BBC Micro
Encyclopedia
The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, was a series of microcomputer
s and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers
for the BBC Computer Literacy Project, operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation
. Designed with an emphasis on education, it was notable for its ruggedness, expandability and the quality of its operating system
.
Following the Literacy Project's call for bids for a computer to accompany the TV programmes and literature, Acorn won the contract with the Proton, a successor to its Atom
computer prototyped at short notice. Renamed the BBC Micro, the platform was chosen by most schools and became a cornerstone of computing in British education
in the 1980s, changing Acorn's fortunes. It was also moderately successful as a home computer
in the United Kingdom
despite its high cost. The machine was directly involved in the development of the ARM architecture
which sees widespread use in embedded systems as of 2011.
While nine models were eventually produced with the BBC brand, the term "BBC Micro" is usually colloquially used to refer to the first six (Model A, B, B+64 and B+128, Master 128, Master Compact), with the subsequent models considered as part of the Archimedes
series.
In the early 1980s, the BBC started what became known as the BBC Computer Literacy Project. The project was initiated partly in response to an extremely influential ITV
documentary series The Mighty Micro, in which Dr Christopher Evans
from the National Physical Laboratory
predicted the coming microcomputer revolution
and its impact on the economy, industry, and lifestyle of the United Kingdom
.
The BBC wanted to base its project on a microcomputer
capable of performing various tasks which they could then demonstrate in their 1982 TV series The Computer Programme
. The list of topics included programming
, graphics
, sound and music, Teletext
, controlling external hardware and artificial intelligence
. It decided to badge a micro, then drew up a fairly ambitious (for its time) specification and asked for takers.
The BBC discussed the requirement with several companies including Sinclair Research, Newbury Laboratories
, Dragon and Acorn.
The Acorn team had already been working on an upgrade to their existing Atom
microcomputer. Known as the Proton, it included better graphics and a faster 2 MHz MOS Technology
6502
CPU
. The machine was only in prototype form at the time, but the Acorn team, largely made up of students including Sophie Wilson
and Steve Furber
, worked through the night to get a working Proton together to show the BBC. Not only was the Acorn Proton the only machine to match the BBC's specification, it also exceeded it in nearly every parameter.
and Commodore
's Commodore 64
, both released later in 1982, demand greatly exceeded supply. For some months, there were long delays before customers received the machines they had ordered. A brief attempt was made to market the machine in the United States. This resulted in adverts being placed by at least one dealer in Interface Age magazine, but ultimately the attempt failed. The success of the machine in the UK
was largely due to its acceptance as an "educational" computer – the vast majority of UK schools used BBC Micros to teach computer literacy
and information technology
skills. Some Commonwealth countries, like India, started their own Computer Literacy programs around 1987 and used the BBC Micro, a clone of which was produced by the Semiconductor Complex Limited and called the SCL Unicorn.
An advantage for the BBC Micro in the educational market was its durable construction. Both casing and keyboard were solidly built and able to cope with all the abuse that schoolchildren could throw at them.
The Model A and the Model B were initially priced at £235 and £335 respectively, but rising almost immediately to £299 and £399 due to increased costs. Acorn anticipated the total sales to be around 12,000 units, but eventually more than 1.5 million BBC Micros were sold.
The cost of the BBC Models was high compared to competitors such as the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64 and in 1983, Acorn attempted to counter this by producing a largely compatible but cut-down version intended for game playing, the 32K Acorn Electron
. Games written specially for the Electron's more limited hardware could usually also be run on the Model B.
The Model A had 16 kB
of user RAM, while the Model B had 32 kB. A feature that the Micro shared with other 6502 computers such as the Apple and the early Commodore models was that the RAM was clocked twice as fast as the CPU (4 MHz), with alternating access given to the CPU and the video display circuits. This gave the BBC Micro a fully unified memory address structure with no speed penalties. Most competing micros with memory-mapped display incurred CPU speed penalties depending on the actions of the video circuits (e.g. the Amstrad CPC
and to a lesser extent the ZX Spectrum
) or kept video memory completely separate from the CPU address pool (e.g. the MSX
).
The machine included a number of extra I/O
interfaces: serial
and parallel
printer ports; an 8-bit general purpose digital I/O port; a port offering four analogue
inputs, a light pen input, and switch inputs; and an expansion connector (the "1 MHz bus") that enabled other hardware to be connected. Extra ROMs could be fitted (four on the PCB or sixteen with expansion hardware) and accessed via paged memory. An Econet
network interface and a disk drive interface were available as options. All motherboards had space for the electronic components, but Econet was rarely fitted. Additionally, an Acorn proprietary interface called the "Tube
" allowed a second processor to be added. Three models of second processor were offered by Acorn, based on the 6502, Z80 and 32016 CPUs. The Tube was later used in third-party add-ons, including a Zilog Z80
board and hard disk drive from Torch that allowed the BBC machine to run CP/M programs.
The Tube interface allowed Acorn to use ARM CPU-equipped BBC Micros as software development tools when creating the Acorn Archimedes
. This resulted in the ARM development kit for the BBC Micro in 1986, priced at around £4000. In 2006 a kit with an ARM7TDMI
CPU running at 64 MHz, with up to 64 MB of RAM, was released for the BBC Micro and Master, using the Tube interface to turn the old 8-bit micros into 32-bit RISC machines just as Acorn had done two decades previously. Among the software titles to run on the Tube were an enhanced version of Elite (see below) and a CAD package that required a second 6502 CPU and a 5-dimensional joystick called a "Bitstik"http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/8bit_Upgrades/Acorn_BitStik.html.
The Model A and the Model B were built on the same PCB
and a Model A could be upgraded to a Model B without too much difficulty. Users wishing to run Model B software needed only to add the extra RAM and the user/printer 6522
VIA (which many games used for timers) and snip a link, a task that could be achieved without soldering. To do a full upgrade with all the external ports did, however, require soldering the connectors to the motherboard. The original machines shipped with "OS 0.1", with later updates advertised in magazines, supplied as a clip-in IC, with the last official version being "OS 1.2". Variations in the Acorn OS exist as a result of home-brew projects and modified machines can still be bought on internet auction sites such as eBay
, as of 2011.
Early BBC Micros used linear power supplies at the insistence of the BBC's engineering specification, but these very hot-running PSUs were soon replaced in production by switched mode
units.
An apparent oversight in the manufacturing process resulted in a significant number of Model Bs producing a constant buzzing noise from the built-in speaker. This fault could be partly rectified by soldering
a resistor across two pads.
There were five developments of the main BBC micro circuit board that addressed various issues through the models production, from 'Issue 1' through to 'Issue 7' with variants 5 and 6 not being released. The details of the technical changes were documented in the 1985 'BBC Microcomputer Service Manual' from Acorn.
, with Econet and speech hardware as standard; the other for West Germany
. Both were fitted with RF shielding as required by the respective countries, and they were still based on the Intel 8271 floppy drive controller. From June 1983 the name was always spelled out in full – "British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System" – to avoid confusion with Brown, Boveri & Cie
in international markets.
US models included BASIC III, modified to accept the American spelling of COLOR, but the height of the graphics display was reduced from 256 scan line
s per field to 200 to suit NTSC
TVs, seriously affecting applications written for British computers. After the failed US marketing campaign the unwanted machines were remanufactured
for the British market and sold off, resulting in a third 'UK export' variant.
" RAM) and a block of 12 kB of 'special' Sideways
RAM. The B+128 came with an additional 64 kB ( 4 × 16 kB "Sideways" RAM banks) to give a total RAM of 128 kB.
The new B+ was incapable of running some original BBC B programs and games, such as, for example, the very popular Castle Quest. A particular problem was the replacement of the Intel 8271 floppy disk
controller with the Western Digital 1770 — not only was the new controller mapped to different addresses, it was fundamentally incompatible and the many 8271 emulators that did exist were necessarily imperfect for all but basic operation. A piece of software that used copy protection
techniques involving direct access to the controller, simply would not run on the new system.
There was also a long-running problem late on in the B/B+'s life infamous amongst B+ owners, when Superior Software released Repton Infinity, which refused to run on the B+. A string of unsuccessful replacements were issued before one compatible with both was finally released.
, which offered memory sizes from 128 kB and many other refinements which improved on the 1981 original. At heart it was essentially the same 6502-based BBC architecture, with many of the upgrades that the original design had intentionally made possible (extra ROM software, extra paged RAM, second processors) now included on the circuit board as internal plug-in modules.
The BBC Micro platform amassed a large software base of games and educational titles, reflecting its dual niches at home and in the classroom. Notable examples of each include the original release of Elite and Granny's Garden
. Programming language
s and some applications were supplied on ROM chips to be installed on the motherboard. These loaded instantly and left the main RAM free for programs or documents.
