Update: BBC Acorn

From: Rob O'Donnell <rob_at_irrelevant.fsnet.co.uk>
Date: Wed Jan 15 12:36:39 2003

At 10:53 15/01/2003 +0000, you wrote:
>Hi,
>
> > ARM Evaluation Kit - yep - that's the one. I do have various discs and
> > manuals for it, too. I used to love the "twin" editor - several open files
> > at one, and could cut and paste between them. Ahead of it's time...
>
>yeah, that's it. Without any discs or being able to find anyone who knew
>anything about it I'm afraid mine got put in storage. I believe I've got the
>original polystyrene packaging for it, but no discs or outer box or anything
>(go figure)


Hmm. I've not got the box any more, mores the pity.




>I've got some other BBC add-on in the same style housing as the ARM unit, but
>can't remember what it is now. It wasn't the teletext unit unfortunately, as
>that could have been interesting to play about with.



There were no end of accessories that all used the same box. Various
add-on processors, modem (prestel adapter) etc.



> > They were expensive, but much more expandable than the spectrum. At one
> > point I had about six of them in my bedroom on an econet network, had
> > several on modems running a multi-user BBS.
>
>excellent :-)
>I never got into the networking side of things with them (I've got all the
>fileserver/network for the RM Link machines which I believe were the schools
>alternative to having BBCs in the UK)



I've still got a 20Mb hard disc that I was using on the fileserver... that
cost me a packet, at the time..



>Slowly picked up a few BBCs and assortments, plus I've got a Master somewhere
>that's fairly well modified from original spec (and an Acorn Cambridge
>Workstation which still needs a suitable hard drive and the OS discs to format
>it)
>
>Interesting machines as far as old 8-bitters go!
>
> > That was about the time I was still single, working for Ferranti Computer
> > Systems (and I've never seen ANY of their computers lying about anywhere...
> > ) and had plenty of money to indulge my hobby.
>
>I've got some sort of machine of theirs, housed in a shell a little bigger
>than
>an IBM XT, plus the guts of a second one - but I don't know if it's just some
>sort of XT clone. Uses an XT-style keyboard anyway and output was CGA
>compatible if I remember right. I certainly never got it to boot with any
>version of DOS I had though (from DOS 2.0 upward) - best I got was a 'missing
>operating system' one time.
>
>I seem to remember this machine is way more complex than the innards of an XT
>though, with about 1.5x the board space and a lot of ULA chips on board.
>
>I'm sure Ferranti produced much better machines than glorified IBM clones
>though, if that's what this is :-)




They did do an IBM XT clone - we had to use some of them. Big black ugly
box. Cassette based, with an upgrade available to floppy disc. W.H.Smiths
used to sell them to the public..! They were not a success.

I seem to recall wandering into the test department one day to find them
erasing hundreds of EPROMs and re-burning them (coz they had the equipment)
apparently whomever wrote the bios for it had pinched rather too much IBM
code, and they all had to be wiped and re-programmed with new bios routines..


Rob
>cheers
>
>Jules
>
>
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Received on Wed Jan 15 2003 - 12:36:39 GMT

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