone that used to work for Acorn. they told me that one time he had to repair a computer
and the owner said sometimes it worked and others it didn't. so he opened it up and it turned out there
was a mouse living inside it and every time it pissed the computer didn't work but when it dried up it worked!
these machines are so rugged!
circuit boards so tough your power supply dies first
I believe this 100%. I own a commodore PET which lives in the garage and had stopped working. When i opened it up, sure enough a mouse was living inside. The board was covered in bird seeds that it stole from the shelf. Poor thing jumped out at me and ran for the door never to be seen again.
In the early 2000s, I dropped my childhood Model B down not one, but two, flights of stairs.
Thing still works perfectly, even though it looks like it's been through a nuclear holocaust. It's the Nokia 3310 of the Microcomputer world.
he probably peed out of fear. I remember having two rats in school (English) and they were scared shitless. Poor things.
I guess the mouse had a hard time with the heat
My Granny visited the UK in the early 80s and brought back a model B with her. The machine pretty much defined my childhood and my teens right until the era of IBM compatibles and MS-DOS. Afterwards I studied Computer Science at university, so perhaps it's more true to say that the BBC Micro ended up defining my life.
I'm from the UK and thus have several Marks from the UK. I can highly recommend them, I feel they may be a successful export venture.
For its time, the BBC Micro was an extremely powerful, high quality computer. A generation of UK programmers grew up on the BBC micro.
Holy shit Clint you've changed! I was expecting current Clint not long haired younger Clint!
Grizzly Adams
@@OneVerySadPanda I was thinking more Daniel Bryan myself.
12:25 era appropriately hair AND chair 😂
The BBC Micro led to the ARM Risc processor from Acorn, which is in pretty much every mobile phone and tablet in the world and any small electronic computer device.
pmailkeey If it connects to the internet or has a touchscreen, it's probably ARM.
That's pretty tautological! :P
ARM stands for Acorn RISC Microprocessor!
Advanced RISC Machines
RISC = Reduced Instruction Set Computer
Originally it stood for Reduced Instruction Set Complexity.
@Zak Jansen Not a flaw, a delight! :-)
@MrYaotubo ...this is a surprisingly deep question. I'm thinking the Amiga. Practical and trustworthy, does about everything you want to the point of being predictable, but somehow still surprises me all the time. Isn't a total skank like the IBM PC. Skanks can be fun too, but you want to settle down with one that stays true over the years.
@ThePichu7892 The Raspberry Pi has been on my radar for about a couple years now. If I can ever get one from the massive waiting list, I hope to show it on here.
I'M A MARK FROM THE U.K.
o hai Mark
Cooooool your awsome
Argonisgema
Hello Tommy
Me tioo
lol
I grew up in the East Of England in the 80/90s, my primary school computer teacher was obsessed with these things.
He had this green infra red turtle that you could program to drive round a table and draw things in basic. My friend had o e in his room with a copy of Doctor Who on floppy disk.
Yes we had that... also big trak... it was all to do with learning how to programme coordinates and stuff I think...
"Can you see a cave?"
"No"
"Yes you can. Do you want to go in the cave?"
"No"
"Yes you do."
I was laughing way too hard at this.
Kind of your typical CoD
"Do you want to walk thru this corridor?"
"No"
"Yes you do!"
I actually remember playing that game in school on an Acorn Archimedes. We spent most of the time simply trying to find an action in the game that wasn't forced upon you.
"Can you see a cave?"
"No"
"Yes you do."
"Do you want to go in the cave? "
"No"
"Yes you do. "
" ;_; "
Do you want to keep playing?
No.
*creepy letters* Yes you do...muahahahahaha.....
*screen goes black for a few seconds, then loads a horrifyingly creepy dungeon*
*commands do not work for an entire few seconds...and then the computer crashes*
*Restarts computer, every time it's restarted a increasingly disturbing image is shown on the screen until the 7th time, in which the computer screams loudly as hell as you and then wipes it's own BIOS*
Wow...dat creepypasta content tho
XD
***** What BIOS :) BBC BASIC is in a mask R...ohh never mind :)
"FRAK"
@@MrNamegame Even though it was an educational game for kids, that game was pretty nightmare inducing anyway. It had one of the first game jumpscares ever as a game over screen
hallmark of the best Dungeon Masters
A lot of memories in this video. We used to program these things using magazines with program listings. You literally typed the machine code into the machine one number at a time. It took hours of debugging and when you were finished it would be a very basic text adventure set in Eygpt and you were a Pharoh keeping the people happy. Happy days.