Although appropriate content was little-supported by television broadcasters, telesoftware
could be downloaded via the optional Teletext Adapter
and the third-party teletext adaptors that emerged.
The built-in operating system, Acorn MOS
, provided an extensive API to interface with all standard peripherals, ROM-based software and the screen. Features private to some other BASICs, like vector graphics
, keyboard macros, cursor-based editing, sound queues and envelopes, were placed in the MOS ROM and made available to any application. BBC BASIC itself, being in a separate ROM, could be replaced with any equivalent language.
BASIC, other languages and utility ROMs resided in any of four 16 kB paged ROM sockets on board, although the MOS catered for sixteen 'slots' internally. The paged ROM system was essentially modular. A language-independent system of star commands, prefixed with an asterisk, provided the ability to select a language (for example *BASIC, *PASCAL), filing system (*TAPE, *DISC), change settings (
Not all ROMs offered star commands (ROMs containing data files, for instance), but any ROM could claim certain vectors
to enhance the system's functionality. Often this was a combined mass storage
device driver
and filing system, starting with Acorn's Disc Filing System
in 1982 whose API became the de facto standard for floppy disc access. The Acorn GXR (Graphics eXtension ROM) expanded the VDU routines to draw geometric shapes, flood fills and sprites. In 1985 Micro Power
designed and marketed a Basic Extension ROM, introducing statements such as WHILE, ENDWHILE, CASE, WHEN, OTHERWISE, and ENDCASE, as well as direct mode commands including VERIFY.
Acorn strongly discouraged programmers from directly accessing the system variables and hardware, favouring official system call
s. This was ostensibly to make sure programs kept working when run on the Tube
coprocessor, but it also made BBC Micro software more portable across the Acorn range. Whereas untrappable PEEKs and POKEs
were commonly used on other computers to reach the system elements, programs in either machine code or BBC BASIC would instead pass parameters to an operating system routine. In this way the MOS could translate the request for the local machine's devices and memory layout or send it across the Tube interface, as direct access was impossible from the coprocessor. Published programs largely stuck to the API but games routinely made direct accesses for increased speed, and thus required a particular Acorn model or MOS version.
As the early BBC Micros had ample I/O allowing machines to be interconnected, and as many schools and universities employed the machines in Econet
networks, numerous networked multiplayer games were created. With the exception of a tank game, Bolo
, few rose to popularity; in no small measure due to the limited number of machines aggregated in one place. A relatively late but well documented example can be found in a dissertation based on a ringed RS-423
interconnect.
or machine code
(necessary with many competing computers). Should one want or need to do some assembly programming, BBC BASIC featured a built-in assembler that allowed a very easy mixture of BBC BASIC and assembler for whatever processor BBC BASIC was running on.
When the BBC Micro was released, many competing home computers used Microsoft BASIC
, or variants typically designed to resemble it. Compared to Microsoft BASIC, BBC BASIC supported IF…THEN…ELSE, REPEAT…UNTIL, named procedures and functions, but retained GOTO
and GOSUB
for compatibility. It also supported high-resolution graphics, four-channel sound, pointer-based memory access (borrowed from BCPL
) and rudimentary macro assembly. Long variable names were accepted and distinguished completely, not just by the first two characters.
RISC CPU in 1985, (the ARM2
) and were working on building a personal computer around it. This was released in 1987 as four models in the Archimedes
series, with the lower-specified two models (with 512 kB and 1 MB respectively) released as BBC Microcomputers with the distinctive red function keys. Although the Archimedes ultimately was not a major success, the ARM family of processors has gone on to become the dominant processor architecture in mobile embedded consumer devices, particularly mobile phones.
Acorn's last BBC-related model, the BBC A3000, was released in 1989. It was essentially a 1 MB Archimedes back in a single case form factor.
community of dedicated users finding new things to do with the old hardware. A BBC B+ was observed running the communications link in an unattended water pumping station in Oxhey
in 1995. They still survive in a few interactive displays in museums across the country, and Jodrell Bank
was reported to still be using a BBC Micro to steer its 42 ft radio telescope in 2004. There are also a number of BBC Micro emulator
s for many OSs, so that even the original hardware is no longer necessary.
In March 2008, the creators of the BBC Micro met at the Science Museum
in London. There was to be an exhibition about the computer and its legacy in 2009.
The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park
uses BBC Micros as part of a scheme to educate school children about computer programming.
with the contemporary Color Graphics Adapter
, the video output of the BBC Micro could be switched under software control between a number of display modes. These varied between 20 column text suitable for a domestic TV, to 80 column text best viewed with a high-quality monitor. The variety of modes offered applications a flexible compromise between colour depth, resolution and memory footprint: in the first models, the OS and applications used whatever RAM was left over from the display.
Mode 7 was a Teletext
mode, extremely economical on memory and an original requirement due to the BBC's own use of broadcast teletext (Ceefax): it also made the computer useful as a Prestel
terminal. Train time displays at UK stations were driven by BBC Master computers in this mode until around the late 1990s.
Modes 0 to 6, the 'ASCII
' modes, could display a choice of colours from a logical palette of sixteen: the eight basic colours at the vertices of the RGB colour cube, and eight flashing colours made by alternating the basic colour with its inverse. The palette could be freely reprogrammed without touching display memory. Modes 3 and 6 were special text-only modes that used less RAM by reducing the number of text rows and inserting blank scan lines below each row. Mode 6 was approximately the same size as Teletext. All Modes 0 to 6 could show diacritics and other user defined characters, and all but the two text modes supported vector graphics.
The BBC B+ and the later Master allowed 'shadow modes', where the framebuffer was stored in 20 kB of an alternative RAM bank, leaving the main memory up to 0x8000 free for user programs. This feature was enabled by setting bit 7 of the mode variable, i.e. by requesting modes 128–135.
featured sampled phonemes spoken by BBC newscaster Kenneth Kendall
. The speech system was standard on the US model where it had an American vocabulary. Elsewhere it sold poorly and was eventually eclipsed by Superior Software
's software-based synthesiser using the standard sound hardware.
The speech upgrade also added two empty sockets next to the keyboard intended to take 16 kB serial ROM cartridges containing either extra speech phoneme data (in addition to the default speech ROM fitted to the motherboard), or general software accessed through the ROM Filing System. The original plan was that some games would be released on cartridges, but due to the limited sales of the speech upgrade, little or no software was ever produced for these sockets. The cut-out space next to the keyboard (nick-named the "ashtray") was more commonly used to install other upgrades, such as a ZIF socket for conventional paged ROMs.
David Allen, Bob Austin, Ram Banerjee, Paul Bond, Allen Boothroyd, Cambridge, Cleartone, John Coll
, John Cox, Andy Cripps, Chris Curry
, 6502 designers, Jeremy Dion, Tim Dobson, Joe Dunn, Paul Farrell, Ferranti, Steve Furber
, Jon Gibbons, Andrew Gordon, Lawrence Hardwick, Dylan Harris, Hermann Hauser
, Hitachi, Andy Hopper
, ICL, Martin, Jackson, Brian Jones, Chris Jordan, David King, David Kitson, Paul Kriwaczek, Computer Laboratory, Peter Miller, Arthur Norman, Glyn Phillips, Mike Prees, John Radcliffe, Wilberforce Road, Peter Robinson
, Richard Russell
, Kim Spence-Jones, Graham Tebby, Jon Thackray, Chris Turner, Adrian Warner, Sophie Wilson
, Alan Wright
The case was designed by industrial designer Allen Boothroyd
of Cambridge Product Design Ltd.
Microcomputer
A microcomputer is a computer with a microprocessor as its central processing unit. They are physically small compared to mainframe and minicomputers...
s and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers
Acorn Computers
Acorn Computers Ltd. was a British computer company established in Cambridge, England, in 1978. The company produced a number of computers which were especially popular in the UK. These included the Acorn Electron, the BBC Micro, and the Acorn Archimedes...
for the BBC Computer Literacy Project, operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
. Designed with an emphasis on education, it was notable for its ruggedness, expandability and the quality of its operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
.
Following the Literacy Project's call for bids for a computer to accompany the TV programmes and literature, Acorn won the contract with the Proton, a successor to its Atom
Acorn Atom
The Acorn Atom was a home computer made by Acorn Computers Ltd from 1980 to 1982 when it was replaced by the BBC Micro and later the Acorn Electron....
computer prototyped at short notice. Renamed the BBC Micro, the platform was chosen by most schools and became a cornerstone of computing in British education
Education in the United Kingdom
Education in the United Kingdom is a devolved matter with each of the countries of the United Kingdom having separate systems under separate governments: the UK Government is responsible for England, and the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive are...
in the 1980s, changing Acorn's fortunes. It was also moderately successful as a home computer
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
despite its high cost. The machine was directly involved in the development of the ARM architecture
ARM architecture
ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...
which sees widespread use in embedded systems as of 2011.
