Tom Scott with the Acorn BBC Micro
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- čas přidán 11. 08. 2020
- Tom Scott and Jason Fitzpatrick chat about Tom's school days with the BBC Micro computer. We take a look at the AMX Mouse with it's Super Art package and educational games like Granny's Garden.
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Thanks so much, Jason ! And if anyone can track down that BBC VT clock code, do let me know...
Although the menu definitely looks BBC Micro-ish, in modes 1 or 4, the clock itself looks to high a resolution for a standard Beeb, even in mode 0. And it would be odd if they were using a 15ish year old home computer for peak time BBC One graphics! So I'm wondering if the Beeb was driving some other graphics device, or if they were actually using an Archimedes model computer? Anyways, have put some feelers out...
**edit - just seen Jason mention the Archimedes thing! Should always wait 'til the end of a video before commenting!**
There is currently a post on the Facebook Group, Acorn Computer and BBC Micro Enthusiasts, about a BBC Master based Autocue Teleprompter, not sure if the same hardware and software was used for the clock.....might be worth joining and chatting to the chap who owns it.
@@timmatthews773 That millipead system Jason mentioned (using the archimedes) also had a BBC micro based version too. Where all the graphics display is done with the millipead hardware with the BBC micro controlling it. Someone has been working on reimplementing the millipead system using a raspberry pi zero connected to the 1mhz port on a BBC.
@@timmatthews773 I disagree, I think you could do that clock in Mode 0.
@Tom Scott If you want me to code that clock for you, I can do that. Since the res looks quite high, it would need to be done in Mode 0 in 6502. The menu looks like standard Mode 7 teletext.
Hello! So my Dad made these games 🤣 Grannies Garden and Dreaded Dragon Droom! Crazy seeing them in this video. I've never actually played them.
Your Dad made grannies garden??
This made me feel like I was sitting in the computer room with a couple of sixth formers after school, just sitting around playing with the machines and having a laugh.
The original version of Granny's Garden was written by a teacher, Mike Matson, who teamed up with another teacher, Neil Souch, to start 4Mation. The characters "Esther" and "Tom" in the game, were named after Mike's children. The characters "Anna" and "Clare" were named after Neil's daughters. 4Mation is still around today, and you can still buy Granny's Garden if you want. There are versions for PC and Mac.
Nice! Will never forget the name Esther because of GG
@@Cuzjudd Probbaly not the makers' intention, but the name Esther has always creeped me out because of Granny's Garden.
This is like re-watching Ian McNaught-Davis demonstrate the Micro to Chris Serle in the first episode of The Computer Programme
From Denmark,
Hi there, I'm an old BBC B user myself and, funnily enough, I've just bought another one from England that I got for
6 days ago.
I got my first BBC B in 1982/83, can't quite remember if it was 82/83.
It was one of the best things that happened to me, I totally fell for it.
I'm looking forward to getting started again and all the memories come flooding back.
it's like being 25 years old again like back then, ha ha.
Wow, the *ART program was a nostalgia punch to the gut. We only used BBC Micros until year 2, and I have a strong memory of using that interface the first time I used a mouse. Tried to drag it into thin air and over the top of the keyboard because I didn’t understand how the ball worked.
Got the Model B when it first came out. Learned 6502 on it. But my best memory is - Elite. Wasted most of my childhood getting to Deadly status. Totally groundbreaking game.
Elite used up a lot of my time, but it also encourage me to move on from Basic to Assembler, to achieve better quality. I got pretty good at assembler, but ended up in a vicious circle, trying to write a disassembler. Then I emigrated, so THE END.
Greetings Commander!
I cut my computing teeth on the BBC Micro, Master and Archimedes machines. I have owned a number of machines, for many years, and regularly fire them up, there is a lot you can do with them. Pride of my collection, is my RiscPC600, but, I also own an A5000, A4000, an A440 (from circa 1987), around three BBC Bs, a Master 128K and a Master Compact, which is proving to be a right pain to get working!. Great machines, and seeing one, always reminds me of happier childhood memories!. Oh, I also have a CUB, a load of floppies, Z80 second CPU, etc etc :).