Had about 40 of these machines networked to a fridge sized hard disc at school in New Zealand back in 1989. Just remember Axle f being played all the time. Good times.
A very good choice for showing off the SN sound chip... same item as found in the Sega SG-1000 and Master System (and Megadrive) and close relation of the legendary AY8910/YM2149, on which there were several excellent cover versions of the tune.
These came out the year I left school but my friends parents were school teachers so had one at home. The games I remember being the best were chuckie egg, Frak, Elite and Revs. Revs is really worth finding, we had rigged up a paper plate steering wheel and meccano pedals all connected up via the joystick port. It was well ahead of it's time.
Good review, thanks. There is a decent enough film (on YT) called 'Micro Men', that tells the tale of the stiff competition between Acorn and Sinclair. And what went on between them with regards to winning the contract for the BBC. Definitely worth a look. Personally I am currently undergoing a revival in 'BASIC' programming. Great fun to actually do something creative computer wise. Cheers, CS.
....
10 CLS
20 A = A + 1
30 PRINT A
40 IF A = 999 THEN 60 : ELSE 10
50 REM
60 CLS
70 PRINT "You've reached 1000!"
80 INPUT "Go again?" ; A$
90 IF A$ = "Yes" or "Y" THEN 10 ELSE END
100 REM
Ahhh I used to love BASIC on the BBCb at school, I have always wanted my own machine but never found one. Best of luck buddy :)
@@DailyCorvid Thanks mate. I like that little program! On my channel there is a compilation of some BASIC programmes that I have written, have a gander if you want. All the best.
@@CelticSaint That was the first thing I ever wrote in BASIC, on the BBC b at school. The teachers couldn't figure out what to do with the things lol but I was a nerdy kid I already had a computer (vic-20).
What sort of stuff do you write? Games I always found too difficult but there are some really great ones by other people.
Just finished building a Raspberry Pi4 so I can emulate Amiga500 etc it's gonna be amazing. Has 8GB RAM but the board is the size of a large matchbox!
@@DailyCorvid I have written a few games, but I quite like 'simulators' and making random patterns. It's hard to describe really! You'll have to see for yourself. Your build sounds great I wish I had the technical ability to do that!!
@@CelticSaint Highly recommend Pi4 8GB it's like £80, then I spent £60 on a plastic case and a fan, plus a keyboard/mouse and a few SD cards. So £150 basically gets you a full kit computer, that requires use of only the included screw driver to build :D Technical ability? Well that's why I bought it, so I can learn some lol!
Honestly mate you'd be more advanced than I am, you'd be able to do something useful with it right now! I am learning how to connect all my IP cameras to the Pi and control them without the need for a PC / phone combo. So far crashed it 3 times lol but it's my own fault trying to run all kinds of stuff on there.
Great fun, definitely would recommend either Pi4 8GB or if you want it all built ready to go - get the Pi400 4GB (all in one unit, built into a tiny keyboard). If you can code a wee bit then it's already a very useful SBC to own, with zero code wisdom I have so far managed an emulation console (Atari2600 all the way up to PS1, including Amiga500 and C64).
Simulators huh? Well the only game I really play with my ridiculous graphics card is...... wait for it ....... No Mans Sky from 2016 :D Great game, it's like classic Elite but in 3D with tonnes of other stuff to do. If you've not played it now's a great time, it's my second favourite game of all time. First love in gaming is Gran Turismo 4 (PS2)! Classic.
This was my first experience of a PC - my primary school sold us their old BBC Micro in about 1998 and I have very fond memories of sitting at my living room table with my sisters and playing Box of Treasures, Dragon World, Flowers of Crystal and various educational games :)
Yep I am 33 the BBC Micro Model B was the first computer I ever used. My school had 2 of them. When I was in year 6 the last year of primary school we got brand new 486 computers to go along side the BBC's. We then went on school holidays for Christmas. When we returned we found the pipes froze and burst all over the computers. Funny thing was all the BBC micros survived and all the 486's died so we were back to playing Frogger again lmao.
The Average Retro Gamers We used these in infant/junior/and high school through the early to very late 90s. They weren't my first computer though.
