It is hard to overstate the impact that having a BBC micro in my 1980s rural primary school had on my career, without that I'd almost certainly have had a very different path through life. My eternal gratitude to whichever executive or politician decided to fund that program.
The politician was Margaret Thatcher and the Department Of Trade And Industry (the website calls it Transport and Industry which looks like a typo as transport was the Ministry of Transport) paid 50% of the cost for schools purchasing computers from the Research Machines 380Z, the BBC Micro plus (I didn't know this) the Spectrum.
Placing this under the DTI, instead of Ministry of Education, suggests the intention was to encourage success stories precisely like yours; build skills for future employment in industry and building IT literate professionals to enable future UK trade. Surprisingly forward looking for any government department!
We were lucky enough to have both the 380Z and the BBC Micro (plus some Acorn Atom's as budget alternatives and a number of Apple ][ that pre-dated the whole computers in schools program) plus ECONET ! Our Computing Department head was involved in setting up the program, so we lucky and got a bit of almost everything except the Spectrum. We also had a few different languages available, Comal, Pascal plus the obvious BBC BASIC. I also got to play with a BASIC Compiler (Apple ][ Expediter if I recall the name correctly). I was incredibly lucky as a result of the teacher being involved in setting up the program and the early Computing courses and examinations.
Thatcher was not prime minister when the DTI was established. She was prime minister when the BBC Micro was developed and released. Did she play some role in the development or approval of the project?
I helped my math teacher (we didn't have computer science yet) set up econet in the computer lab so learned all about how it worked (all of which I've now forgotten) and took advantage of its lack of security for the rest of the year.
We also transitioned from actual typewriters to beebs in typing class, and I ended up writing a user(/idiots) guide for the beeb word processor.
When the BBC micro arrived at my tiny rural school the elderly teacher had been given instructions for how to type in and run a simple "hello world" style program to demonstrate what this amazing machine could do.
She began copy-typing in the program and then invited each of us to sit at the keyboard and add our names to what I imagine was a simple print statement.
Finally, after quite some time going around the whole class one by one, the program was ready and she pressed return and ..
Syntax error
The machine was promptly powered off and put back in the box.
It would be a few years before it reemerged and, thankfully, captured my interest.
Lots of late 30's/early 40-something Brits in this sub thread I think :D
BBC Micro was the first computer I ever used, in 1986 upon entering primary school. I remember learning DART and programing the turtle to move around using LOGO (we actually had a physical version too from what I remember).
My elderly year 1 primary school teacher disliked the computer, however, and told us we needed to spend the time learning to write in pen because "we wouldn't be able to carry a computer on our back for the rest of our lives"!
My parents soon bought an Acorn A3000 (32bit home computing in 1988!) and I would type out BASIC programs from books from the library and then later edit them to discover I could do my own programming. I don't think there was any free/open source (what we used to call 'shareware') WIMP tools so being about 10 years old my programming was strictly relegated to BASIC as that's all we had.
I'm a bit depressed to think that Margaret Thatcher had a direct impact on my career in tech, however :/
A few years ago UK schools were flooded with BBC:Micro Bits - everyone in my son's year-group received one.
I think the idea was similar, seed a new generation with technical know-how. I'm not sure if it will work this time - I guess we will have to wait and see.
It was really. I worked at the beeb when it was being worked on and it was very much tyring to strip back all the cludgy layers built up and get real interaction with the device, much the same way as the original did. Yes, there were Pi's but there's a lot more to the stack in that.
Hopefully they don't overheat (that was part of my testing I helped with :) )
As for it's efficacy, it definitely sparked a few minds but I don't think anywhere near the effect the original had. There's so many more distraction nowadays for kids too.
Most my friends had Spectrums, i was looking forward to gaming when Santa would surely bring me one too. Alas i got an Acorn Electron. Turns out, having the different system that my extended friend group meant i spent time messing about with coding than gaming. So whilst 'young james' was probably unreasonably unhappy with that Christmas, i think in hindsight it was amazing :)
Similar. That Christmas when my dad & I started working through the BBC BASIC manual, I thought that this was the exciting experience of owning a computer which my friends were all on about (and I was excited by it!)
...It was only some time later I learned about loading pre-written programs (games) on it.
But the reason I started coding in BASIC was because when we received a ZX Spectrum for Christmas one year the cassette player was broken - no preloaded games for us.
I was always more interested in programming, and hacking games for infinite lives than actually playing games!
Exactly that. In some ways i'd love to have some of that old code, as icky as it would likely be to view now.
Does make me wonder how kids of today just start coding, without having to fuss about dev environments. Listening to my young nephew talking about doing python at school sounded encouraging, but python is hardly "I want to learn to python, starting coding in python". Lots of fiddling about. Still he seems to enjoy it.
Less so having them in school, but I cut my programming teeth on an Acorn Electron, then later a BBC Master, that we had at home.
