Adrian, the cut out on the BBC Micro was never factory. I paid my way through college by fixing BBC's and it was a rare mod designed to dissipate the PSU heat. If you need any parts for the BBC, or need help, please let me know. I have tons of s/w and utilities including ROMs....

@kwanchan6745

5 жыл бұрын

@@adriansdigitalbasement the -5v problem will prevent the sound chip working as well as the serial and tape interfaces

@eekee6034

2 жыл бұрын

You've got me wondering how it was cut out so neatly.

In the UK in 1984 there was a TV show called 'Database' which actually broadcast live software over the end credits which could be recorded onto your machine.

@willitwork4330

4 жыл бұрын

That genuinely is incredible! In 1984?

@gwishart

4 жыл бұрын

@Fonzie It varied from programme to programme, one week it was the C64, next week the ZX Spectrum, next week the BBC Micro etc. It didn't require any additional hardware; just a tape recorder. Although it really helped if your TV had a headphone or audio out socket.

@MrVidification

4 жыл бұрын

@@willitwork4330 'database thamestv' is on here. if there are no sound issues then I imagine someone could attempt to use the end credit audio (if it exists in any clips) within a capable 8-bit emulator, such as spectaculator

Not sure if you've tried the printer, but it works with a little stylus that is dragged across the paper on a loop. It actually burns through to a black backing with an electric arc. Very odd, but also very Sinclair.

@brandonupchurch7628

5 жыл бұрын

So what can carry more current the metallic face on the Sinclair paper or the carbon paper from the male USB hole warmer.

@wich1

5 жыл бұрын

Hey Clive, nice to see you here.

@infinitecanadian

5 жыл бұрын

An electric arc? You have got to be kidding me. I have never heard of that before.

@BlackEpyon

5 жыл бұрын

Didn't know you were into vintage computers Big Clive.

@39Kohm

5 жыл бұрын

have a fan running or crack open a window while running it, I hear the fumes are none-to-pleasant ;)

The CTL sticker is from a company called Clyde Technics Limited in North Wales, the UK. I used to work for them 30 years ago. They sold and repaired BBC micros.

@ResiPlopper

5 жыл бұрын

Hey Adrian love your channel, and your enthusiasm, I can't add any more about the company or the sticker, but I actually live in the town of Mold, it is less than 2 miles from location mentioned on the sticker.

@peterwilliams942

5 жыл бұрын

Yes, it would have been. Clwyd Technics sold 1000s of BBC micros.

@grws86

5 жыл бұрын

Cymru am byth!

@amirpourghoureiyan1637

5 жыл бұрын

@@adriansdigitalbasement the Welsh one was most likely an OEM system, whereas the micro with the full bbc name was probably sold by Acorn and distributed to schools

@Poolio32

5 жыл бұрын

It’s awesome seeing these bbc computers again I used them in a secondary school in the clwyd county where we had computer rooms filled with them and they had the boxy monitors mounted on top of each one that matched the computer........even the piece of paper taped to the plastic trim was a common thing on all the machines we used....will be interesting what you do with them 👍🏻

I’m from the UK and to see you take an interest in these systems and give them a new home in the US makes me proud. Great video and I have now subscribed. Thank you.

well done for saying ZED-EX spectrum ;)

@richardedwards9389

5 жыл бұрын

Ha never picked up on that.

@RK-zf1jm

5 жыл бұрын

Its the same at Jay- Z it sounds wrong if you say it the English way he would be Jay-Zed

@smittenthekitteninmittens2679

5 жыл бұрын

Ben Heck calls it zee...it really irks me!!!!

@reconnaissancesquadron222

5 жыл бұрын

But he lost half of them bonus points for saying "sodder".

@officermeowmeowfuzzyface4408

5 жыл бұрын

and the rapper 50 pennies

Awesome. I'm from the UK and had a ZX Spectrum +2 as a childhood computer (but this was in the very late 90s WAY after it was relevant lol!)

@terminusaquo1980

5 жыл бұрын

I had the +3 but most of my childhood was spent using a 48k

@Yukatoshi

5 жыл бұрын

@@Lee_B77 Ouch lol.

@terminusaquo1980

5 жыл бұрын

@@Lee_B77 Ah that sucks. My +3 is still in my parents attic so I'll pick it up sometime and get it hooked up to see if it works.

@gwishart

5 жыл бұрын

@@terminusaquo1980 The most common fault on +3s that have been in storage for a long time is that the disk drive belt snaps or rots away. You can get new ones from various places, like www.dataserve-retro.co.uk/index.html they also sell cables to connect the monitor port on the +3 to the SCART input on a TV - much better quality than RF and saves having to find an analogue TV.

@terminusaquo1980

5 жыл бұрын

@@gwishart Thanks for letting me know, when I get it out again I'll keep an eye on the drive belt.

Great to see an American embracing these two UK machines, instead of the usual, sneering, dumping on them and regarding the Apple II or TRS80 as the be all and end all.