Videos such as this make me yearn the past. That is when not as many people were as enthusiastic about obsolete computers, and that people actually sold them for more reasonable prices just like referred to on this video at 4:00.
@ThePwntr0n I must admit, 70's/80's programmer beards have definitely been an inspiration. As well as Nord warriors.
I also tasted a BBC Micro when I was in middle school. It taste good.
Me too!!!!
The music from cute to kill at 11:10 is phenomenal!
My first ever computer was a bbc micro B 32k. My dad bought it in 1984.. i was 3.
I had it until 1997 and played it almost daily with over a hundred games... my first introduction to gaming and computers and so many childhood smiles.
Kevin Toms football manager (soccer for non brits)
Barbarian 2
The last ninja 1 and 2
Repton thru time... still one of the best and hardest games ever released.
My dad introduced me to computers and games through the BBC... i'm so glad he did. Those memories are never gonna fade
I well remember the BBC Micro Computer - playing games on it back in 1980 aged ten at junior school! That was my first encounter with technology! Takes me right back to childhood memories.
This was the Computer I played at school, I remember I got in trouble at School cos I told my Teacher it was bollocks compared to the Spectrum! Yes ickle Dave was a fan boy! ;) Would really like one now though! ;)
even i played on this at school, and a horrible accorn computer, thank god for the sega and nintendo days.
When I was in elementary school, we had a C64, where we would often play games like Hangman or Battleship. The only few times we had computer class at my old high school in Germany, before moving to Costa Rica, we were working with old Mac Classics running the At Ease environment. The only year I had computer class in my new school in Costa Rica, the computers ran either Windows NT 3.51 or Windows NT 4.0 (so for the time period, they were boring systems).
This takes me back! We had these in our Primary school (UK's version of elementary) classrooms when I started in 1991. The game that I can recall the most is "Granny's Garden".
That Headband Guy Lol, yeah. They were everywhere, as was Granny's Garden!!
An entire generation of British kids know Granny's Garden.
Got suggested this. Had watched before but cool to see some of your older content. Thanks for all you do!
Wow man this was uploaded 8 years ago, yet the jump in quality from your first videos(which have an amazing quality on their own; gotta love that "low" res) to this is astounding. And that's not even mentioning your actual nowadays videos! Good job dude
With a beard like that you could have fronted one of the Open University tv programs of the decade.
As always, an excellent and informative video
We had BBC computers like these in our primary school, one per classroom. Huge keyboards with casing made from military grade beige coloured metal. Giant floppy disks that you had to lock in. Perforated printer paper. Green characters on a black background. With reception, I'd say this was 1991-98. Obviously, these computers were getting on a bit by then! My sister went to the same school from 1986-92, and they had the same computers there then. The disk drives were generally bigger than the one on this video, and again encased in beige metal. The one in year 2-3 was a Mitsubishi disk drive. I remember the computers could also speak in a Stephen Hawking way. Nice video!
Bruh! Just seeing this video of yours now! Dangit son! This is flippen gold. Thanks Clint. You are a legend sir.
Beautiful machine, I remember playing on it a lot in junior school. I can still feel the thunk of those weighty keys. I also remember printing from it on a dot matrix printer with that weird paper with holes in the side and the noise it made lolol the kids nowadays would think wtf.
Oh, man, DMPs are sooo noisy! I have one I use occasionally, it's awful.
Game: Do you want to go in the cave?
Player: No
Game: Yes you do!
*Road and open cave appears.... lol
keep looking ... like many games that promise limitless freedom. They actually just offer the illusion of choice. Just like life does...
I think that game is essentially just a tree database where a lot of the branches ultimately lead back to the same place. Could swear I used a program at some point in my schooldays where you could produce a remarkably similar, though non-graphical game (or just very basic 20-questions style information retrieval system) just by typing a bunch of questions along with answer choices that then led to certain other questions, and some answers could lead to the same place as an answer to a different question...
We had to start somewhere, Eldorado Gold was the first tet program they wrote :)
one of the best descriptions of an item (in this case teh BBC computer) I have ever seen on youtube!!!! subbed :)
Just finding this video now now (10th Sept 18) but one of my earliest memories of using a computer was using a BBC micro and this video just dragged it from the depths of my 34 year old mind. I guess I would have been 5 or 6 around 1988, Mrs Whalley's class (wow how'd i remember that) I can just remember being in awe of the big 5 1/2 floppy disk that sound as it read the disk and being able to type letters on a keyboard and have them appear on the screen. Was probably a few years later that my parents bought me a commodore 64, which I still have today. I frikkin love this channel!
