5 blog posts tagged BBC Micro

Revisiting my BBC Micro - display, speech & more

It's been a while since I blogged about Revitalizing my BBC Micro. In that time, I've performed a few upgrades readers might find interesting.

As useful as the tiny Amstrad CRT was, I wanted something bigger, brighter, and sharper. LCD is terrible for retro systems with blurry scaling attempting to draw images designed to take advantage of CRTs. Emulator authors spend significant effort trying to mimic CRT effects for an authentic retro feel - but the best option is to use a CRT.

Revitalizing a BBC Micro

Recent casualties were my Apple ][e (no disks), Acorn ARM (wouldn’t boot) and Commodore VIC 20 (poor state). Next up is my Acorn BBC Micro B:

My "Beeb" is in good condition and works well, but the case screws have long since disappeared (a common theme in my collection), and it needed a good clean. These older mechanical keyboards attract dust and dirt.

Origins of a love affair

From an earliest memory of a cream colored box emblazoned with letters, mostly black – some red, came an owl proclaiming allegiance to the BBC.

This small box sat silently, patiently even, in our classroom for the best part of a year. On the few occasions our teacher was brave enough to flip the switch the machine would chirp into life with it’s two-tone beep and would state on capital white letters on a black background that it was BASIC. At this point the teacher would key-in the mythical incantation of CHAIN ""CHAIN "" – handily jotted on a nearby note – and feed the beast a cassette tape.

Adding depth to my programming ability

I remember gazing at the screen of Acornsoft’s Elite in my childhood wondering what the code behind those 3D images looked like.

How did they rotate like that? How did it know which lines to hide? And more importantly where I can get a good price for this cargo hold of radio-actives and platinum?