I remember in awe at the multiple ROM switch board that was plugged into a peripheral that connected to the parallel port.
Not all connectors were at the back of the machine, they had ribbon cable connectors underneath that you had to butterfly clip to secure the ribbon cable!
The parallel port had a 1kb bus speed if I remember correctly.
6:38 "Now if I Break out of this" - ad break.
Well-placed. Don't know if that was intentional, but very clever.
My grandparents used to have a BBC Micro, but all I remember from when I was very young was that they had a couple games on large floppy disks... although my memory's so hazy from back then I don't think I'd be able to tell you what they were. Granny's Garden certainly wasn't one of them, though.
We had a bbc Micro here in Ireland, i was quite young and got lots of great games, but god I loved that system!
Visiting the Centre was one of my most memorable moments in Cambridge. Thanks for keeping computing history alive!
It’s incredible how far things have come that we can now do our own live overlays in OBS just like that.
To be fair, there was still other PCs ahead of the BBC Micro like: Apple Macintosh, Amigo 1000/500, etc but the schools had a budget!
I love this. [ 50, big bro worked for a Beeb +DFS and got a MUSIC500 also ]
Tom is a top bloke. Great vid.
I learned BASIC on one of these at my school. Only one of the machines had any storage, so there was a serial cable connected to the others through a switcher box. We had to manually switch to each machine to send saved programs out to each computer and back again, all on a monstrous hard drive.
We had a mouse, i remember this paint program. I feel special.
Those CUB monitors were awesome
I remember in primary school we had a school disco to raise money for a mouse for our science room’s bbc micro. 1 mouse lol. And that was cutting edge at the time.
When we had a BBC Micro, it was the only one in the school! No mouse either. Wasn't until the mid 90's when we had multiple computers (middle school).
I think I may have been in the same era as Tom, my "first school" had a beeb master, on its own trolley and was often wheeled out parent evenings, but in middle school, no computers. In high school there were loads of beebs in the science block but hardly used for lessons, but the "library" block had a room full of Archies, that we also hardly got chance to use. By that time I'd been through a few machines, so they were moot at that point.
I was given a beeb by a teacher at that school, and it had an embossed lid. BMBC moulded in it. I took it back to the tech in the science block cause I wanted *word and *sheet roms putting in it, he pulled me up about the embossing, and asked if I knew what it stood for. I knew of course. Still, he put me the two roms in and I was on my way.
Thanks so much for making this video. I have fond memories of the BBC Micro. I even wrote the Wikipedia page for Dread Dragon Droom! I remember playing /Citadel/ by Superior Software -- a real treat :)
When I was a student back in 1985, I was part of a small team (led by Michael Rodd!) that made a televised schools computer quiz. It was sponsored by Commodore, so all software had to run on the C64.
One of my bits was the animated scoreboard, and I had to design some numeric sprites to fly in from time to time. Of course, being an Acorn man, my small act of rebellion was to scale up the MODE 4 digits from a BBC Micro, happily printed in matrix form in the BBC User Guide ;)
The Noel’s House Party clip would have been a BBC Micro. I started worked in Television Centre as a Studio Engineer in 1990 mainly in studio TC4 which core programmes were The Generation Game and Noel’s House Party. On the 2nd floor lived the ‘Special Projects’ team which was also staffed by Studio Engineers.
Their main job was creating technology for shows like audience scoring systems (‘Press A, B or C on your keypad now’) or on screen custom graphics e.g. showing results of viewers voting for outcome X or Y and games on Saturday morning shows where viewers called in and said ‘left, up, fire’. The BBC Micro was used initially on NHP and also Mastermind and coded by this team.
Later on the Archimedes was used in place of the BBC micro to create more detailed dynamic graphics. This was in addition to the captioning computers used in the gallery for adding name ‘supers’ for guests and the end credits but they were pretty much static in terms you could not programme them to do fancy stuff.
These captioning computers used by the BBC were made in the UK by a company called ‘Aston’ and did not come cheap and typically cost £40k and at the time ran on custom hardware. You could control them with a computer but in reality it was much more flexible to use a Archimedes which was ‘genlocked’ to the studio video reference so that it could be cut up on the vision mixer.