@rbrtck

3 жыл бұрын

Nah, the Commodore 64, which was by far the most popular 8-bit personal computer in the US, leaves them all for dead. ;)

@VandalIO

2 жыл бұрын

I thought he was Canadian

The excitement of having a ZX Spectrum and the ultimate - a kempston joystick

You have the bbcs, now you've got to find yourself a copy of Elite.

@shaunnormancroft

5 жыл бұрын

yes elite loved that game took me almost 6 months to reach elite used to count all the right on commanders every time one of those came on looking to see if I had been promoted, I played on the acorn electron based on the BBC great computer for its time better than the spectrum in my opinion wireframe graphics in elite but never spoilt the game, how I miss the the early 80's

@chriswareham

5 жыл бұрын

And make sure it's the floppy disk and not the tape version - the disk version has extra features not found on the tape one (or conversions like the C64 one that I played back in the day) such as the interior of the space stations!:-)

@Mike.Nov51

5 жыл бұрын

DavstrWrexham I did have one

@sopcannon

5 жыл бұрын

Elite has been reborn thanks to kickstarter, now available on xbox and ps4 as well as pc.

@sahhull

5 жыл бұрын

I still have my BBC Model B and all the kit and games, including Elite on tape and disk

I still have my BBC Model B with tape, disk drives, BBC joystick, 6502 second processor, word wise eprom, a huge selection of games, including Elite on tape and disk. Mine is a 1982 model, according to the sticker on the pcb. Yes it still works.

Nice pickups. I'm very glad to have discovered your channel, i can't enough of quality retro computer restoration :)

Seems like yesterday this was the cutting edge in home computer tech!

The BBC micros were used in alot of schools in the uk my school had loads till the acorn archimedes came out that was defantly a blast from the past

@wodenoftheangles3339

4 жыл бұрын

Zarch.

@nickpink25

4 жыл бұрын

Computer studies for me 1984 derby england on bbc 🤓

@Georgeasaurus2001

4 жыл бұрын

Yep and me we had 10-15 all in one room, seemed really space age at the time lol

@K1k1k148

4 жыл бұрын

@@Georgeasaurus2001 yh I remember well bloody old gits we are lol it did seem all space age its crazy how tech has advanced so fast where dose the time go mate

Fantastic to see these lovely BBC B machines being brought back to life in the US. I used to work for the BBC and your video brought back so many happy memories of my early BBC career as back in the late 80s these machines were used to create CEDFAX (teletext) pages and I spent many happy hours tapping away on my old BBC B back in the day. Looking forward to your further restoration of these excellent machines.

I remember my school having ONE of these BBC computers back in the 80`s. They were on a desk with wheels that was pushed into each class on a rota basis. We were allowed 10 minutes a week with a friend to work on the computer, it was then pushed on to the next class when everyone took a turn. My teacher had created a traffic light that we took turns to program.

Thanks for the memories, I had the BBC Model B computer, a company in the UK called Watford Electronics used to have lots of accessories for them

@rogeratygc7895

2 ай бұрын

Ah yes! I bought my model B from them. Still have it, though unused for so many years.

Brings back some memories, I we had 1 BBC in my primary school, when I started secondary school they was a computer room with 40 of them. And that was 1997!

@unregistredhypercam

4 жыл бұрын

I remember using Micros in school around 1999/2000. Most of them were masters but there was a B i remember. My younger brother told me they still had risc pcs there in 2006, and possibly still the beebs.

I think I know why one BBC has a cut out section. It's because the BBC wanted a specific power supply that wouldn't interfere with their equipment, against the advice of Acorn. But when it became clear the kind Acorn recommended was required for reliability, it was changed to fit the original specification. All learnt/vaguely remembered from last week on Retromancave. That might be something to do with it.

As a 40 yr old, the bbc micro was the very first computer i ever saw as a 5yr old kid, that would have been 1983 ish, and there was only one that arrived at my school and it was considered SACRED incase it got damaged, the fact is that we barely got to use it which is a shame because im sure by 1986 or so they were pretty much defunkt. However at the time It was state of art and had a program called pod or similar, you could guess at the things the caracter could do “pod can JUMP” if you typed that in and it worked it was written on the wall for the other kids to also try, we were hooked.

machine with the hole cut out is in an early issue 4 case, the texturing is different to later issue 4s and issue 7s the later cases also had the anti-finger trap design

@kwanchan6745

5 жыл бұрын

NB issue 7, issue 3 and issue 4 cases had the ashtray perforation to the left issue 2s don't have the perforation the mention of the BBC function key strip is absolutely correct...bbc copyright in europe held by a swiss company

@kaitlyn__L

4 жыл бұрын

@Tone. was going to say the same if my looking around didn't yield anything. :D

I had these machines when I was a kid. I loved the spectrum

This is so awesome, most of the Information on the Hardware went over my head with confusion, but interesting none the less! Subscribed :)

You have both my childhood computers right there! I have been planning to make a pilgrimage back to the UK this summer to pick up some of those myself :) Can't wait to see what else you do with them.