@techguruuk Yes, Micro Men is fantastic! I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in these computers or just highly entertaining docudramas. It's here on CZcams last time I checked.
Still here. Only discovered it some months ago.
I just discovered your channel and can only say:
Holy Shit! Thank you so much! You have encouraged my own collection acquisitions as well as confirmed suspicions of machines, while neat, just need to be display pieces.
If you know anyone with a Mac LC III -- please let me know!
J.K. Benedict Thanks, glad you're enjoying!
And you may want to check here, they're always selling them off:
68kmla.org/forums/
wow - thanks, LGR!
I actually owned an LC III growing up. For a budget computer, it was a pretty dependable little thing.
Sadly, I lost it with all my other vintage computers in a house fire. :/
This has been such a beautifully nostalgic video for me. This wonderful thing was almost certainly the first computer I used in school as a learning device. Seeing Granny's Garden was a mind blower, a 30 year old neuron fired up at the sight of that. Something I'd long since forgotten. Looiking up screenshots and it's all so suddenly familiar again.
I also remember playing something called Podd which was a red tomato looking character that you gave commands to. A way of teaching kids adjectives, I guess. You could tell him to jump or fly or even explode. That was the one we got the biggest laugh out of, of course. One of us suggested it and we were amazed it actually worked a bits of red flew all over.
Brilliant video, I'm only sorry I hadn't caught this sooner.
Great video! I always loved the Beeb back at school and played Elite to death on it. We’ve got 3 in the shed and they are brilliant. :)
11:06
I finally solved the Battlestar Galactica riddle !!!
we had a BBC micro in primary school only games I remember are pod can and imogen there was also a infrared turtle accessory that you could give basic commands and it would draw on a piece of paper
That pro-mo picture from the 80's haunts me. That blond boy with the hard stare was so much me on a bad day at school..
...when I was the only kid who knew the computer backwards before IT lessons. [ my bro had one and I'm an Autistic kid, VERY high functioning as I am told... guff ]
Love your work as always Clint ;-) [ Remembers when the wood-grain 486 was a dream ]
Man, you're the biggest treasure of YT. You do perfect reviews of retro computers and you even look like you're from the good 'ol computing times. Keep it up!
I love the irony of the fact that the SD card that you're using in it is from Vodafone which is a mobile network where its HQ are in Newbury....where one of the compa.....oh you know where I'm going with this
With the beard you look like Richard Stallman x3 so cool!
except Clint here doesn't eat toe fungus, I hope.
Thanks for the great series of videos. It's fascinating watching a US perspective on some very UK machines as well as a few machines that, as a Brit I new very little about (the apple GS was only vaguely known to me!).
What a great video,loving the detail .
Hello from the UK, keep up the good work
I have a Mark from the Intergalactic Space Arcade.
I remember the BBC Domesday Project, that's worth looking at.
Hell, yeah, my school had all the kit on loan once and I got to play with it. It felt like we were seriously looking at the future.
I really love your hardware/oddware reviews. Not only is it a blast from the past, but Its also a good history lesson with lots of little facts I never knew. Great job LGR! Keep it up man ^.^
Great video!!. 1981 was my first year of High School and my school just got these in brand new here in Australia. Thdre was so much hype over these machines and we were told the world is going to change! LOL...
My mates and I couldn't wait for computer classes just so we could play the games usually towards the end of class. After school we would race down to the lab and continue to play games and write basic programs. Very fond memories indeed and they really were great machines!
2:03 Must of been a rich school. Only one kid per BBC. In our school it was always 2 kids to one BBC.
+Steven Whiting You were lucky, our school only had one machine.
+Steven Whiting Now I'm thinking how spoiled schools where here in the states when Apple was their go-to.
+Steven Whiting In our school it was one class to one BBC... on the other hand, we learned to write "must have been" instead of "must of been", so I guess it was a good school?
+Steven Whiting Here in the states, my school had a single room with about 35 Apple IIe's. Each class got an hour or so a week in there.
The Garden of Eatin This would've been standard at the schools I've been to.
We still had BBC micros at school in 1996.