A lot of the broadcast kit at that point was British, Link Research made the cameras, Calrec and Neve made audio consoles and Quantel had their Paintbox. Exceptions were vision mixers which were typically Grass Valley (California) and lenses from Japan.
A high end captioning computer was made by Quantel called the Cypher which had limited use as it was complex, expensive and had to be hired in but did see a limited life on Top Of The Pops for doing fancy animation of the song / band name.
The Special Projects department is long gone like a lot of Television Centre but the core team still exist as a commercial company doing similar things for lots of the light entertainment shows on all channels.
I got to play on one of these in 1985. A company I started working for had one storing their inventory.
oh, more of this, Please. I liked the Amstrad video too and if we could just get a series of Tom going through every computer he used as a youngun that'd be lovely
An excellent video and lots of fantastic tidbits of information.
10 thousand line program. MODE 7. L. (only n00bs type LIST in full) and all 10 thousand lines flash past in 3 microseconds. Those were the days. :)
/edit - Oh, forgot to mention, I never saw a mouse on a Beeb but we did used to have a light pen. We also had a "stick on" light detector that you put on the screen for downloading software transmitted in a spare scanline on TV transmissions. Remember that?
Really great video. Nicely shot and great rapport between Tom and Jason. Great to find the channel of your organisation on CZcams! I donated a Risc PC many years ago plus manuals to you.
I wrote a StackExchange Retro Computing question about my attempts in the late 1980s reading the motion from the user port via PEEKs (?&...) I could see the pins being wiggled 0/1 when the mouse moved x and y, but I couldn't work out which direction along those axes it was going - some kind folks answered on that question. Essentially I had been trying to write my own mouse handling code without needing the AMX ROM.
Interesting to note that the Superior Software Repton game editor had support for the AMX mouse, without the need for the AMX ROM, so they would have written software routines for this or contracted in AMS (makers of AMX ROM and mouse) developers at a guess. That said, I think I still have the AMX ROM and Pagemaker images archived somewhere, as well as the Repton game. I don't have a real BBC Micro these days, so would use an emulator.
Kind of astounded by that drawing program honestly. That looks shockingly modern to me. I grew up using the Apple IIe at that same time, and I don't recall it having that capability. The Commodore 64 is the first time I remember anything like that.
+1 it looks great, doesn't it?! Looks amazingly responsive.
amx super art is really good, especially with the designed mouse :)
Very strong memory of the school BBC B where i would build a grass mound with a castle or similar to go on top of it....
This machine inspired me into a 25 yr career designing games. It was like magic to me, when that power switch went on, a portal into another world of endless possibilities. The commitment was huge, typing in Frogger code from a magazine. One misplaced semi-colon and it wouldn’t run. I could never understand how the likes of Revs and Elite could possibly fit into 32k of memory 😮
I loved eveything about this chill vid. Thank you
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it :)
I remember the day that a BBC turned up in my teacher's classroom. He insisted that we must use the mouse on top of the monitor. My friend went to take it down onto the desk and the teacher shouted at him that it must be on the monitor, so he put it back up there. The teacher returned a little later and another kid had it back down on the desk (well, it was a wheely trolley) to which he got shouted at, so then the kid said, "But Sir, look, it works down here". The teacher was confused how it could possibly work there as that is where he had tested it.
Microvitec Cub monitors
I walk past a nostalgic stack of three every time I go out to the garage. :D But yes I agree, something about those Cubs. I have other models, but none are as good.
@@mapesdhs597 A company in Leicester called "Digivision" produced similar metal cased monitors for the home computers of the day, they were not as prolific as the Cub though as most went into the London dealer desks, British rail, the National Coal Board, British Steel and the London Underground etc. Now they are some nostalgic names :).
I rescued my cub from our local college 20 years ago..... they had a room full of them they didn't want at the time.... i wish i had rescued a couple.
Those Cub cubes were simply awesome monitors.
OMG I remember these so well!
I used to be regularly sent out of our school library by the librarian for one of three things:
1.) Cranking up the volume on the cassette player and removing the headphones, whilst slightly depressing the play button, making the audio tapes play at higher speeds, producing higher pitch tone 🤣
2.) Performing farts in the reading corner Infront of paying or tuck shop donating crowds!