Oh how I loved using those BBC Micro keyboards!! The feeling of pressing those keys, the sound they made, I miss them! Typing now is just not the same

@johnkean6852

2 жыл бұрын

Woof l agree woof woof

Great stuff! My first computer was a Beeb, which I eventually donated to a local school when I ‘upgraded’ to a PC. Now that I’ve caught the retro bug, I have 2 BBC model Bs, and a Master 128. Some add-on suggestions; a Gotek drive is a good start, especially if you mod it to use an OLED display and a rotary encoder & piezo sounder. You can add co-processors by using a raspberry pi and the ‘pitubedirect’ software. Also worthwhile is a turbo MMC, or equivalent, and a ‘Data Centre’ from Retro Clinic. Details of all these can be found on the Stardot forum, which I see you have already joined. So, enjoy your Beebs, and have fun!

Growing up here in the United States I had no exposure to these computers back in the '80s. So I'm definitely looking forward to following along as you combine the best of each of these BBC machines in to one. I really enjoyed watching what you've done so far with testing, and repair. Now it's just a matter of cleaning everything up, and assembling one nice example.

I have no idea why KZread suggested this video but it brought back many memories. The BBC Model B was our first computer and between 1983 and 1993 my husband and I had a small software company producing educational programs for secondary schools in the UK. Our best sellers were for data analysis, allowing students to enter and display records from e.g. a weather station, measuring rivers and for human geography doing surveys in towns. I learned to use a word processor with View (supplied on a chip), spreadsheet was ViewSheet and ViewData (if I remember correctly) was the database. With the BBC Model B, you could only get about 1000 words in the memory before having to start a new file, though you could chain them together to print documents out. My favourite was probably the BBC Master 128. That would hold 5000 words before running out of memory. Favourite game was definitely Elite.

The paper has a metallic coating because it's used in the electroerosion "spark" dot matrix printer. The metal is blasted off by current flow heating where a dot is desired.

@absurdengineering

4 жыл бұрын

Winston Smith Should be fun to listen to on a shortwave receiver :)

Nice pickups!!! Regards ideas for mods / upgrades on the BBCs - get yourself one of the Turbo or Super MMC adapters (allows you to play all games off a single MMC card), consider adding some sort of ROM expansion board - or some of the RAM / EEPROM adapters you can get off eBay. These are also cool with the speech chip added - you can buy a kit from RetroClinic in the UK. I've done some repair and upgrade videos on these myself just last year. Lovely machines! You can also add a Raspberry Pi as a co-processor to these too (via the TUBE connection), and I recently added a SID chip to mine too. If you want a "Beeb SID" bare PCB for free just let me know and I will post you one from the UK - just needs some TTL chips and a Swin SID / SID chip etc, but its easy enough to assemble. I used a Swin SID to avoid reducing physical SID chip stocks from my C64 systems. Also worth considering doing switchable audio mod too - so you can have audio out into the SCART connection or line out, rather than being forced to use the speaker.

@GadgetUK164

5 жыл бұрын

@@adriansdigitalbasement Yes, that darned 245 really gave me a run for my money lol! It was litterally the last thing that could possibly be affecting the databus - why couldn't it have been one of the earlier chips I removed lol. I couldnt see an email address on your about page (maybe YT changed permissions or something related to that recently). I have added you in Twitter but cannot message until you add me in at your side.

@Ryges

5 жыл бұрын

@@adriansdigitalbasement @GadgetUK164 definitely the guy you want to ask about British Computers. He can probably also give you some more insight on the ZX Spectrum

@GadgetUK164

5 жыл бұрын

The Master is a nicer machine, but it had some incompatibilities didnt it? That said, I am sure those progs / games have been patched up already to work these days.

@mattaz8601

4 жыл бұрын

I added a daughter board to mine and installed a number of EEPROMs for different compilers and interpreters. I remember learning Modula2 and Forth for example. It was a great machine to learn on, plus of course Elite and a brilliant racing game called Revs. After that it was the Atari 520ST.

@kaitlyn__L

4 жыл бұрын

The Tube socket is so so cool :3 I suppose a Pi is as close as you'd get to the original ARM dev Tube board from a modern system?

Adrian, I LOVE the fact that your main priority on coming to the UK was to get a BBC B. They're still great machines!

Liked your video. Funny to hear an American talking bout our home computers from here in the uk. My first home computer was a ZX81 then I got a Spectrum 48k. They were so so popular back then. Good to see it again.

There was an Spectrum interface we had made by US Robotics that let you control Lego Technic models via a cable to a couple of motors, we made things like a plotter printer and driving robots, it would be amazing if one of them was on eBay

So cool seeing that CTL sticker - Clwyd was the County name at the time but has since been split up & Techneg is just the welsh for Technics. These and other Acorn machines we're the go-to computers in schools in my area until around 1997/8!