Shoulda tried to get one when they finally got rid of them...unless they kept them for the hell of it or for a computer history class.
JamieBarnes11 You still find them in use in factories to this day.
Nevets If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Certain subjects (mainly science) in my school were still using them in 2000 as the school had invested in accessories they couldn't use on windows
Justin L Well, at least it's a bit more straightforward for that person to print timetables. They would have a hard time using it with any modern printers without custom adapters and software, but you'd be making use of something that isn't broken and doesn't need to be fixed.
Awesome and informative as always - keep up the stellar work Clint!
Love your video. Very interesting to hear an American perspective on the humble BBC Micro, a machine I used in school over in good old blighty!
I remember Granny's Garden on the old beeb. That bloody witch was scary!
Wasn't there something called betsy too, it was a long time ago I left school lol
I remember playing Granny's Garden as a kid and finding it intensely creepy. Probably pretty laughable now.
Did you ever play the magic telephone? Both are quite odd games
My junior school (ages 7-11) had one. I used it a lot. This was early 80’s.
Good times!
Words can not describe how much I love these old hardware reviews. Thanks!
BBC Micro .. what a paradox
PAL master race!
Also, getting a movie and then having my dvd player just not play it is a pain in the ass
I've still got one of these languishing in a cupboard! Still works fine! My favourite game was always 'Starship Command'. Best BBC game ever!
Glad you had granny garden on the fave list of games ,, it's one I remember well from school days
Taxi Cabbie Same!!
We had those in my school (south west england). They were on a network, with a 20mb file server. To log on we had to type "I AM *254 HS"
128mb of storage?!? Madness!!
128MB would have been unthinkably huge in the early 80s. The PC XT shipped with a 10 or 20MB HDD in 1984
SPARTA
Clint your channel is freaking awesome!!!
Great review, thanks. you crack me up, very funny. I live in the UK and am getting one of these soon, nice to know about that module thing on top, didn't know about that before. I remember using one of these at my school back in the 80's
Could you send me a Mark from the UK? I could use some retro gear supplies, too. :)
I had a Mark from the UK once... Took a few weeks and a special cream to get it off...
Depends... where do you live?
There's a version of Sim City for it?!
*say thankyou for the nostalgia
this is the computer I learned to program on....continued on the c64 and A500. them were the lost days of a carefree youngster geek :)
a belated congratulations to you, mate! I never thought I'd see a Beeb turn up in the 'new country'. inside the case, just above the top right of the keyboard, is a auxiliary board for 4-5 software roms (if I remember correctly). ...it might be an addon, but we had them in our school computers back then.
all you need now, is the BBC A, the Master and the Archimedes to complete your collection...if you're lucky, you might even find the original monitors that came with them too. the school computers we had, were hooked upto a coaxial lan which had a bbc b acting as a file server (a 20mb hardcdrive).....well gucci ;)
the wee Acorn had a 3 1/2" floppy which was quite exotic (and perversly expensive) at the time...
ahhh memories, memories :) must admit, I got a little emotional when I watched this.....25 years in the armed forces never desensitised me in that part of my brain, which is nice to know ;)
good on you, though fella, and thanyou muchly for posting this and making my day! have fun with the Beeb...you're a lucky man
As I watch with joy through each and every one of your old videos, I'm starting to think this is my favourite era - your beard is majestic 8)
11:20 That's one passive aggressive game
I wish we had tablets today which were a lot more capable in the long run, even if it'd take a lot more time to... do the... capabilities.
Oh my, I just went on a massive nostalgia trip watching this. As a Brit funnily enough called Mark too I remember the BBC Micro so well as it was one of my first PC's, it was a great machine and seeing some of them games just brings back so many memories!
It was a very rare day in primary school to get a 5 minute shot of the beeb!
BBC Computer
Acorn DFS
BASIC
_
Beee-bip!
Damn, at first I thought that after market ZIF socket was a stock included E2PROM programmer socket... and I was like whoa.... holy crap... envy....
Still not a bad machine, considering the massive amounts of expandable ports, advanced hardware, full keyboard, etc. Bet it set Brits back a pound though. Still... respect for the Brits. After all, they couldn't be out done, they built all those Bletchley Park WW2 Bombs... and practically felt they pioneered the field...