While nine models were eventually produced with the BBC brand, the term "BBC Micro" is usually colloquially used to refer to the first six (Model A, B, B+64 and B+128, Master 128, Master Compact), with the subsequent models considered as part of the Archimedes
Acorn Archimedes
The Acorn Archimedes was Acorn Computers Ltd's first general purpose home computer to be based on their own ARM architecture.Using a RISC design with a 32-bit CPU, at its launch in June 1987, the Archimedes was stated as running at 4 MIPS, with a claim of 18 MIPS during tests.The name is commonly...
series.
Background
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
documentary series The Mighty Micro, in which Dr Christopher Evans
Christopher Evans (computer scientist)
Dr Christopher Riche Evans was a British psychologist, computer scientist, and author.-Biography:Born in Aberdovey, he spent his childhood in Wales and was educated at Christ College, Brecon . He spent two years in the RAF , and worked as a science journalist and writer until 1957 when he began a...
from the National Physical Laboratory
National Physical Laboratory, UK
The National Physical Laboratory is the national measurement standards laboratory for the United Kingdom, based at Bushy Park in Teddington, London, England. It is the largest applied physics organisation in the UK.-Description:...
predicted the coming microcomputer revolution
Microcomputer revolution
The microcomputer revolution is a phrase used to describe the rapid advances of microprocessor-based computers from esoteric hobby projects to a commonplace fixture of homes in industrial societies...
and its impact on the economy, industry, and lifestyle of the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
.
The BBC wanted to base its project on a microcomputer
Microcomputer
A microcomputer is a computer with a microprocessor as its central processing unit. They are physically small compared to mainframe and minicomputers...
capable of performing various tasks which they could then demonstrate in their 1982 TV series The Computer Programme
The Computer Programme
The Computer Programme was a TV series, produced by Paul Kriwaczek, originally broadcast by the BBC in 1982. The idea behind the series was to introduce people to computers and show them what they were capable of. The BBC wanted to use their own computer, so the BBC Micro was developed as part of...
. The list of topics included programming
Computer programming
Computer programming is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in one or more programming languages. The purpose of programming is to create a program that performs specific operations or exhibits a...
, graphics
Computer graphics
Computer graphics are graphics created using computers and, more generally, the representation and manipulation of image data by a computer with help from specialized software and hardware....
, sound and music, Teletext
Teletext
Teletext is a television information retrieval service developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. It offers a range of text-based information, typically including national, international and sporting news, weather and TV schedules...
, controlling external hardware and artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
. It decided to badge a micro, then drew up a fairly ambitious (for its time) specification and asked for takers.
The BBC discussed the requirement with several companies including Sinclair Research, Newbury Laboratories
Grundy NewBrain
The Grundy NewBrain was a microcomputer sold in the early 1980s by Grundy Business Systems Ltd of Teddington and Cambridge, England.- Beginnings :...
, Dragon and Acorn.
The Acorn team had already been working on an upgrade to their existing Atom
Acorn Atom
The Acorn Atom was a home computer made by Acorn Computers Ltd from 1980 to 1982 when it was replaced by the BBC Micro and later the Acorn Electron....
microcomputer. Known as the Proton, it included better graphics and a faster 2 MHz MOS Technology
MOS Technology
MOS Technology, Inc., also known as CSG , was a semiconductor design and fabrication company based in Norristown, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is most famous for its 6502 microprocessor, and various designs for Commodore International's range of home computers.-History:MOS Technology, Inc...
6502
MOS Technology 6502
The MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch for MOS Technology in 1975. When it was introduced, it was the least expensive full-featured microprocessor on the market by a considerable margin, costing less than one-sixth the price of...
CPU
Central processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
. The machine was only in prototype form at the time, but the Acorn team, largely made up of students including Sophie Wilson
Sophie Wilson
Sophie Wilson is a British computer scientist. She is known for designing the Acorn Micro-Computer, the first of a long line of computers sold by Acorn Computers Ltd, as well as the instruction set of the highly successful ARM processor.- Life and career :...
and Steve Furber
Steve Furber
Professor Stephen Byram Furber CBE, FRS, FREng is the ICL Professor of Computer Engineering at the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester but is probably best known for his work at Acorn where he was one of the designers of the BBC Micro and the ARM 32-bit RISC...
, worked through the night to get a working Proton together to show the BBC. Not only was the Acorn Proton the only machine to match the BBC's specification, it also exceeded it in nearly every parameter.
Market impact
The machine was released as the BBC Microcomputer in late 1981 and became affectionately known as the Beeb. The machine was popular in the UK, especially in the educational market. As with Sinclair's ZX SpectrumZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd...
and Commodore
Commodore International
Commodore is the commonly used name for Commodore Business Machines , the U.S.-based home computer manufacturer and electronics manufacturer headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania, which also housed Commodore's corporate parent company, Commodore International Limited...
's Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
, both released later in 1982, demand greatly exceeded supply. For some months, there were long delays before customers received the machines they had ordered. A brief attempt was made to market the machine in the United States. This resulted in adverts being placed by at least one dealer in Interface Age magazine, but ultimately the attempt failed. The success of the machine in the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
was largely due to its acceptance as an "educational" computer – the vast majority of UK schools used BBC Micros to teach computer literacy
Computer literacy
Computer literacy is defined as the knowledge and ability to use computers and related technology efficiently, with a range of skills covering levels from elementary use to programming and advanced problem solving. Computer literacy can also refer to the comfort level someone has with using...
and information technology
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
skills. Some Commonwealth countries, like India, started their own Computer Literacy programs around 1987 and used the BBC Micro, a clone of which was produced by the Semiconductor Complex Limited and called the SCL Unicorn.
An advantage for the BBC Micro in the educational market was its durable construction. Both casing and keyboard were solidly built and able to cope with all the abuse that schoolchildren could throw at them.
The Model A and the Model B were initially priced at £235 and £335 respectively, but rising almost immediately to £299 and £399 due to increased costs. Acorn anticipated the total sales to be around 12,000 units, but eventually more than 1.5 million BBC Micros were sold.
The cost of the BBC Models was high compared to competitors such as the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64 and in 1983, Acorn attempted to counter this by producing a largely compatible but cut-down version intended for game playing, the 32K Acorn Electron
Acorn Electron
The Acorn Electron is a budget version of the BBC Micro educational/home computer made by Acorn Computers Ltd. It has 32 kilobytes of RAM, and its ROM includes BBC BASIC along with its operating system....
. Games written specially for the Electron's more limited hardware could usually also be run on the Model B.
Hardware features: Models A and B
Kilobyte
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
of user RAM, while the Model B had 32 kB. A feature that the Micro shared with other 6502 computers such as the Apple and the early Commodore models was that the RAM was clocked twice as fast as the CPU (4 MHz), with alternating access given to the CPU and the video display circuits. This gave the BBC Micro a fully unified memory address structure with no speed penalties. Most competing micros with memory-mapped display incurred CPU speed penalties depending on the actions of the video circuits (e.g. the Amstrad CPC
Amstrad CPC
The Amstrad CPC is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, where it successfully established itself primarily in the United Kingdom,...
and to a lesser extent the ZX Spectrum
ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd...
) or kept video memory completely separate from the CPU address pool (e.g. the MSX
MSX
MSX was the name of a standardized home computer architecture in the 1980s conceived by Kazuhiko Nishi, then Vice-president at Microsoft Japan and Director at ASCII Corporation...
).
The machine included a number of extra I/O
Input/output
In computing, input/output, or I/O, refers to the communication between an information processing system , and the outside world, possibly a human, or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent from it...
interfaces: serial
Serial port
In computing, a serial port is a serial communication physical interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time...
and parallel
Parallel port
A parallel port is a type of interface found on computers for connecting various peripherals. In computing, a parallel port is a parallel communication physical interface. It is also known as a printer port or Centronics port...
printer ports; an 8-bit general purpose digital I/O port; a port offering four analogue
Analog signal
An analog or analogue signal is any continuous signal for which the time varying feature of the signal is a representation of some other time varying quantity, i.e., analogous to another time varying signal. It differs from a digital signal in terms of small fluctuations in the signal which are...
inputs, a light pen input, and switch inputs; and an expansion connector (the "1 MHz bus") that enabled other hardware to be connected. Extra ROMs could be fitted (four on the PCB or sixteen with expansion hardware) and accessed via paged memory. An Econet
Econet
Econet was Acorn's low-cost local area network system, intended for use by schools and small businesses. Econet is rumoured to be an abbreviation of Economy Network, but Acorn were always careful to stress the Greek root, oikos, meaning "house"....
network interface and a disk drive interface were available as options. All motherboards had space for the electronic components, but Econet was rarely fitted. Additionally, an Acorn proprietary interface called the "Tube
Tube (BBC Micro)
In computing, the Tube was the expansion interface and architecture of the BBC Microcomputer System which allowed the BBC Micro to communicate with a second processor, or coprocessor....