@BlackEpyon

5 жыл бұрын

The Sinclair, by my understanding, was like the Tandy in North America, with BBC being the bigger player like IBM, or something.

@MattRandles

5 жыл бұрын

The sinclair/spectrum shown is (in my mind) most comparable to the Commadore 64. The BBC Micro's were build by Acorn (ARM originally was Acorn RISC Machine) - at the time they felt like an educational only tool rather than a big company!

@jaycee1980

5 жыл бұрын

Yep this is more correct.. ZX Spectrum was like the Commodore 64 of the time. BBC wouldve been more like the Apple.

@TheXJ12

5 жыл бұрын

Micro Men, a one-off BBC drama television show set in the late 1970s and the early-mid 1980s, about the rise of the British home computer market (Thks Wikipedia), illustrates the relationship between these companies

@MattRandles

5 жыл бұрын

@@TheXJ12 the one with martin freeman in? good shout out, that's a great watch for anyone who loves retro computers!

brill ..... you bring back my days from long ago ..... thank you

Great videos on here,really brings back good memories

I only live 20 mins drive from southgate tube station in the UK 😀 in fact i have done a few courses in southgate college over the years lol

Got to love the Beeb, one of those few early micros that feels like a "proper" computer. And you can't go past a system that lets you do inline assembly code in BASIC!

@kaitlyn__L

4 жыл бұрын

Sophie Wilson really did care above user experience and sensible design, designing to a cost was so low in her priorities. Even though so many more Speccies were sold than Micros and Electrons, at least her RISC CPU design has stood the test of time... and the strengths in her design of the Micro still show through today - as Adrian said, the connectivity is out of this world. The mods people could do to these things were incredible. Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett both had highly extended systems hooked into various smart home devices from back in the day... crazy stuff. And incredible. Leaving those unpopulated sockets for expansion ROMs was a small stroke of genius. That kind of stuff gets washed away with the first skim of cost cutting when taking a design from prototype to production. But they kept it for the Micro. Same about the keyboard.

Both of those computers were my introduction to computing: I had a ZX Spectrum 128K +2 at home (mostly gaming obviously!) and used the BBC Micros at school. Hope you enjoy your finds!

Learnt more about the BBC computer in 30 minutes than I did 5 years in senior school using them!

Retro computers and a box of Kleenex, perfect night in.

@rambledogs2012

4 жыл бұрын

Pixel Porn?

I used to have a sinclair ZX81, and also did some of my first songs using an old Archimedes Acorn A3000

@perihelion7445

4 жыл бұрын

You had an Archimedes? maaaan those machines were not cheap in their day! As far as I remember your particular model possessed a RISC CPU, I could be wrong, it's been a while?

Wow, just seen this - such a nostalgia trip for me. I was always a speccy guy. I spent years on that computer, probably waiting for games to load just as much as playing them but I so loved that little computer. Its fascinating for someone from America to grab hold of these and look at them. As for the BBC, we had them at school but they were out of reach financially for the average home user. Thank you for this video, very appreciated!

Amazing. We have 3 working BBC Micros here and a couple of Masters. I can't recall the cut out on the top of any of them thought there were multiple versions of the original BBC Micro, model a, a+ etc. Great to see them working, nice job. Now you just need a disc drive, Elite and Castle Quest!

I remember playing the "Magic Telephone" on the BBC computer in school

ZX Spectrum Sinclair was assembled not far from me in Dundee Scotland in the old Timex factory,

Great to see these working, I grew up with these old computers and good to see them travelling around the world being used 40 years on

Made me smile when tried to turn the the Beeb on without a keyboard. “Won’t work, You’ll only get a flashing cursor”. 😀

You should buy one of the Soviet ZX Spectrum clones on eBay and compare their internals with the authentic one. The Russian ones are cheap.

BBC Microcomputer was used in every school in the UK during the 80's

@mikejandrews

4 жыл бұрын

Until they were replaced in favour of the Acorn systems line in the late 80's, early 90's. The old BBCs and other Acorns had an impressive life. I was using them at my school right up until the end, in '97.

@andrewnorris5415

4 жыл бұрын

@@mikejandrews They were all Acorns, Acorn made the BBC Micro and the Archimedes. Yes, well-built computers, guess they had to be for school use. I owned both of them back in the day.

@mikejandrews

4 жыл бұрын

@@andrewnorris5415 Yes, I know. The story behind the BBC machine's development is fascinating. They were strong, well-built machines.They probably anticipated bothersome primary school kids going wild with them. But I never owned either, though used both at school (mostly the Archimedes) and my brother had the Electron. Played a lot of games on that. (After they finally finished loading.)

@pyeltd.5457

4 жыл бұрын

Till RM Education took over

@unregistredhypercam

4 жыл бұрын

Some schools still used them well into the 2000s. It's still a perfect educational computer for young children. There is no American software with incorrect spellings, they are so limited there are no pointless distractions, and they are extremely robust. I wouldn't be surprised if there are still a handful in use. The Risc PC was great for slightly older kids. I remember it having a really nice word processor and paint program, so it was more productive without being too full of distractions, and still had correct English.