Schools and colleges could negotiate discounts (buying in bulk), but to individuals, the BBC model B cost £400 ( initially it had been £350). In 2017 money, about 1600 USD. A lot of cash for a 32K machine. The price didn't fall until the machine was quite dated... and then only to £300.
The lack of RAM could be handled if you had a disc drive ( as is evident in the disc based game Elite). A floppy disc drive was another £300 - £400 though it made for a much more useful system, something that could be employed to do serious tasks. In the UK at least, in the early 1980s, it was more commonplace for people to rely on cassette tape storage (we were just playing games). People with BBC micros tended to have more money and usually could afford the 5.25" disc drive too.
I think the best feature of the BBC model B, was the 16K ROM BASIC. It had some nice commands for controlling flow and making code modular / procedural. It was also a very fast BASIC (for the time), and even included an in-line 6502 assembler, so you could easily mix BASIC and 6502 code. I had a ZX Spectrum, which had loads of fun machine code games, but came with a slow BASIC. I did learn to code in Z80 assembly language on the Spectrum... but it involved looking up the op codes in a book, calculating 16 bit addresses, calculating, and recalculating jump offsets, converting to decimal from hexadecimal... storing the code in DATA statements, and using POKE to load it into RAM. The Beeb's ROM based in-line assembler, was luxurious in comparison.
Yeah, but bear in mind we had something approaching hyperinflation through the late 80s (something that anyone who had a mortgage then will bend your ear about at length if you get them started), on top of the global memory shortage. The price of most other computers stagnated for several years in the UK at the same time - the Spectrum didn't end up selling for £25 or the like, after all. By the time the BBC's price was reduced to £300, they were shipping with 128k onboard instead and £400 was worth quite a lot less in real terms than it had been when the Model B launched.
Besides, look at how much it would have cost you to buy an IBM machine instead, it'll make your eyes water. And a close rival to the Beeb in the external expandability stakes may have been the ~£1000 (at launch) Atari ST, but as much love as I have for that machine, I have a feeling the BBC _still_ beat it at that game (hell, the ST's DMA port is essentially the BBC's 1Mhz _or_ maybe Tube port), never mind the easier internal upgrades, despite the gulf in their stock internal specs. If you were buying a computer for scientific / data capture / multiprocessing purposes it may actually have been a better option than any even vaguely comparable rival either 8 or 16 bit... the Apple II and IBM PC were more expandable and reconfigurable choices and a halfway house to a full-on rackmount backplane micro or minicomputer, but not really significantly faster in the CPU stakes, and far more expensive.
Thank you for showing this one brought back memories
About the third time I've watched this video since its release and only just realized you're wearing a Speccy shirt while holding an Acorn at the end... sacrilege!
Oh dear, I've scrapped somewhere in the region of about 4,000 of these units over the last decade or so. If the dude wants a slightly later British educational machine then he needs to take a look at the RM Nimbus, I've scrapped about three or four thousand of those also. Getting rid of the monitors that usually need removing with those BBC's usually cost more than anything gleamed from the units themselves. I've had bonfires with 200+ of these in the past just to get rid of the dam things. I would estimate that there is still maybe about 100-200k of these BBC's still waiting to be scrapped here in the UK.
Karl Slicher The RM Nimbus was a pain. I got hold of one a few years back (actually, about 12 years ago now!) and it has a semi-locked OS. It's a version of Windows but it's not entirely IBM-compatible. Never did get it working.
Duncan Taylor I don't have any further information for you on the OS I'm sorry, other than I remember it certainly was some form of Windows. The Nimbus network from my high school 20 years ago didn't like it when we tried to play Golf with a stolen admin login and would regularly have you sat for half a lesson waiting for some kind of system fault to resolve itself.
Karl Slicher Earlier ones had an IBM incompatible version of DOS
+Karl Slicher So you've basically been burning money. You could have made about 5 million pounds if you sold all of those BBC computers. The BBC monitors alone are worth a lot.
If you can tell us where those 100k+ not-yet-scrapped BBCs are lurking, I'm sure there's a lot of us who'll happily take at least a few of them off your hands. Particularly I'd like to salvage one to go in place of the model I attempted to salvage from a previous educational employer, but when I drove in by car the day after putting a post it note on it saying "don't throw out" and that I was going to take it myself (normally I didn't have enough carrying capacity for a big old Beeb and 5.25" disc drive, never mind the Cub monitor as well) I found a rubbish truck driving away and the note lying on the same desk but the computer and other parts missing... Seems like a fair exchange, like, I get the one that they blithely scrapped, you have to scrap one fewer.