Mostly in BASIC (a better implementation than most common 8-bits had: proper procs & functions rather than just GOTO/GOSUB and decent variable name length limits) but later with a bit of 6502 assembler added in for sprite drawing/moving & similar (BBC BASIC had a built-in multi-pass assembler – another significant point in its favour).
I doubt I'd be where I am today if I'd not had that (and my parents had not had the foresight to let me stretch bed-time rules when doing something learn-y rather than just playing games!).
It was the Electron for me. Bought it new for the equivalent of less than #100 when Acorn discontinued it, the only computer I could afford from my allowance. Incidentally it also forced me to learn German and English as a kid, to be able to read the manuals and Acorn Magazine.
Second to learning to read, that machine probably had the largest influence on my career
The archive of the BBC's Computer Literacy Project, of which the BBC Micro was a key part, is now online. Lots of fascinating programmes:
https://clp.bbcrewind.co.uk/
After playing with a C64 Maxi replica (mine has the VIC-20 colors) I can't think of using a vintage computer without a matching keyboard (and often mouse). The experience is not only the pixels on the screen and the sounds of the speaker, but the whole spatial relationship with the physical object.
It probably doesn't need to be an almost perfect replica like the 64 Maxi, but having the keys in the same places (even if there is no ESC key - looking at you, DEC LK-201). On my desk, my two daily drivers are a Sun Type 7c (Type 7 is in storage, waiting for its rotation) and an IBM/Lexmark/Unicomp PC-122 Model M, and I can say each of them provides a unique experience, tactile, spatial, and, on the Model M's case, auditory.
I'm thinking about learning how to build keyboards and make a couple DIY ones. Switches can't be the same, but, at least, physical layout, keycap shapes, labels, and colors can be matched.
They are well known to anyone that was interested in Elite. BBC Micro has the best Elite version, after all :)
That said, that ATX4VC thing looks fantastic. I have recently restored a MSX computer back to life, but I think the power supply is unstable and crapping up when the machine warms up. It also contributes significant noise. Maybe it's time to replace with a modern PSU instead of spending time trying to fix the wimpy transformer-based PSU.
EDIT: I realize that cheap devices like this already existed. But this one seems to be much more complete (and trustworthy!). It's too bad that many printers use 24V rather than 12, otherwise this would be helpful for those scenarios too.
Strong nostalgia whenever I see the BBC Elite opening screen!
These days we can re-live it easily in the browser: https://bbc.godbolt.org/?autoboot&disc=sth%3AAcornsoft%2FEli... Although I can also recommend "oolite": http://www.oolite.org/ which is an open source modernised elite with game play kept quite faithful to the original (I'm currently hooked on this and wasting more my life trying to get that "Elite" rating all over again)
In 1990 I did something similar with a Commodore 64. Mine wasn't as slick and well done as this one, but it had a C-64, two floppy drives, internal modem, RAM expansion, and three cartridge ports selectable via push button, in a case intended for an IBM clone. I was never able to find a good case for the keyboard, so I ended up putting it in a cardboard cookie box until I could find something better.
After that experience, I got into the world of build-your-own IBM clones, and I don't remember what ever happened to the 64. Kinda sad.
"BBC Micro motherboard requires two voltages: +5V and -5V. The former powers all the chips, and the latter only for sound and serial communication.
Fortunately, 5V is readily available on a ATX PSU, and -5V can be derived from -12V with a simple 7905 linear regulator"
The power ATX power supply also supplied -5 volts. Why did they need to use a linear regulator to on the -12v line derive -5v?
Edit:// my question was previously asked an answered.
My teachers at University were involved in the project. If you were one of that influential cohort who developed this machine, you were rewarded with your initials being included on the silicon die. Pretty rad.
A major piece of Beeb history was also the manual. Without a doubt the most important book of my childhood.
That statement is somewhat analogous to what is said about software development (in the tone of JFK's "moonshot" voice), "...we do things things not because they are easy but because we thought they would be easy..." :)
This is a lovely project, given that the original Beeb wasn't "damaged" per se. I have a few Beeb mainboards with unrecoverable cases, and this sort of thing might be a very good destination for one.
BBC micro and econet were amazingly hackable and still have fond memories.
Bruteus you in this thread? It’s Apollo here!
(Bruteus and Apollo fucking owned our econet. Until we got suspended and banned of course. Hard to emphasize how scared of computers and our superior ability with them our teachers were).
This is incredible. Not only the final result is breathtaking, but the intermediate projects you created to support it are awesome too! The duckyPad looks very nice too!
The ATX PSU (labeled CX650F here) converts wall power to a maximum of 12v DC. It's metal case is earthed so short of sticking pointy metal bits though the fan grills it is safe to touch.
The rest of the system only sees the 12v DC or less which remains completely safe to touch. The PSU can not (and will not due to fuses) supply enough current to risk fire (like a 12v car battery).
Having the PSU case exposed is electrically identical to having a pc case exposed. Having it opened on the other hand is a danger. PSU capacitors are known to be large enough to kill.