UK here, the ZX 48k was my very first computer my parents got me for.Christmas way back in 1984, it was used but I got so many hours of fun out of that thing. Awesome little machine.

Just found your channel! Really cool video as the BBC Micro was the first ever computer I used at school in the mid to late 1980’s here in the UK. I remember playing some Dungeon Crawler / Quest game on it. Great memories! My brother and I were quite lucky as our Dad bought a Commodore 64 for the family which is where my gaming began. Seems like only yesterday.... I’ll be 40 this year! 😌

WTF? Those computers were still running our missile defence system. We need those back, dude.

@jari2018

4 жыл бұрын

So true and with 8 inch floppy drives installed .

@darknewt9959

4 жыл бұрын

@@jari2018 That's right. The government drafted in Sir Clive Sinclair to personally design and build the interface for that. Cost them £10M and was classified until 2016.

ZX Spectrum, convert it to composite - it's a very simple & quick modification.

We had those BBC computers way back in primary school. You were deemed very lucky to get to have a go. Only the well behaved kids usually got to play on them. I vaguely remember a game on there that we went mad for even though it was like a few pixels at best!

Hey mate. Brit here. I grew up with the Amstrad CPC (I'm assuming you know about and who runs Amstrad etc!) and other than that, it was a bit later than the BBC Micro and Spectrum I think. But wow, it's amazing how you brought these over the pond! Like it's amazing how people care about the cool and niche things. Nice :)

10 PRINT “HELLO WORLD!” 20 GOTO 10 RUN

@elektron2kim666

4 жыл бұрын

10 FOR a=1 TO 29 20 PRINT "Hello World for the ";a;"th time." 30 NEXT a

@chrisatherton8234

4 жыл бұрын

@@elektron2kim666 Hello World for the 1th time. Hello World for the 2th time. Hello world for the 3th time.

@elektron2kim666

4 жыл бұрын

@@chrisatherton8234 a$="stndrdth"

@martinj.fowler6262

4 жыл бұрын

10 PRINT "MARTIN IS ACE!" 20 GOTO 10 I used to go into Dixons on the high street. They had Oric-1 with it's onomatapaeic (sp?) BASIC key words 10 SHOOT 20 GOTO 10

@johnyboytown

4 жыл бұрын

@@martinj.fowler6262 how many times we did this in the 80's. Dixons was ace, Roland synths, mahoosive hifi systems, battleship proportions televisions.

Great! I really appreciate your love for european computers! My first (well, actually second) computer was a 48K Speccy, so can't wait for that video!

@nickpink25

4 жыл бұрын

KolliRail british

Great video buddie I love the speccy it brings back so many memories also the BBC was primarily a school computer i remember my school I'm 1983 having about 15 of the things in the computer class room great days lol

Our secondary school had a Commodore PET and then upgraded to a networked room of BBC micros with RGB monitors. Not being anything more than a 48k+ user, I avoided the computer club like the plague. I was happy to play games at home and do the odd bit of BASIC programming. Good fun to watch someone from N. America enthuse about our 'primitive' PC tech. Be a bit like me doing a vid on some dusty Peavey amps and risking death by breaking down the power amp section. Thanks for the nostalgic trip down memory lane BTW, my brain still hasn't recovered from playing Skool Daze for ten hours on Xmas day 1982.

The Econet machine was definitely from a UK secondary school in the 1980's. Nobody else but the criminally rich and insane (ok, Acornsoft) would have a network of Beeb's back then. They would all need a fileserver too which would be a rack mount Acorn Atom based machine (called an Acorn System something) with massive 5MB Winchester drive or perhaps dual 5 1/4" floppies. The -5V is used for the RS423 interface. You definitely need it for trying to transfer files between a real BBC micro and your PC. The PC end is the usual TTL/RS232/USB adapter and the other uses a 5 pin "domino" plug for the BBC Micro. The domino/dice plugs are rare but Farnell CPC does sell them. Deltron 611-0520 for example. There are few ways to wire it - I go with the simple CTS/RTS and RX/TX swap over, all that nonsense with DTR and DSR really isn't needed. ETA: I'm pretty sure the -5V is needed for the cassette interface too, as a negative bias for the op-amps.

@dalecousins7373

5 жыл бұрын

I agree with Drew i went to school on Anglesey late 80s and the school had loads on a econet so your unit is 90% likely from a north wales school at some point and the rom is likely to have a build that if it detects econet connection and the file server it would have booted differently.

@daishi5571

5 жыл бұрын

I worked at a school in London where we had ~50 Beebs & 15 (there may have been more) Archs. I hated chasing down Econet disconnects, network clashing and just outright disaster. But when it worked it worked fine, I would come in the morning and power up the server a BBC with a Winchester drive a big smoky glass dome with the HDD platters spinning (later upgraded to a ST506 I think), give it a few mins to warm up then hit the breaker, powering up the bulk of the BBC systems and in general it was reliable.