" allowed a second processor to be added. Three models of second processor were offered by Acorn, based on the 6502, Z80 and 32016 CPUs. The Tube was later used in third-party add-ons, including a Zilog Z80
Zilog Z80
The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog and sold from July 1976 onwards. It was widely used both in desktop and embedded computer designs as well as for military purposes...
board and hard disk drive from Torch that allowed the BBC machine to run CP/M programs.
The Tube interface allowed Acorn to use ARM CPU-equipped BBC Micros as software development tools when creating the Acorn Archimedes
Acorn Archimedes
The Acorn Archimedes was Acorn Computers Ltd's first general purpose home computer to be based on their own ARM architecture.Using a RISC design with a 32-bit CPU, at its launch in June 1987, the Archimedes was stated as running at 4 MIPS, with a claim of 18 MIPS during tests.The name is commonly...
. This resulted in the ARM development kit for the BBC Micro in 1986, priced at around £4000. In 2006 a kit with an ARM7TDMI
ARM7TDMI
ARM7 is a generation of ARM processor designs. This generation introduced the Thumb 16-bit instruction set providing improved code density compared to previous designs. The most widely used ARM7 designs implement the ARMv4T architecture, but some implement ARMv3 or ARMv5TEJ...
CPU running at 64 MHz, with up to 64 MB of RAM, was released for the BBC Micro and Master, using the Tube interface to turn the old 8-bit micros into 32-bit RISC machines just as Acorn had done two decades previously. Among the software titles to run on the Tube were an enhanced version of Elite (see below) and a CAD package that required a second 6502 CPU and a 5-dimensional joystick called a "Bitstik"http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/8bit_Upgrades/Acorn_BitStik.html.
The Model A and the Model B were built on the same PCB
Printed circuit board
A printed circuit board, or PCB, is used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using conductive pathways, tracks or signal traces etched from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. It is also referred to as printed wiring board or etched wiring...
and a Model A could be upgraded to a Model B without too much difficulty. Users wishing to run Model B software needed only to add the extra RAM and the user/printer 6522
MOS Technology 6522
The 6522 Versatile Interface Adapter was an integrated circuit made by MOS Technology, as well as second sources including Rockwell and Synertek. It served as a I/O port controller for the 6502 family of microprocessors, providing the parallel I/O capabilities of the PIA as well as timers and a...
VIA (which many games used for timers) and snip a link, a task that could be achieved without soldering. To do a full upgrade with all the external ports did, however, require soldering the connectors to the motherboard. The original machines shipped with "OS 0.1", with later updates advertised in magazines, supplied as a clip-in IC, with the last official version being "OS 1.2". Variations in the Acorn OS exist as a result of home-brew projects and modified machines can still be bought on internet auction sites such as eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
, as of 2011.
Early BBC Micros used linear power supplies at the insistence of the BBC's engineering specification, but these very hot-running PSUs were soon replaced in production by switched mode
Switched-mode power supply
A switched-mode power supply is an electronic power supply that incorporates a switching regulator in order to be highly efficient in the conversion of electrical power...
units.
An apparent oversight in the manufacturing process resulted in a significant number of Model Bs producing a constant buzzing noise from the built-in speaker. This fault could be partly rectified by soldering
Soldering
Soldering is a process in which two or more metal items are joined together by melting and flowing a filler metal into the joint, the filler metal having a lower melting point than the workpiece...
a resistor across two pads.
There were five developments of the main BBC micro circuit board that addressed various issues through the models production, from 'Issue 1' through to 'Issue 7' with variants 5 and 6 not being released. The details of the technical changes were documented in the 1985 'BBC Microcomputer Service Manual' from Acorn.
Export models
Two export models were developed: one for the USUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, with Econet and speech hardware as standard; the other for West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
. Both were fitted with RF shielding as required by the respective countries, and they were still based on the Intel 8271 floppy drive controller. From June 1983 the name was always spelled out in full – "British Broadcasting Corporation Microcomputer System" – to avoid confusion with Brown, Boveri & Cie
Brown, Boveri & Cie
Brown, Boveri & Cie was a Swiss group of electrical engineering companies.It was founded in Baden, Switzerland, in 1891 by Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown and Walter Boveri who worked at the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon. In 1970 BBC took over the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon...
in international markets.
US models included BASIC III, modified to accept the American spelling of COLOR, but the height of the graphics display was reduced from 256 scan line
Scan line
A scan line or scanline is one line, or row, in a raster scanning pattern, such as a line of video on a cathode ray tube display of a television set or computer monitor....
s per field to 200 to suit NTSC
NTSC
NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...
TVs, seriously affecting applications written for British computers. After the failed US marketing campaign the unwanted machines were remanufactured
Remanufacturing
Remanufacturing is the process of disassembly and recovery at the module level and, eventually, at the component level. It requires the repair or replacement of worn out or obsolete components and modules. Parts subject to degradation affecting the performance or the expected life of the whole are...
for the British market and sold off, resulting in a third 'UK export' variant.
Hardware features: B+64 and B+128
Acorn introduced the Model B+ in mid 1985, increasing the total RAM to 64 kB and including floppy-disk support as standard, but this had modest market impact. The extra RAM in the Model B+ BBC Micro was assigned as two blocks, a block of 20 kB dedicated solely for screen display (so-called "ShadowShadow RAM (Acorn)
"Shadow RAM", on the Acorn BBC Microcomputer and Master-series microcomputer is a special framebuffer implementation to free up main memory and permit double-buffered graphics....
" RAM) and a block of 12 kB of 'special' Sideways
Sideways address space
The "Sideways" address space on the Acorn BBC Microcomputer and Master-series microcomputer was Acorn's bank switching implementation, providing for permanent system expansion in the days before hard disk drives or even floppy disk drives were commonplace...
RAM. The B+128 came with an additional 64 kB ( 4 × 16 kB "Sideways" RAM banks) to give a total RAM of 128 kB.
The new B+ was incapable of running some original BBC B programs and games, such as, for example, the very popular Castle Quest. A particular problem was the replacement of the Intel 8271 floppy disk
Floppy disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
controller with the Western Digital 1770 — not only was the new controller mapped to different addresses, it was fundamentally incompatible and the many 8271 emulators that did exist were necessarily imperfect for all but basic operation. A piece of software that used copy protection
Copy protection
Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy obstruction, copy prevention and copy restriction, refer to techniques used for preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media, usually for copyright reasons.- Terminology :Media corporations have always used the term...
techniques involving direct access to the controller, simply would not run on the new system.
There was also a long-running problem late on in the B/B+'s life infamous amongst B+ owners, when Superior Software released Repton Infinity, which refused to run on the B+. A string of unsuccessful replacements were issued before one compatible with both was finally released.
Hardware Features: BBC Master
In 1986, Acorn followed up with the BBC MasterBBC Master
The BBC Master was a home computer released by Acorn Computers in early 1986. It was designed and built for the British Broadcasting Corporation and was the successor to the BBC Micro Model B. The Master 128 remained in production until 1993....
, which offered memory sizes from 128 kB and many other refinements which improved on the 1981 original. At heart it was essentially the same 6502-based BBC architecture, with many of the upgrades that the original design had intentionally made possible (extra ROM software, extra paged RAM, second processors) now included on the circuit board as internal plug-in modules.
Software and expandability
Granny's Garden
Granny's Garden is an educational adventure game created for the BBC Micro in 1983. It served as a first introduction to computers for many schoolchildren in the United Kingdom during the 1980s and 1990s. The software is still used today in many schools worldwide.Created by Mike Matson for...
. Programming language
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
s and some applications were supplied on ROM chips to be installed on the motherboard. These loaded instantly and left the main RAM free for programs or documents.
Although appropriate content was little-supported by television broadcasters, telesoftware
Telesoftware
The word Telesoftware was coined by W J G Overington who first proposed the idea; it literally means “software at a distance” and it refers to the transmission of programs for a microprocessor or home computers via broadcast Teletext...
could be downloaded via the optional Teletext Adapter
BBC Cheese Wedge
BBC Micro expansion units, for the BBC Microcomputer were peripherals in a box with the same profile and styling as the main computer.-Second processors:...
and the third-party teletext adaptors that emerged.
The built-in operating system, Acorn MOS
Acorn MOS
Acorn's Machine Operating System or OS was a computer operating system used in the Acorn BBC computer range. It included support for four-channel sound and graphics, file system abstraction, and digital and analogue I/O including a daisy-chained fast expansion bus...
