
The BBC Microcomputer User Guide - lsllc
http://central.kaserver5.org/Kasoft/Typeset/BBC/Contents.html
======
tobych
The BBC made a drama, "Micro Men" (2009), about some of the behind-the-scenes
drama behind the BBC Micro. As I recall, it doesn't explain the whole Fred,
Jim and Sheila thing though.

Martin "Bilbo Baggins" Freeman is in it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM)

~~~
as1mov
Just watched it last night, it's pretty good. Though does anyone have any
context for the scene with Sinclair and the 3 women in the convention? It
seemed a bit out of place in the whole doc.

BTW, Silicon Cowboys is another film I'd recommend. It's about the history of
Compaq.

~~~
LeoPanthera
It's a reference to the fact that Sinclair was a notorious womanizer, and his
exploits often ended up in the press of the time. He was also chairman of
MENSA from 1980 to 1997.

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duncanawoods
Now you've read the manual, time to start coding:

[https://bbc.godbolt.org/](https://bbc.godbolt.org/)

Awesome web based emulator. You can load various games too. Loads of them are
still really playable. Try: Starport, Commando, Alien8, Inertia...

~~~
nickt
That's amazing. Even forces me to use the proper UK keymap on my US keyboard!

~~~
lsllc
Trying to remember where * lived!

~~~
lproven
If you fancy a modern take on this environment, RISC OS Pico is the 32-bit ARM
version of BBC BASIC on top of the 32-bit ARM version of Acorn MOS:

[https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/show/Software%...](https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/show/Software%20information:%20RaspberryPi:%20RISC%20OS%20Pico)

Same language, editor, commands, etc. but about 2000x faster.

Runs great on a Raspberry Pi Zero, which is $5 and accepts USB peripherals &
an HDMI screen.

[https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-
zero/](https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-zero/)

The same code will work but without fighting the weird restrictions of
early-1980s hardware. (Even when emulated.)

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lsllc
Only eclipsed by:

"The Advanced User Guide for the BBC Microcomputer"

[http://stardot.org.uk/mirrors/www.bbcdocs.com/filebase/essen...](http://stardot.org.uk/mirrors/www.bbcdocs.com/filebase/essentials/BBC%20Microcomputer%20Advanced%20User%20Guide.pdf)

~~~
tom_
Only itself eclipsed by:

"The Advanced User Guide for the BBC Microcomputer" (remastered)

[https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=17242](https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=17242)

~~~
lsllc
Oh man, it even has the front cover! Thank you!

~~~
nickt
While an amazing manual, nothing beats the original ZX Spectrum manual covers
(and the manuals themselves are great too). Retro8bitcomputers [1] has an
amazing selection of manuals to peruse. It's almost like we've forgotten the
art of the user manual since the 80's.

[1]
[http://www.retro8bitcomputers.co.uk/Downloads](http://www.retro8bitcomputers.co.uk/Downloads)

Edit: typo

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Kim_Bruning
I literally read my real-world version of this to pieces.

I'm not sure where it is now, but last I saw it it was a mess of sellotape and
ring-binder-repair stickers kept in a separate box with lost pages in the
bottom.

I don't recall any other book that got quite that much mileage.

~~~
Kim_Bruning
(Some detail) Acorn manuals always had a good reputation. They usually
contained a tutorial section, a reference section, clear appendices with all
sorts of examples and details, and a very solid index. I haven't quite seen
other manuals that were quite as good.

As a really neat example: the Acorn Midi Card manual for the Archimedes went
all the way from high level "what is midi" down to bits and bytes and
assembler-level API calls. As a kid, it allowed me to _understand_ midi.
Compare that to the manual for my synthesizer at the time, which really didn't
explain anything at all.

I found it quite interesting that a document aimed at a musician could be so
technical and obtuse while the document for the computer person was so clear
and enlightening!

~~~
timthorn
I understand (from a friend who was at the school at the time) that at least
one of the authors for one of the manuals was a teacher at Netherhall, the
school round the corner from Acorn.

The BBC Micro was the reference point for the Computer Literacy Project, so
developing understanding was a key goal.

------
mattbee
Memory protection in the old days:

 _There are three memory mapped input /output areas and these are named FRED,
JIM and SHEILA. SHEILA contains all the machine's internal memory mapped
devices, such as the analogue to digital converter, and should be treated with
considerable respect._

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louthy
It's why I now run a software company. Reading this (and the Advanced User
Guide) at 10 years old gave me a career.

~~~
Arathorn
Same here. The manual was an incredibly readable on-ramp from total basics
(hah) all the way through to the FX & OSBYTE & 6502 references at the end.
(And I was distraught when my ringbinding started to unravel on the Advanced
User Guide)

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numinos1
And then there's the guy who communicated with an individual from the 16th
century through his BBC Micro:

[https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15271](https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15271)

Lamentably, I don't see anything in the user guide about that feature ;-)

~~~
louthy
That's amazing.

> "At the time, Webster was living with his girlfriend."

Might shed some light on where his messages came from. She was probably a real
joker, haha!

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djmips
Coming from the Apple II world as a kid I love chapter 43 where you can mix in
6502 code!

[http://central.kaserver5.org/Kasoft/Typeset/BBC/Ch43.html](http://central.kaserver5.org/Kasoft/Typeset/BBC/Ch43.html)

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forinti
BBC Basic is a work of art. It exposes its underlying API for you to use in
assembly so you can, for instance, use its floating point routines and data
areas. And it's a very well thought out API.

~~~
tom_
Does it? My recollection is that the entry points were undocumented, and
changed in every revision, of which there were at least 6! - BASIC 1, BASIC 2,
HIBASIC, BASIC 4, BASIC 4.32, HIBASIC 4.32...

The inbuilt assembler was super useful, and an excellent feature, but not
obviously designed for calling BASIC itself. The expected use case seemed to
be that you'd use BASIC by writing BASIC code, and any machine code routines
(probably created using the inbuilt assembler) would be self-contained.

(Modern readers unfamiliar with this system should compare the BBC BASIC
assembler much more to LuaJIT's dynasm, which it rather resembles, than to the
average C compiler's inline assembler, which it was not really much like.)

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scmurcott
So many memories - thanks for sharing.

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zem
ah, nostalgia! i learnt to program with that manual in hand.

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hcheung
Thanks for sharing, the title should be dated with (2001).

~~~
LeoPanthera
(1981), surely.