@mrswinkyuk

5 жыл бұрын

The rackmount fileserver WASN'T Atom based, it just looked like it. What looked like an Atom was actually just a keyboard. The CPU board would have been an Acorn system II ( I think).

@aitchpea6011

5 жыл бұрын

Ahhh, Beebs on Econet. Four character passwords that, if you didn't want to spend a few hours brute-forcing, you could just sniff while they were typed from any machine on the network, IIRC

@Drew-Dastardly

5 жыл бұрын

@@mrswinkyuk The Atom was basically a cut down System 3 without the Eurocard chassis for the home computer market. Looking at some googled photos I definitely remember the System 5 with that Atom style keyboard, drives, and monochrome monitor as our school Econet file server. When I said Atom based I meant those System X's were ancient tech even back in 1983. They were decidedly not BBC Micro hardware, and clearly didn't need to be (colour graphics on a file server?).

BBC was the first ever computer I used when I was about 6/7 i played a game called badger, Which was lame but amazing at the time.

@user-ks5ff

5 жыл бұрын

Was that Geordie racer game on the BBC?

@pegasusted2504

5 жыл бұрын

Do you remember a game called "Chuckie Egg"? They have just in the past couple of years released a new updated version and damn it brings back some memories.

Hello Adrian, and first, thanks a lot for your always very great and appreciated videos. You need now to come over France and take back some THOMSON Computers to the US ! See you there. Kind regards from France. Stéphane

As soon as you had that box and said "It's a small thing" .. I knew it would be a rubber-keyed 48k ZX Spectrum. My first computer in 1983 and still my favourite machine of all time.. And the BBC was the first computer I ever used...we had ONE of them at school.. You had to have been there to understand! Great video, good to see you restoring these antiques and was happy to hear that BBC boot-up sound for the first time in decades. Subbed... The best peripheral I had for the Spectrum was the RAM Turbo II interface.. It had 2 joystick ports and was compatible with almost all games and it had a cartridge slot for a few select games that came on carts.

The BBC computers (when fully equipped) were very powerful compared to other 8 bit systems for back in the day. They were very expensive too. Games on the BBC generally suck though, well other than Elite which has the best and fastest 8 bit version. I think you should make one perfect machine and load up all the parts like speech synthesis chips etc and get a floppy emulator. Maybe add the Z80 Tube for CPM, LOL.

@xyzzy3000

5 жыл бұрын

Exile

@dlew3624

5 жыл бұрын

You need to try and find a cheetah speach synthesiser ☺

@10p6

5 жыл бұрын

@@dlew3624 I have one ;-)

... I am from the UK !, My Zx, was like new, i kept it very good condtion, I wish i had not sold it now ! :). Still have my Amiga computer though, and box !.

Good to see you back, Adrian. Nice score!

The BBC Model B was featured in a BBC TV series entitled " Making the most of your Micro " , you can find this on you tube . The machine was used in quite a lot of British schools as part of a Govt / BBC promotion .

The rectangular aperture is probably a (very neatly-done) mod to get rid of the heat from the PSU. Early Beebs had a transformer power supply (at the BBC's insistence, to limit RF interference) with dissipative regulators, which got very hot. Acorn eventually convinced the BBC to allow a switched-mode supply. It was my understanding that linear PSUs were only fitted up to Issue 3. So an Issue 4 machine should have had the SMPS from the factory; but Acorn would have wanted to use up all their existing stock, and if your machine was a very early Issue 4 it could just about have been fitted at the factory with a linear PSU. If I had to take a guess, I'd say the disk drive was overloading the PSU; cutting out the top proved a temporary fix, but it eventually blew and was replaced with a switched-mode one. They might then have tried gluing the cut-out piece back in, but the glue perished in storage and it fell out. The sound circuits (and the memory, on Issue 2 Beebs) require the -5V supply, so if that was absent on the machine while still in the UK it would explain the weak power-on beeps. You were only getting the crests of your waves, not the troughs! The BBC keyboard was an absolute delight to use. The switches are proper heavy-duty tactile switches. The letters on the keys are not printed: they are actually moulded right through the coloured plastic layer! Most CGA monitors will sync to the BBC's 50Hz signal. There is only a composite sync, but nearly all monitors will accept a composite sync on the HSYNC input with VSYNC left unconnected. There is a +5V available on the 6-pin socket, so you can tie the BRIGHT input high. If you type REPORT at the prompt immediately after switching on or pressing BREAK, the computer will display a copyright message. (REPORT normally repeats the last error message.) If the date is 1981, you have BASIC I; if the date is 1982, you have BASIC II. This has better accuracy on trigonometric functions, a few reliability enhancements, and some extra options and directives in the built-in assembler. Both are capitalisation-sensitive (though, interestingly, the built-in assembler isn't .....) Both the User Guide (supplied with the machine) and the Advanced User Guide (sold separately, but pretty much essential anyway) can be found online. When you get bored of BASIC, you can start using the built-in 6502 assembler. The instruction set is nice and easy to learn, and most instructions can be used in several different addressing modes. Good luck with it! You have a fine piece of computing history there, standard issue in every UK school and also very common in homes, offices, and even -- thanks mainly to its analogue, user and 1MHz bus ports, accessible directly from BASIC without resorting to machine code -- used for controlling machines in factories and recording measurements in laboratories.