As for the Nimbus, part of the problem is likely the 80186 processor they used, and the custom version of PC-DOS written to take advantage of it (for better performance, and more particularly the virtualisation functions that allowed the OS you saw on-screen to be tightly locked down inside of a hypervisor preventing the usual MSDOS machine get-outs). I believe that regular MSDOS can still be ran on it to at least some limited extent, maybe just needing a few patches for that and certain programs (a bit like trying to run raw 68000 code on a 68010), but I don't know if Windows will work. It depends how much of its 286 code is also 186 compatible... anything which uses exclusively 286-or-later code will fail and you'll be limited to running 8086/8088 versions instead, because the IBM platform proper skipped straight over the 186 (and proper 8086)... RM used the interstitial processor to get full 16-bit processing and those additional protected modes on the cheap, building something with quasi-AT performance (and at least PCjr if not full Tandy graphics and sound) for less than XT money.
They seemed like OK machines for the time, my primary school had one, it was definitely a cut above the Beeb other than maybe having lower vertical rez (something we didn't really notice), seeming very modern with hi-rez and also very colourful graphics, relatively dinky 3.5" floppies and an included mouse ... all taken great advantage of by an early version of PC Paintpot (which gradually morphed into MS Paint over the next ten years, with a gradual loss of the more child-wowing features as it became more serious and Windows-y) and various educational games... The restrictive platform not really being an issue in its original context, as it was an Intel-based PC for far less than IBM money, and had OK compatibility with PC programs but ran a bit faster... and pretty much everyone else had a similar sort of thing going on after all. How many different third-party systems had their own version of Workbench, MacOS or GEM/TOS?
It even tastes good. Lalalalala
Like a lot of computers of that period, it was a developer's machine from the ground-up. That's why there's so many middle-aged programmers in the UK. (such as myself)
Awesome review, answered all my question about it in an entertaining manner. Got to love those vibrant but eye searing colors. Exile was the game that made me sit and take notice of this system. :D
Strange three prong plugs? You're the ones with strange two prong plugs. Three is bigger than two, we win.
UK and USA are weird both of 'em.
australian 3 prong is stronger
fupp uh, the plugs in the US have 3 prongs as well. I think your inferiority complex is showing.
US plugs also suck because they don't have shutters or sleeved live/neutral prongs to stop you sticking your fingers onto the live prongs. I've been shocked by a US plug more than once.
The Tyttuutface were you drunk or just not paying attention to what your were doing?
Dat Beard :0
My dads old company folded and they sold off a load of BBCs for next to nothing. He brought us home one of these and we loved playing Frak!, Last Ninja 3 and Centepede :D
Great review! I've picked up one of these in England this summer together with other stuff like an OSI 600 and a few Anita calculators. I've restored one of the Anita's and now I'm waiting for parts for the others.... So I think I jump into the basement and get that BBC out. There is still that HUGE BEAST of a mains plug on it which you showed here. I refuse to cut that off! Just use an English power strip :-)
4:29 Of all the emplyees working for the FCC, nobody knows how to use google?
They probably did, and saw that UK spec BBC Micro would not pass the FCC regulations.
The US version had extra screening on the inside of the lid.
12:22
Does anyone think that Clint should bring back the giant beard?
Nah, he looks better now
What a wonderful computer! We had these at the university (in the educational labs) and it had an incredible basic. We used them for data acquiring and processing. There were 3 model B's and a BBC Master.
Great video. I was one of those many kids who’s first computer experience was this one at school
Loving the beard! Nice shot of the Macintosh in the last shot. Another fantastic review as always. I love your channel as you are not afraid to play around and work with retro computers from overseas. I know our UK PAL machines can present problems in the U.S. The Beeb is a wonderful machine and you did a great job on your research, really enjoyed this video. Btw I have a tutorial on my channel on how to play Acorn Electron games from CD, should work with Beeb games also. Cheers.
awesome video as always. grettings from the UK
Yes I totally agree with you on the Mark from the UK. Mark is an awesome guy, met him in Blackpool last year.
great presentation. keep up the good work!
You have gone up one level. Before you were a nerd like all of us. But now you have risen to the level of WIZARD!