, provided an extensive API to interface with all standard peripherals, ROM-based software and the screen. Features private to some other BASICs, like vector graphics
Vector graphics
Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics...
, keyboard macros, cursor-based editing, sound queues and envelopes, were placed in the MOS ROM and made available to any application. BBC BASIC itself, being in a separate ROM, could be replaced with any equivalent language.
BASIC, other languages and utility ROMs resided in any of four 16 kB paged ROM sockets on board, although the MOS catered for sixteen 'slots' internally. The paged ROM system was essentially modular. A language-independent system of star commands, prefixed with an asterisk, provided the ability to select a language (for example *BASIC, *PASCAL), filing system (*TAPE, *DISC), change settings (
*FX, *OPT) or carry out ROM-supplied tasks (*COPY, *FORMAT) from the command line. The MOS recognised a handful of built-in commands, and polled the paged ROMs in descending order for service otherwise; if none of them claimed the command then the OS returned a Bad command error. Connecting an external EPROM programmer, one could write extensive programs, burn to PROM or EPROM, then run them without taxing user memory.Not all ROMs offered star commands (ROMs containing data files, for instance), but any ROM could claim certain vectors
Hooking
In computer programming, the term hooking covers a range of techniques used to alter or augment the behavior of an operating system, of applications, or of other software components by intercepting function calls or messages or events passed between software components...
to enhance the system's functionality. Often this was a combined mass storage
Mass storage
In computing, mass storage refers to the storage of large amounts of data in a persisting and machine-readable fashion. Devices and/or systems that have been described as mass storage include tape libraries, RAID systems, hard disk drives, magnetic tape drives, optical disc drives, magneto-optical...
device driver
Device driver
In computing, a device driver or software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device....
and filing system, starting with Acorn's Disc Filing System
Disc Filing System
The Disc Filing System is a computer file system developed by Acorn Computers Ltd, and introduced in 1982 for the Acorn BBC Microcomputer. It was shipped as a ROM to be inserted onto the BBC Micro's motherboard. It has an extremely limited design, and uses a flat directory structure...
in 1982 whose API became the de facto standard for floppy disc access. The Acorn GXR (Graphics eXtension ROM) expanded the VDU routines to draw geometric shapes, flood fills and sprites. In 1985 Micro Power
Micro Power
Micro Power was a British company established in the early 1980s, best known as a video game publisher but they also produced and sold many types of computer hardware and software through their Leeds...
designed and marketed a Basic Extension ROM, introducing statements such as WHILE, ENDWHILE, CASE, WHEN, OTHERWISE, and ENDCASE, as well as direct mode commands including VERIFY.
Acorn strongly discouraged programmers from directly accessing the system variables and hardware, favouring official system call
System call
In computing, a system call is how a program requests a service from an operating system's kernel. This may include hardware related services , creating and executing new processes, and communicating with integral kernel services...
s. This was ostensibly to make sure programs kept working when run on the Tube
Tube (BBC Micro)
In computing, the Tube was the expansion interface and architecture of the BBC Microcomputer System which allowed the BBC Micro to communicate with a second processor, or coprocessor....
coprocessor, but it also made BBC Micro software more portable across the Acorn range. Whereas untrappable PEEKs and POKEs
PEEK and POKE
In computing, PEEK is a BASIC programming language extension used for reading the contents of a memory cell at a specified address. The corresponding command to set the contents of a memory cell is POKE.-Statement syntax:...
were commonly used on other computers to reach the system elements, programs in either machine code or BBC BASIC would instead pass parameters to an operating system routine. In this way the MOS could translate the request for the local machine's devices and memory layout or send it across the Tube interface, as direct access was impossible from the coprocessor. Published programs largely stuck to the API but games routinely made direct accesses for increased speed, and thus required a particular Acorn model or MOS version.
As the early BBC Micros had ample I/O allowing machines to be interconnected, and as many schools and universities employed the machines in Econet
Econet
Econet was Acorn's low-cost local area network system, intended for use by schools and small businesses. Econet is rumoured to be an abbreviation of Economy Network, but Acorn were always careful to stress the Greek root, oikos, meaning "house"....
networks, numerous networked multiplayer games were created. With the exception of a tank game, Bolo
Bolo (computer game)
Bolo is a video game created for the BBC Micro computer by Stuart Cheshire in 1987, and later ported to the Macintosh in its most popular incarnation. Most recently a Windows clone named Winbolo was developed by John Morrison. Cheshire's Bolo is a networked multiplayer game that simulates a tank...
, few rose to popularity; in no small measure due to the limited number of machines aggregated in one place. A relatively late but well documented example can be found in a dissertation based on a ringed RS-423
RS-423
RS/EIA/TIA-423 is a standard for serial communications. It defines an unbalanced interface , with a single, unidirectional sending driver, and allows for up to 10 receivers . It is normally implemented in integrated circuit technology and can also be employed for the interchange of serial binary...
interconnect.
BBC BASIC
The built-in ROM-resident BBC BASIC programming language interpreter was by far the most sophisticated of its time, and wholly supported the machine's educational focus. Advanced programs could be written without resorting to non-structured programmingNon-structured programming
Non-structured programming is the historically earliest programming paradigm capable of creating Turing-complete algorithms. It has been followed historically by procedural programming and then object-oriented programming, both of them considered as structured programming.Unstructured programming...
or machine code
Machine code
Machine code or machine language is a system of impartible instructions executed directly by a computer's central processing unit. Each instruction performs a very specific task, typically either an operation on a unit of data Machine code or machine language is a system of impartible instructions...
(necessary with many competing computers). Should one want or need to do some assembly programming, BBC BASIC featured a built-in assembler that allowed a very easy mixture of BBC BASIC and assembler for whatever processor BBC BASIC was running on.
When the BBC Micro was released, many competing home computers used Microsoft BASIC
Microsoft BASIC
Microsoft BASIC was the foundation product of the Microsoft company. It first appeared in 1975 as Altair BASIC, which was the first BASIC, and the first high level programming language available for the MITS Altair 8800 hobbyist microcomputer....
, or variants typically designed to resemble it. Compared to Microsoft BASIC, BBC BASIC supported IF…THEN…ELSE, REPEAT…UNTIL, named procedures and functions, but retained GOTO
Goto
goto is a statement found in many computer programming languages. It is a combination of the English words go and to. It performs a one-way transfer of control to another line of code; in contrast a function call normally returns control...
and GOSUB
GOSUB
GOSUB is a command in many versions of the BASIC computer programming language. A GOSUB statement jumps to a line elsewhere in the program. That line and the following lines up to a RETURN are used as a simple kind of a subroutine without parameters or local variables.The GOSUB command may be used...
for compatibility. It also supported high-resolution graphics, four-channel sound, pointer-based memory access (borrowed from BCPL
BCPL
BCPL is a procedural, imperative, and structured computer programming language designed by Martin Richards of the University of Cambridge in 1966.- Design :...
) and rudimentary macro assembly. Long variable names were accepted and distinguished completely, not just by the first two characters.
Successor machines
Acorn had produced their own 32-bit32-bit
The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....
RISC CPU in 1985, (the ARM2
ARM architecture
ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...
) and were working on building a personal computer around it. This was released in 1987 as four models in the Archimedes
Acorn Archimedes
The Acorn Archimedes was Acorn Computers Ltd's first general purpose home computer to be based on their own ARM architecture.Using a RISC design with a 32-bit CPU, at its launch in June 1987, the Archimedes was stated as running at 4 MIPS, with a claim of 18 MIPS during tests.The name is commonly...
series, with the lower-specified two models (with 512 kB and 1 MB respectively) released as BBC Microcomputers with the distinctive red function keys. Although the Archimedes ultimately was not a major success, the ARM family of processors has gone on to become the dominant processor architecture in mobile embedded consumer devices, particularly mobile phones.
Acorn's last BBC-related model, the BBC A3000, was released in 1989. It was essentially a 1 MB Archimedes back in a single case form factor.
Retro computing scene
As of 2005, thanks to its ready expandability and I/O functions, there are still numbers of BBCs in use, and a retrocomputingRetrocomputing
Retrocomputing is the use of early computer hardware and software today. Retrocomputing is usually classed as a hobby and recreation rather than a practical application of technology; enthusiasts often collect rare and valuable hardware and software for sentimental reasons...
community of dedicated users finding new things to do with the old hardware. A BBC B+ was observed running the communications link in an unattended water pumping station in Oxhey
Oxhey
Oxhey is a suburb of the borough of Watford in the county of Hertfordshire, England. It is located at and forms part of the Watford post town....
in 1995. They still survive in a few interactive displays in museums across the country, and Jodrell Bank
Jodrell Bank
The Jodrell Bank Observatory is a British observatory that hosts a number of radio telescopes, and is part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester...
was reported to still be using a BBC Micro to steer its 42 ft radio telescope in 2004. There are also a number of BBC Micro emulator
Emulator
In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...
s for many OSs, so that even the original hardware is no longer necessary.