@graemescott990

5 жыл бұрын

Just for interest I have one of the very early model B's and it has a linear PSU but no output connector for the disk drive. I managed to obtain the disk drive chip (it was a crazy price as they were on limited supply) and initially fitted a dual 40 track floppy drive before "upgrading" to a dual 80 track pair of drives. I still ended up using an external PSU as I couldn't get hold of a switched mode PSU then.

@bluerizlagirl

5 жыл бұрын

@@graemescott990 Ah, yes. My BBC was an Issue 7, and my local Acorn dealer (who would later become famous for selling an Electron joystick interface .....) had some 8271s in, so my disk upgrade was a same day job.

@kwanchan6745

5 жыл бұрын

agree that the hole was a user modification...probably with a dremel or just some careful cutting and filing the hole was sometimes necessary due to internal ROM boards and/or beeb powered disk drives which made the PSU get very hot I've got a few beebs with similar mods

@aitchpea6011

5 жыл бұрын

"used for controlling machines" etc. SO true. Even as late as the mid-nineties a certain defence company (who shall remain unnamed, but their name rhymes with "Hark Phony") still used a model B for testing certain aspects of their laser-guided missile systems.

@bluerizlagirl

5 жыл бұрын

@@aitchpea6011 Well, if something isn't bust, why fix it?

8:36 a chip? I believe they call them "crisps" in the UK. I look forward to seeing you work on these

@mickles1975

5 жыл бұрын

Very droll, sir. Very droll.

@suntexi

5 жыл бұрын

We certainly do. There used to be a salt 'n' vinegar 6502.

@gtp_vexd3507

5 жыл бұрын

Yeah and our crisps were made from aluminium 😏

@keithmarsh8120

5 жыл бұрын

A chip is a thickly cut french fry and a crisp is a potato chip. An English or Irish bloke might say “ pass me a bag er ready salted crisps barkeep and a pint or yur finest bitter for me mate”

@Thurgosh_OG

4 жыл бұрын

@@keithmarsh8120 They weren't limited to only 2 of the 4 countries that make up the UK, Scotland and Wales have them too.

Still got my original ZX Spectrum 48K that I got when I was 9, along with his 6 brothers and many many retro computing friends.

I grew up on the Speccy 48, learned the basis of everything I know now in the good old days of the 1980s.

I had a BBC micro model B back in the day. Later I had its successor, the Acorn Archimedes which was, of course, the first RISC based personal computer with the Acorn designed ARM processor (which then stood for Acorn RISC Machine). That. of course, begat Advanced Risc Machines with the ubiquitous ARM architecture chips. So, if it wasn't for that BBC micro, then the world wouldn't have had it's most popular microprocessor architecture with over 100 billion ARM processors having been produced by 2017. No doubt something else would have come along, but it's still the case, that BBC micro is what financed the development of the ARM architecture, even if this model used a 6502 running, if I recall correctly, at 2 mhz. Just a shame ARM was sold to a Chinese tech company. nb. even before the BBC micro, I had a NASCOM II which I built from a kit. If you want a fairly rare UK computer, try and find a Nascom I or Nascom II, both of which were Z80 based machines. They truly were the first UK microcomputers.

@branes2000

5 жыл бұрын

Minor correction, ARM was sold to Softbank, a Japanese company. Yes, a shame though.

@TheEulerID

5 жыл бұрын

I'm not sure why I had it in my head Softbank was Chinese.

"I am not going to touch this" *proceeds to wave hands within millimeters of it* .... This was hard to watch hahahaha

Magical! can't wait for the next video

I'm really pleased for you Adrian, enjoy messing about with these iconic computers ;)

Don't leave the Beebs and speccy near each other, a fight will break out! - The Beebs will win BTW ;-)

I'm not sure the age/generation of electrolytic caps is the whole story. If you open something and it has a ton of chong or shamwa or whatever off brand in there you can be sure at least some of them are out of spec (probably never in spec) or leaking. If it's all Japanese brands then you're probably ok unless whoever designed the PCB did an oopsie and put a cap right next to something that gets hot. Even worse in some machines like some commodores you get capacitors that are reverse polarity from the factory.

@BlackEpyon

5 жыл бұрын

I've replaced capacitors on LOADS of machines from our old labs back in the early 2010s when that whole bad cap fiasco was going on.

@jaycee1980

5 жыл бұрын

@@adriansdigitalbasement in the BBC machine you want to check for "RIFA" branded capacitors in the power supply. These fail with age and because they are directly across the power line, they make a LOT of smoke when they let go! Replace with good quality "X2" rated film capacitors.

