On Jul 15, 7:48, charles hobbs wrote:
> Tony Duell wrote:
> > Over here, I'd recoment getting a BBC Micro.
> I lucked out at a flea market about 10 years ago and found one for $15 or
> so. It had a US style plug, so I figured it would work fine "over here".
It
> did, with a few caveats:
>
> 1. Unlike US micros, which had a TV output on Channels 3 or 4, the
> BBC output RF on UHF (Channel 37 or something like that). Of course,
> the channel numbers and frequencies used in the US are different than
> those in the UK.
>
> 2. It still outputs a 625-line screen, which my 525-line US TV can only
> display a part of (some lines off the top and bottom are missing)
>
> 3. It outputs PAL color, so a NTSC TV will get a monochrome picture
>
> (It also supports direct RGB output, so, theoretically, I could wire a
cable
> that would connect it to a monitor, fixing all of those problems)
In a way, you're unlucky -- you have a bit of an oddity. Acorn did sell
BBC Micros in the States, but the ones officially shipped had a number of
modifications: 110V PSU, VHF modulator instead of UHF, 525-line 60Hz video
instead of 625-line 50Hz, "COLOR" keyword in BASIC instead of "COLOUR".
I can't remember if they changed the colour subsystem to do NTSC instead of
PAL. I think that's unlikely as it would have involved changing the PCB;
the changes I know about only required changed to the ROM.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
Received on Sun Jul 15 2001 - 12:33:02 BST