3.) Turning the power switch on/off repeatedly on the two BBC computers that were stationed in the library!
Wow, hearing that tone replayed on CZcams just then, brought all those memories back!
Brilliant, I had a BBC as a child, My Dad was a school teacher and brought home monitors, disc drives and software at the weekends so we could use
I remember hitting serious nostalgia when my ex-girlfriend worked at a public access station back in the early 2000's. Their video editing computers were all Commodore Amigas. I was amazed because at that point, those computers were fossils (and I desperately wanted them to upgrade their systems to modern ones so I could get my hands on one of their Amigas!). They were using those things well into the mid 2000's.
I wrote Cold Tea and thought I heard it once on BBC TV Micro Live programme in 1986/7, but never managed to watch it again to confirm.
Watching this made me feel incredibly nostalgic bought back a lot of memories I started using a BBC Microcomputer when I was about 4 years old and kept using it mostly for retro gaming that I love till 2006 when it stopped working, and smelt of burning when I turned it on so I got rid of it which I regret and still miss, I used to write basic programs and modify programs to see and learn how they work on games like Harry hopper where I tried to alter the game so I didn’t die and used to save programs on cassette tape till in 1998 my old college threw out old bbc dual disk drive bridge so I asked if I could have it and office software which I used and worked well until one day I forgot to put in the blank disk before saving work and erased the master copy by mistake.
I also used my bbc micro with an old VCR to use graphics pack bug byte on cassette tape to draw a picture and out put to VCR from my BBC micro model B 32K and re draw picture to same dimensions to make animation like a boat I moving past teletext looking lighthouse and I used flashing colour to look like the light in the lighthouse, and I used clock on BBC Welcome cassette program to record on the VHS tape, especially tried to make my own test cards as I am weird and absolutely love ❤️Television Test Cards and Idents, and I must be more weird then that as I also ❤️ Tom Scott CZcams videos!!!
found this, brought back memories, i used to work for Akhter Computers, i was service engineer and repaired BBC's and related peripherals, and also helped assemble the floppy disc monitor stand. a later evolution had a single floppy on one side and a 20Mb hard disc on the other.
Ah, joy! I had a UFD 40/80 track switchable double sided drive, and that 20MB HDU was the hub of out Econet!
I remember playing granny's garden on one of these when I was at school and I'm only 29, so weird I came across this video and I instantly remembered it, I must have only been 7 or 8
Oh this takes me back, I had the spectrum in the 80s but i completely forgot the primary school i went to had one computer with this stuff
One thing I remember from those days is a music programme that played ‘Golden Brown’ with envelopes for the individual notes I’d love to hear it again to see if it really was as good as we thought it was at the time
What I find is that the sound on the BBC Micro was much better than was demonstrated here. It had multichannel sound, complete with envelopes.
The BBC is my second favourite 8-bit (after the Amstrad CPC). My school had some old BBC's and I would spend all the time I could on them.
When I was in primary school we had these. In high school it was mostly Acorn Archimedes computers, and half a dozen Apple Macintoshes and Windows 95 PCs. I'd love to get my hands on a BBC Micro and an Archimedes.
I can remember using the BBC Micro in primary school and can vividly remember using Logo and just found the experience so natural for me compared to my other school work, i also remember A Volcano Database and like Tom said we wrote a school newsletter on the machine. 90s computing was strange as i never liked Windows thought but carried on with the Amiga, I subsequently went on to study computing at University and im now a software developer, it all rings true when you think of this history. However i must add that the 90s dislike for Windows ceased and my centre of gravity is Microsoft.
a fantastic machine my high school had these delivered in 1983 year 11 melbourne australia
When I was in primary school the proceeds of the Halloween disco went to buying 1 mouse for 1 of the school few bbc micros. About 1986-7
When I attended primary school from 1994 in year 1 until year 7 in 2001 they were still using
BBC Micro computers until 1998 when PCs became more affordable and when every class had their
own PC they became surplussed to requirements. At the time BBC Micros were either donated to poor
countries or just chucked into landfill.