In March 2008, the creators of the BBC Micro met at the Science Museum
Science Museum (London)
The Science Museum is one of the three major museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is part of the National Museum of Science and Industry. The museum is a major London tourist attraction....
in London. There was to be an exhibition about the computer and its legacy in 2009.
The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
uses BBC Micros as part of a scheme to educate school children about computer programming.
Specifications (Model A to Model B+128)
| | Model A | | Model B | | Model B+64 | | Model B+128 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | MOS Technology MOS Technology MOS Technology, Inc., also known as CSG , was a semiconductor design and fabrication company based in Norristown, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is most famous for its 6502 microprocessor, and various designs for Commodore International's range of home computers.-History:MOS Technology, Inc... 6502A MOS Technology 6502 The MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch for MOS Technology in 1975. When it was introduced, it was the least expensive full-featured microprocessor on the market by a considerable margin, costing less than one-sixth the price of... at 2 MHz |
Rockwell Semiconductor 6512A at 2 MHz | ||
| RAM Random-access memory Random access memory is a form of computer data storage. Today, it takes the form of integrated circuits that allow stored data to be accessed in any order with a worst case performance of constant time. Strictly speaking, modern types of DRAM are therefore not random access, as data is read in... |
16 kB | 32 kB | 64 kB composed of 32 kB standard memory, 20 kB video (Shadow Shadow RAM (Acorn) "Shadow RAM", on the Acorn BBC Microcomputer and Master-series microcomputer is a special framebuffer implementation to free up main memory and permit double-buffered graphics.... ) memory and 12 kB extended (special Sideways) memory. |
128 kB composed of 32 kB standard memory, 20 kB video (Shadow) memory and 76 kB extended (Sideways) memory. |
| ROM Read-only memory Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only... |
32 kB of ROM composed of a 16 kB MOS Acorn MOS Acorn's Machine Operating System or OS was a computer operating system used in the Acorn BBC computer range. It included support for four-channel sound and graphics, file system abstraction, and digital and analogue I/O including a daisy-chained fast expansion bus... (Machine Operating System) chip, and 16 kB read-only paged space defaulting to the BBC BASIC chip. Four paged 16 kB ROM sockets standard, expandable to 16. |
48 kB of ROM composed of 16 kB MOS, 16 kB DFS, and 16 kB read-only paged space defaulting to the BBC BASIC. | ||
| Keyboard Computer keyboard In computing, a keyboard is a typewriter-style keyboard, which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys, to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches... |
Full-travel keyboard with a top row of ten red-orange function key Function key A function key is a key on a computer or terminal keyboard which can be programmed so as to cause an operating system command interpreter or application program to perform certain actions... s  . These generated Teletext control characterControl character In computing and telecommunication, a control character or non-printing character is a code point in a character set, that does not in itself represent a written symbol.It is in-band signaling in the context of character encoding.... s when pressed with CTRL or SHIFT, and could be programmed with keyboard macros. The arrow keys and BREAK could also serve as function keys. |
|||
| Display | As Model B except RGB (Optional upgrade, soldering required). | 6-pin DIN DIN connector A DIN connector is a connector that was originally standardized by the , the German national standards organization. There are DIN standards for a large number of different connectors, therefore the term "DIN connector" alone does not unambiguously identify any particular type of connector unless... digital RGB connector +5 V/0 V, 1 V p-p composite colour or monochrome video (link S39) and built-in UHF (PAL PAL PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system... ) RF modulator RF modulator An RF modulator is a device that takes a baseband input signal and outputs a radio frequency-modulated signal.... . |
||
| Graphics Graphics Graphics are visual presentations on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, computer screen, paper, or stone to brand, inform, illustrate, or entertain. Examples are photographs, drawings, Line Art, graphs, diagrams, typography, numbers, symbols, geometric designs, maps, engineering drawings,or... |
As Model B, but Modes 0, 1, 2, and 3 not available due to lack of memory. | Configurable graphics in Modes 0-6 (see table below) based on the Motorola 6845 Motorola 6845 The Motorola 6845 is a video address generator first introduced by Motorola and used among others in the Videx VideoTerm display cards for the Apple II computers, the MDA and CGA video adapters for the IBM PC, in the Amstrad CPC and the BBC Micro. Its functionality was duplicated and extended by... CRT controller Video Display Controller A Video Display Controller or VDC is an integrated circuit which is the main component in a video signal generator, a device responsible for the production of a TV video signal in a computing or game system... or Mode 7, a special Teletext Teletext Teletext is a television information retrieval service developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. It offers a range of text-based information, typically including national, international and sporting news, weather and TV schedules... mode, based a Mullard Mullard Mullard Limited was a British manufacturer of electronic components. The Mullard Radio Valve Co. Ltd. of Southfields, London, was founded in 1920 by Captain Stanley R. Mullard, who had previously designed valves for the Admiralty before becoming managing director of the Z Electric Lamp Co. The... SAA5050 Mullard SAA5050 The Mullard SAA5050 was a character generator chip for implementing the teletext character set. The SAA5050 was used in teletext-equipped television sets, viewdata terminals, and microcomputers, most notably the Philips P2000T homecomputer , Acorn's System 2 , and the BBC micro's... Teletext chip and only taking 1 kB of RAM. |
||
| Sound | Four independent sound channels (one noise and three melodic) using the Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology... SN76489 Texas Instruments SN76489 The SN76489 Digital Complex Sound Generator is a TTL-compatible Programmable Sound Generator chip from Texas Instruments. It contains three square wave tone generators and one white noise generator, each of which can produce sounds at various frequencies and sixteen different volume levels... sound chip Sound chip A sound chip is an integrated circuit designed to produce sound . It might be doing this through digital, analog or mixed-mode electronics... . Phoneme-based speech synthesis using the Texas Instruments TMS5220 with a custom Acorn ROM (the "PHROM", a TMS6100 TMS6100 The Texas Instruments TMS6100 is a 1 or 4-bit serial mask-programmed read-only memory IC. It is a companion chip to the TMS5100, CD2802, TMS5110, TMS5200, and TMS5220 speech synthesizer ICs, and was mask-programmed with LPC data required for a specific product... ) of Kenneth Kendall Kenneth Kendall Kenneth Kendall is a retired British broadcaster. He was a contemporary of Richard Baker and Robert Dougall... 's voice (optional). |
|||
| Tape storage Magnetic tape data storage Magnetic tape data storage uses digital recording on to magnetic tape to store digital information. Modern magnetic tape is most commonly packaged in cartridges and cassettes. The device that performs actual writing or reading of data is a tape drive... |
Tape interface (with a relay operated motor control), using a variation of the Kansas City standard Kansas City standard The Kansas City Standard , or Byte standard, is a digital data format for audio cassette drives. Byte magazine sponsored a symposium in November 1975 in Kansas City, Missouri to develop a standard for storage of digital computer data on inexpensive consumer quality cassettes, at a time when... data encoding scheme running at 1200 or 300 baud. |
|||
| Disk storage Disk storage Disk storage or disc storage is a general category of storage mechanisms, in which data are digitally recorded by various electronic, magnetic, optical, or mechanical methods on a surface layer deposited of one or more planar, round and rotating disks... |
Optional floppy disk Floppy disk A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles... interface based initially on the Intel 8271 chip and later on the WD1770 WD1770 The FD1771 is the first in a line of floppy disk controllers produced by Western Digital. It uses single density modulation and supports the IBM 3740 disk format... , also requiring the installation of the DFS (disk filing system) ROM (and of soldered connector on Model A). (5.25" floppy drive usually used). |
floppy disk Floppy disk A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles... controller based on the Western Digital Western Digital Western Digital Corporation is one of the largest computer hard disk drive manufacturers in the world. It has a long history in the electronics industry as an integrated circuit maker and a storage products company. Western Digital was founded on April 23, 1970 by Alvin B... WD1770 WD1770 The FD1771 is the first in a line of floppy disk controllers produced by Western Digital. It uses single density modulation and supports the IBM 3740 disk format... controller and DFS ROM as standard (except ANB51, ANB52). |
||
| Hard-disk storage | None (lack of memory). | Additional ADFS Advanced Disc Filing System The Advanced Disc Filing System is a computing file system particular to the Acorn computer range and RISC OS based successors. Initially based on the rare Acorn Winchester Filing System, it was renamed to the Advanced Disc Filing System when support for floppy discs was added and on later 32 bit... ROM required, external drive unit connected to the 1 MHz Bus interface. (Winchester Hard disc drives in 5 MB, 10 MB or 20 MB sizes. Maximum of 512 MB per drive, up to four drives). |
||