@NaoPb

5 жыл бұрын

I've read somewhere that it has to do with a stolen recipe that was actually missing a bit. So the caps were not being made with the proper recipe, so they are missing a component that keeps them stable. Which is why Japanese caps are considered better than Chinese caps. Here is a link. And I've now learned that it's called a formula, not a recipe. www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/stolen-formula-for-capacitors-causing-computers-to-burn-out-106907.html

@donpalmera

5 жыл бұрын

@@NaoPb While I believe that story might be true I don't think it's the overall issue with cheaper caps. I think poorer materials and wider tolerances are probably a bigger issue. Interesting enough I know a guy that used to work at one of the Japanese capacitor manufacturers and he said they used to ship all the parts that weren't right on spec to customers outside of the country because they were less fussy.

@jaycee1980

5 жыл бұрын

@@NaoPb Yes, this was largely responsible for the problem

It’s great to see an American giving a Beeb (that was what we referred to them here) some love and enthusiasm.

@user-yv2cz8oj1k

4 жыл бұрын

Ah yes the beeb beeb ceeb. 😃

I remember “Beagle Bros.” Software; I had their BeagleWrite WP for the Apple //GS, as well as the Apple ImageWriter dot-matrix printer, both of which saw heavy use in my early College days! 😎

Haha so funny listening to an American talking about iconic uk computers

@iwanttocomplain

4 жыл бұрын

But what about iconic Welsh computers!? Dragon 64 anyone? Anyone...?

BBC means Brown, Boveri & Cie in some places. Brown, Boveri (BBC) was a Swiss group of electrical engineering companies.

@rayfenwick8761

5 жыл бұрын

Exactly. That's why the name was changed.

@flybobbie1449

5 жыл бұрын

Seen their kit on U Boats.

@stevesimpson5994

5 жыл бұрын

They made pressure wave superchargers, which are another quirky but cool technology

Arm employee, sat here in Cambridge UK, watching with fascination! 👍

The big hole used to have clear perspex grid in it and found alot on the units that were used in school

Hey he's stealing or computers! 🤣

I want to dump those boards in an ultrasonic bath. filthy!

@hanniffydinn6019

5 жыл бұрын

DaveJustDave real men like their bitches dirty !

@Yukatoshi

5 жыл бұрын

If you think that's filthy you should see my browsing history.

@BlackEpyon

5 жыл бұрын

So long as everything's still watertight, that should work. I don't know what automotive solvent does to PCBs though. I should drop a board into my cleaning tank and find out.

@Kundalini12

5 жыл бұрын

Nah, give them a spray with brake cleaner, should do the trick.

Great video, thanks for pushing through the cold. :-)

That brings back memories... The ZX Spectrum was my first computer way back in the early 80's. That small printer uses heat sensitive paper, don't put it in the sun or on hot surfaces.

Outside of England? You mean I can't buy this in Wales or Scotland?

@gwishart

5 жыл бұрын

No, there are HMRC officers on the Severn Bridge and at Gretna Services to make sure you aren't exporting any forbidden technology ;-)

@pitmatix1457

5 жыл бұрын

The Dragon 32 mafia would find you.

@daverees8644

4 жыл бұрын

These were available throughout the uk as my old schools had them in wales.

British retro computers are the best. Fight me.

Loved my Spectrum when I was a teeny person. REALLY loved getting to play on the BBC Micro at school too.

Good old ZX. I got one when they first came out and using a CB we would send very simple sounds and our friends would record it and then play it back to say HELLO.

Boo BOOP

@gwishart

5 жыл бұрын

​@@adriansdigitalbasement To more accurately re-recreate the typical startup sound of a BBC micro, you need to accompany it by the sound of 30 impatient 10-year-olds shouting "Is the computer ready yet Miss?" and the sound of the caretaker complaining about having to wheel the computer trolley across the playground to the classroom :-)

I have 6 BBC computers in the loft. I taught computing when UK schools started with 'microcomputers'. I never saw one with that cut out over the power supply. I also have some Acorn RISC PCs which were terrific - knocked spots of Windows PCs in their day!.

I remember doing my school O level computing project on the BBC micro. loved it.

@DrunkenKnight71

4 жыл бұрын

Same here, still have my computer wrapped up in the loft

Just found your channel, an interesting find there. I had a spectrum 48k - i think its still in the attic and used the BBC at school up until the early 90's.

BBC Basic is an absolute joy to use, very feature rich and great way to get to grips with simple procedural progamming techniques - it even has an in-line assembler when you get into more advanced techniques.

We had this turtle thing that used to draw stuff on paper when you typed in commands, this was around the same time as our Primary school having a Big Trac that we all used to take turns using in our little village school hall. I loved that thing lol

Wow, this is a blast from the past. I still have ZX somewhere.

I learned how to code on a bbc micro. I also owned a ZX Spectrum 128k. I used to visit a friend and sit in astonishment watching him use his Amiga.