Granny's Garden and POD were staples of my late 80s edutainment at primary school in Australia
You opening comments made me realise just how close in age we actually are scott. I remember the BBC micro in my own primary school and these were also replaced by RMNimbus machines by the time I hit year 7.
I also have very fond memories of a Micro game. The premise was you typed an action and this little red character thing would perform it. If you typed 'pop' it would inflate and explode. Seriously, if anyone remembers the name to this game please do let me know. I would love to get it running again for a nostalgia hit.
My Primary school had a few different versions of the BBC micros and they went into storage in 1999 when I went to high school
Something so enchanting about these machines
Wish to clear space for a collection of these relics
What was that black keyboard machine they had in schools in the eighties with the chase the mouse game where you had to find the keys fast.
Unsure if it was an early version of a nimbus or if that was a different brand altogether.
Anyone remember the game where you had to protect/administrate a village? Everything was ASCII characters I think.
We had these at senior school
Jeez... i completely forgot about that art program, a whole wad of memories arrived then soon as the interface popped up.
I loved the micro at school
The star introduces shell commands. The Beeb and the later RISC OS machines had a weirdly powerful shell interpreter, which went well with having a weirdly powerful (and fast) BASIC interpreter and and excellent built-in assembler. It might never have had the powerful built-in custom hardware of, say, a C64, but the Beeb was worth every penny.
Didn't remember the program but remembered the music
Our primary school had one of these machines, only one, and they treated it as if it was the holy grail of rewards. One child would get one chance to touch this computer once in a school term because they were very well behaved and had the most gold stars. None of the other kids were allowed to touch it and then it went back in the cupboard until next term. The only other time it would come out would be if it was raining outside and we couldn't play out.
I like the layout of your BBCs. Because in high school (Gunnersbury Boys School) we had a room of these laid out in the same way with the CUB monitor. Was only in the 1st year, I think they either disappear in the 2nd year from what I remember. It was 2 boys to one BBC and I never really got a go which was annoying. Think they had the mouse drawing bot as well I think.
I remember the newspaper program at school!
Hi there. I’m hunting for some old games I used to play at Infants School between 1996-1998. I’m not sure what platform they were on but I know they had the Acorn logo on them, and the Software ‘Pen Down’ was the word processing tool. The games were similar to Granny’s garden, but the intro screen was reminiscent of a top down Zelda style game, and you had to move between two paths. I’d love to play it again if possible. Does anyone know what I’m talking about?
The BBC is 40 years old this year. I have a NEW really good BBC competition pro style Joysticks on eBay that are only £50! (not like £100 like old BBC competition pros go for) - celebrate in style. Works great - I just completed Airwolf with it after 40 years! Really responsive. My BBC Master is even more cherished now I can really get good with games!!:)))
I was also just at the end of the BBC micros. There was one adventure game I'd love to revisit, but I don't have a clue what it was called. Involved collecting items and combining them to advance.
Citadel? You have to collect the parts of the sword to stab the dragon with.
The RENUMBER command on the Beeb had one of the best error messages ever. If you try something like RENUMBER 10,0 you get the response - "Silly".
I would love to have a play around with that lottery graphics program
@The Centre for Computing History
I still have the schematic of my BBC micro (with a power supply that only starts up after half an hour). But if you like a copy I can scan and e-mail it...
Line numbers are the only practical way to edit text using a printing terminal. With a video terminal they no longer make sense, but old software and conventions often persist for a long time after technology changes.
11:53 "That's _really_ unpleasant!" I can only imagine how terrible a classroom full of BBC Micros would sound, with everyone playing the same game, at the same time. (Really-the elementary school I went to in the 1980s had _one_ computer for the entire school, which was rotated monthly among the classes.)
I remember the sound on our Micro was disabled, which is funny because one level of Dragon World (also made by the Granny's Garden people) requires you to listen to tones to proceed. I don't think anyone in our school ever beat it.
RM Nimbus Machines at School were cool. I used to break into all the games and put my name as the programmer on the title screens. When I left senior school my IT teacher gave me 2 Apple 2's out the stockroom.
When I was 11, the BBC Micro was gathering dust in the corner of the classroom.