| Serial Interface | Optional upgrade, soldering required. | 5-pin 'domino'-DIN DIN connector A DIN connector is a connector that was originally standardized by the , the German national standards organization. There are DIN standards for a large number of different connectors, therefore the term "DIN connector" alone does not unambiguously identify any particular type of connector unless... RS-423 RS-423 RS/EIA/TIA-423 is a standard for serial communications. It defines an unbalanced interface , with a single, unidirectional sending driver, and allows for up to 10 receivers . It is normally implemented in integrated circuit technology and can also be employed for the interchange of serial binary... serial port. |
||
| Parallel interface | Optional upgrade, soldering required. | 26-pin IDC Insulation-displacement connector An Insulation-displacement connector, insulation-displacement technology/termination or insulation-piercing connector is an electrical connector designed to be connected to the conductor of an insulated wire or cable by a connection process which forces a selectively sharpened blade or blades... Centronics Centronics Centronics Data Computer Corporation was a pioneering American manufacturer of computer printers, now remembered primarily for the parallel interface that bears its name.-The beginning:Centronics began as a division of Wang Laboratories... -compatible parallel port. |
||
| User port | Optional upgrade, soldering required. | 20-pin IDC "user port" with 8 general purpose digital I/O pins and two special/trigger sensitive digital pins used for control purposes (for eg a turtle when using the Logo Logo (programming language) Logo is a multi-paradigm computer programming language used in education. It is an adaptation and dialect of the Lisp language; some have called it Lisp without the parentheses. It was originally conceived and written as functional programming language, and drove a mechanical turtle as an output... programming language). |
||
| Analogue interface | Optional upgrade, soldering required. | DA15 D-subminiature The D-subminiature or D-sub is a common type of electrical connector. They are named for their characteristic D-shaped metal shield. When they were introduced, D-subs were among the smaller connectors used on computer systems.... socket with four 8/12 bit analogue inputs based on µPD7002 IC (suitable for two joystick Joystick A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. Joysticks, also known as 'control columns', are the principal control in the cockpit of many civilian and military aircraft, either as a center stick or... s), two inputs suitable for pushbuttons and an input for a light pen Light pen A light pen is a computer input device in the form of a light-sensitive wand used in conjunction with a computer's CRT TV set or monitor. It allows the user to point to displayed objects, or draw on the screen, in a similar way to a touch screen but with greater positional accuracy... . |
||
| 1 MHz Bus | Optional upgrade, soldering required. | 34-pin IDC connector for generic expansion on a "daisy-chain" (used for connecting hard disks, sound synthesisers etc). | ||
| The Tube Tube (BBC Micro) In computing, the Tube was the expansion interface and architecture of the BBC Microcomputer System which allowed the BBC Micro to communicate with a second processor, or coprocessor.... |
Optional upgrade, soldering required. | 40-pin IDC connector for external second CPU. Options included a second 6502 MOS Technology 6502 The MOS Technology 6502 is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch for MOS Technology in 1975. When it was introduced, it was the least expensive full-featured microprocessor on the market by a considerable margin, costing less than one-sixth the price of... , a Zilog Z80 Zilog Z80 The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor designed by Zilog and sold from July 1976 onwards. It was widely used both in desktop and embedded computer designs as well as for military purposes... , the ARM Evaluation System, or a National Semiconductor 32016 (the latter was either branded "BBC Microcomputer System - 32016 Second Processor" or "Acorn Computer - Cambridge Co-Processor"), other vendors added 6809, 6800, 68000 and 68008. A 10 MHz 80186 co-processor from a BBC Master can be connected through a co-processor adapter to a BBC Micro, thus enjoying a limited degree of PC compatibility. |
||
| Network Computer network A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information.... (Optional extra) |
Econet Econet Econet was Acorn's low-cost local area network system, intended for use by schools and small businesses. Econet is rumoured to be an abbreviation of Economy Network, but Acorn were always careful to stress the Greek root, oikos, meaning "house".... large-scale low-cost networking system - around 100 kbit/s using the Motorola Motorola Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009... 68B54 (standard on US model). |
|||
Display modes
Like the IBM PCIBM PC
The IBM Personal Computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform. It is IBM model number 5150, and was introduced on August 12, 1981...
with the contemporary Color Graphics Adapter
Color Graphics Adapter
The Color Graphics Adapter , originally also called the Color/Graphics Adapter or IBM Color/Graphics Monitor Adapter, introduced in 1981, was IBM's first color graphics card, and the first color computer display standard for the IBM PC....
, the video output of the BBC Micro could be switched under software control between a number of display modes. These varied between 20 column text suitable for a domestic TV, to 80 column text best viewed with a high-quality monitor. The variety of modes offered applications a flexible compromise between colour depth, resolution and memory footprint: in the first models, the OS and applications used whatever RAM was left over from the display.
Mode 7 was a Teletext
Teletext
Teletext is a television information retrieval service developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. It offers a range of text-based information, typically including national, international and sporting news, weather and TV schedules...
mode, extremely economical on memory and an original requirement due to the BBC's own use of broadcast teletext (Ceefax): it also made the computer useful as a Prestel
Prestel
Prestel , the brand name for the UK Post Office's Viewdata technology, was an interactive videotex system developed during the late 1970s and commercially launched in 1979...
terminal. Train time displays at UK stations were driven by BBC Master computers in this mode until around the late 1990s.
Modes 0 to 6, the 'ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
' modes, could display a choice of colours from a logical palette of sixteen: the eight basic colours at the vertices of the RGB colour cube, and eight flashing colours made by alternating the basic colour with its inverse. The palette could be freely reprogrammed without touching display memory. Modes 3 and 6 were special text-only modes that used less RAM by reducing the number of text rows and inserting blank scan lines below each row. Mode 6 was approximately the same size as Teletext. All Modes 0 to 6 could show diacritics and other user defined characters, and all but the two text modes supported vector graphics.
The BBC B+ and the later Master allowed 'shadow modes', where the framebuffer was stored in 20 kB of an alternative RAM bank, leaving the main memory up to 0x8000 free for user programs. This feature was enabled by setting bit 7 of the mode variable, i.e. by requesting modes 128–135.
Optional extras
A speech synthesis upgrade based on the Texas Instruments TMS5220TMS5220
The Texas Instruments LPC Speech Chips are a series of speech synthesizer DSP ICs created by Texas Instruments beginning in 1978. They continued to be developed and marketed for many years, though the speech department moved around several times within TI, until finally the speech department...
featured sampled phonemes spoken by BBC newscaster Kenneth Kendall
Kenneth Kendall
Kenneth Kendall is a retired British broadcaster. He was a contemporary of Richard Baker and Robert Dougall...
. The speech system was standard on the US model where it had an American vocabulary. Elsewhere it sold poorly and was eventually eclipsed by Superior Software
Superior Software
Superior Software is a video game publisher. It was established in 1982 by Richard Hanson and John Dyson, two graduates of the University of Leeds, England...
's software-based synthesiser using the standard sound hardware.
The speech upgrade also added two empty sockets next to the keyboard intended to take 16 kB serial ROM cartridges containing either extra speech phoneme data (in addition to the default speech ROM fitted to the motherboard), or general software accessed through the ROM Filing System. The original plan was that some games would be released on cartridges, but due to the limited sales of the speech upgrade, little or no software was ever produced for these sockets. The cut-out space next to the keyboard (nick-named the "ashtray") was more commonly used to install other upgrades, such as a ZIF socket for conventional paged ROMs.
Use in the entertainment industry
- The BBC Domesday ProjectBBC Domesday ProjectThe BBC Domesday Project was a partnership between Acorn Computers Ltd, Philips, Logica and the BBC to mark the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book, an 11th century census of England...
, a pioneering multimedia experiment, was based on a modified version of the BBC Micro's successor the BBC MasterBBC MasterThe BBC Master was a home computer released by Acorn Computers in early 1986. It was designed and built for the British Broadcasting Corporation and was the successor to the BBC Micro Model B. The Master 128 remained in production until 1993....
. - Musician Vince ClarkeVince ClarkeVince Clarke is an English synthpop musician and songwriter. Clarke has been involved with a number of successful groups, including Depeche Mode, Yazoo, The Assembly and Erasure....
of the British synth pop bands Depeche ModeDepeche ModeDepeche Mode are an English electronic music band formed in 1980 in Basildon, Essex. The group's original line-up consisted of Dave Gahan , Martin Gore , Andy Fletcher and Vince Clarke...
, YazooYazoo (band)Yazoo are a British synthpop duo from Basildon, Essex. They had a number of Top 10 hits in the UK charts in the early 1980s...