The pupils all gathered around the brand new Multimedia PC running state of the art MS Windows 3.11, marveling at Doom!
I loved playing Chuckie Egg on the old Beeb, whenever we could get the disk drive to work!
I'm 40 years old now!
Did you know, the BBC Micro monitors could also work with the Acorn Archimedes systems? Do I see you have a custom BIOS?
I never realised that the Beeb was capable of such graphics! I have a Beeb, but it's in poor condition 🥺
Line numbers... I learned early on to give a space, typically 10, between each line of code. Reason? So I could insert code between earlier lines of code. Hard to believe, but yes, that's how we programmed in the early 80s. In the 70s, it was all in machine code and a *lot* harder :)
How nostalgic is that?!
Omg my school had that game but we where not allowed disk 2 I also remember that there where only 2 trees that ever worked
When did the monitor and keyboard text programming first come about.
First computer game I played granny's garden
8:55 That looks like a BBC rom port covers I made for CCH! Yey...I'm famous!
He may also be remembering a program called front page, which was a simpler affair than stop press.
Our school moved onto the Acorn Acamedies
Dread Dragon Droom!
...Now I've got to go and boot up my emulator (our beeb died many years ago, alas...) and see if I can find the image...
is the emulator exactly the same as the 'real' bbc micro ? models a and b???? thanks. (beebem and b-em etc etc)???? thanks.
That was epicly the most horrifying game ever, I was kept in suspense waiting for something to jump up at me!
As an American I find this super interesting and wish I could experience all these wonderful quirky British machines!
Naturally there are quite a few on ebay. Channels like Adrian's Digital Basement covers the issues of how to get old PAL home micros working in the US, modified PSU, video output, etc. Only downside is Beebs sell for quite a lot more nowadays than they once did.
Remember there were also good games like Elite and Codename Droid
I’ve sat in the same place as Tom Scott
I also used the same bbc micro cuz the art one I used had that glitch
Ah grannies garden.. Memories of primary school
Shift+Break 💻💥
For anyone looking for the video on the Archemede Computer that was used to generate graphics for old tv shows here is the link:
czcams.com/video/exW-LbLRJV0/video.html
Put elite on!!
Alan Turing in background!
Does anyone else remember the turtle robot that you could connect to this.....I'm sure it had a pen attached to it
Am I the only one that hears a high pitched weeeeeeeeeeee in the back?
No, CRT monitors do make a high pitched whistle and we forgot to filter it out of the audio. Sorry! But what you're experiencing is actually how it was! :)
Relevant: czcams.com/video/RA5UiLYWdbM/video.html
@@TheCentreforComputingHistory np, thats cool actually. didn't know they were noisy too haha! as is experience.
I occasionally work with several ex-BBC staff engineers of varying sorts. I'll put out a few enquiries. Can not promise anything, though.
Im not sure NHP was entirely a BBC production. (e.g. TFI Friday was not produced by Channel 4. It was produced by Ginger Productions, they in turn hired BBC OB resources, and engineering staff!)
Perhaps that's a question for the quiz show nerds?!
If it was not a BBC production, then it's likely BBC staff had absolutely nothing to do with it.
From the tape room Thanks! We’d love to find out! :)
@@TheCentreforComputingHistory On further thought, is the episode of NHP (shown at 19:00 ) available online in full? .....IF it still has full end credits attached, this may be helpful
From the tape room Yeah, it’s here : czcams.com/video/lu49RdY20GQ/video.html
There's a strong chance it wasn't a BBC Model B, but an Archimedes, as those were heavily used for genlock'd graphics at the time. It's where Eidos started out.
If inkey$(-74). For return key if I remember and *fx commands ,I also remember 16 pin rom chips for speech program and 5.25. Flopies
The keyboard on the BBC micro cost £25 - quite a lot when the whole computer cost £235
When I was in elementary school in the 80s we used the PET computer. And then the Commodore 64
The computer no kid wanted for Christmas.
That was good! BUT, I wish he'd put on Commander Stryker, which I've only ever seen adverts for. Granny's Garden was simply horrible, if intriguing.
We all know what Tom's going to be doing for the next few weeks... 😉