, and ErasureErasureErasure are an English synthpop duo, consisting of songwriter and keyboardist Vince Clarke and singer Andy Bell. Erasure entered the music scene in 1985 with their debut single "Who Needs Love Like That"...
used a BBC Micro (and later a BBC MasterBBC MasterThe BBC Master was a home computer released by Acorn Computers in early 1986. It was designed and built for the British Broadcasting Corporation and was the successor to the BBC Micro Model B. The Master 128 remained in production until 1993....
) with the UMI music sequencerMusic sequencerThe music sequencer is a device or computer software to record, edit, play back the music, by handling note and performance information in several forms, typically :...
to compose many hits. In music videoMusic videoA music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...
s from the 1980s featuring Vince Clarke, a BBC Micro is often present or provides text and graphics such as the clip for Erasure's "Oh L'Amour". - QueenQueen (band)Queen are a British rock band formed in London in 1971, originally consisting of Freddie Mercury , Brian May , John Deacon , and Roger Taylor...
used the UMI Music Sequencer on their record A Kind of MagicA Kind of MagicA Kind of Magic is a 1986 album by British rock band Queen. It was the band's twelfth studio album and their first to be recorded digitally, and is based on the soundtrack to the film Highlander, the first in a series directed by Russell Mulcahy....
. The UMI is also mentioned in the CD booklet. Other bands who have used the Beeb for making music are A-haA-haA-ha were a Norwegian pop band formed in Oslo in 1982. The band was founded by Morten Harket , Magne Furuholmen , and Pål Waaktaar...
and the reggae band Steel PulseSteel PulseSteel Pulse is a roots reggae musical band. They originally formed at Handsworth Wood Boys School, in Birmingham, England, composed of David Hinds , Basil Gabbidon , and Ronald McQueen .-History:...
. - Paul Ridout is credited as "UMI programmer" on CarsThe CarsThe Cars are an American rock band that emerged from the early New Wave music scene in the late 1970s. The band consisted of lead singer and rhythm guitarist Ric Ocasek, lead singer and bassist Benjamin Orr, guitarist Elliot Easton, keyboardist Greg Hawkes and drummer David Robinson...
' bassist/vocalist Benjamin OrrBenjamin OrrBenjamin Orr was an American rock musician best known as the bassist and vocalist for the Boston based rock band, The Cars....
's 1986 solo album, The LaceThe Lace (Benjamin Orr album)The Lace is the debut solo record by The Cars' member Benjamin Orr. It features his only solo hit, the song "Stay the Night" which reached the top 40 in 1987...
. - The BBC Micro was utilised extensively to provide graphics and sound effects for many early 1980s BBC TV shows. These included, notably, The Adventure GameThe Adventure GameThe Adventure Game was a game show, aimed at children but with an adult following, which was originally broadcast on UK television channels BBC1 and BBC2 between 24 May 1980 and 18 February 1986. The story in each show was that the two celebrity contestants and a member of the public had travelled...
, (the BREAK key on the keyboard was covered by a plastic box to prevent accidental pressing by contestants); the children's quiz game "First Class" (where the onscreen scoreboard was provided by a BBC Micro nicknamed "Eugene"); and numerous 1980s episodes of Doctor WhoDoctor WhoDoctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
including "Castrovalva", "The Five DoctorsThe Five DoctorsThe Five Doctors is a special feature-length episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, produced in celebration of the programme's twentieth anniversary. It had its world premiere in the United States, on the Chicago PBS station WTTW and various other PBS member stations...
" and "The Twin DilemmaThe Twin DilemmaThe Twin Dilemma is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four twice-weekly parts from 22 March to 30 March 1984, the first to star Colin Baker in the title role.-Synopsis:...
". A BBC Micro was used to display pages from CeefaxCeefaxCeefax is the BBC's teletext information service transmitted via the analogue signal, started in 1974 and will run until April 2012 for Pages from Ceefax, while the actual interactive service will run until 24 October 2012, in-line with the digital switchover.-History:During the late 60s, engineer...
whenever required. - A BBC Micro was used to display stills of AcornsoftAcornsoftAcornsoft was the software arm of Acorn Computers Ltd, and a major publisher of software for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. As well as games, they also produced a large number of educational titles, extra computer languages and business and utility packages - these included ROM-based word...
Elite in the music video of Pump Up the VolumePump up the Volume (song)"Pump Up the Volume" is a song and the only single by British recording act MARRS. It was a number-one hit in many countries and is generally regarded as a significant milestone in the development of British house music and music sampling....
by MARRSMARRSMARRS was a 1987 one-off recording act formed by the groups A.R. Kane and Colourbox which only released one commercial disc...
. - A BBC Micro was shown during the opening title of the first series of the BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's Look Around YouLook Around YouLook Around You is a British television comedy series devised and written by Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz, and, in the first series, narrated by Nigel Lambert...
. It is shown running a simple BASIC program to repeatedly display the name of the show. - In the movie AliensAliens (film)Aliens is a 1986 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron and starring Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, William Hope, and Bill Paxton...
, shot at Pinewood StudiosPinewood StudiosPinewood Studios is a major British film studio situated in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, approximately west of central London. The studios have played host to many productions over the years from huge blockbuster films to television shows to commercials to pop promos.The purchase of Shepperton...
in 1985, the textual information displayed on the colonial marines' helmet cam feeds (including the name of each soldier and the elapsed mission time) is recognizably generated by a BBC Micro, using a combination of single height and double height mode 7 characters.
Design team
The following people, organisations and places are credited within the operating system ROM as contributing the development of the BBC Computer 'among others too numerous to mention':-David Allen, Bob Austin, Ram Banerjee, Paul Bond, Allen Boothroyd, Cambridge, Cleartone, John Coll
John Coll
John Coll appeared regularly on the television programmes Making the Most of the Micro and Micro Live - he was also closely involved in the development of the BBC Micro with Acorn Computers....
, John Cox, Andy Cripps, Chris Curry
Chris Curry
Christopher Curry is the co-founder of Acorn Computers, with Hermann Hauser and Andy Hopper.-Early life:...
, 6502 designers, Jeremy Dion, Tim Dobson, Joe Dunn, Paul Farrell, Ferranti, Steve Furber
Steve Furber
Professor Stephen Byram Furber CBE, FRS, FREng is the ICL Professor of Computer Engineering at the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester but is probably best known for his work at Acorn where he was one of the designers of the BBC Micro and the ARM 32-bit RISC...
, Jon Gibbons, Andrew Gordon, Lawrence Hardwick, Dylan Harris, Hermann Hauser
Hermann Hauser
Hermann Maria Hauser, CBE FREng FinstP CPhys , is an entrepreneur who was born in Vienna, Austria but is primarily associated with Silicon Fen in England....
, Hitachi, Andy Hopper
Andy Hopper
Andrew Hopper CBE FRS FREng FIET is the Professor of Computer Technology and Head of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and an Honorary Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge.-Research:...
, ICL, Martin, Jackson, Brian Jones, Chris Jordan, David King, David Kitson, Paul Kriwaczek, Computer Laboratory, Peter Miller, Arthur Norman, Glyn Phillips, Mike Prees, John Radcliffe, Wilberforce Road, Peter Robinson
Peter Robinson (computer scientist)
Peter Robinson is Professor of Computer Technology and Deputy Head of Department at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory in England, where he leads the Rainbow Group working on computer graphics and interaction...
, Richard Russell
Richard T. Russell
Richard Thomas Russell is the creator of the BBC Basic for Windows programming language and the author of the Z80 and MS-DOS versions of BBC BASIC....
, Kim Spence-Jones, Graham Tebby, Jon Thackray, Chris Turner, Adrian Warner, Sophie Wilson
Sophie Wilson
Sophie Wilson is a British computer scientist. She is known for designing the Acorn Micro-Computer, the first of a long line of computers sold by Acorn Computers Ltd, as well as the instruction set of the highly successful ARM processor.- Life and career :...
, Alan Wright
The case was designed by industrial designer Allen Boothroyd
Allen Boothroyd
Allen Boothroyd is an industrial designer. He trained as a mechanical engineer and went on to study industrial design at the Royal College of Art....
of Cambridge Product Design Ltd.
See also
- Acorn ElectronAcorn ElectronThe Acorn Electron is a budget version of the BBC Micro educational/home computer made by Acorn Computers Ltd. It has 32 kilobytes of RAM, and its ROM includes BBC BASIC along with its operating system....
- Acorn ArchimedesAcorn ArchimedesThe Acorn Archimedes was Acorn Computers Ltd's first general purpose home computer to be based on their own ARM architecture.Using a RISC design with a 32-bit CPU, at its launch in June 1987, the Archimedes was stated as running at 4 MIPS, with a claim of 18 MIPS during tests.The name is commonly...
- BBC MasterBBC MasterThe BBC Master was a home computer released by Acorn Computers in early 1986. It was designed and built for the British Broadcasting Corporation and was the successor to the BBC Micro Model B. The Master 128 remained in production until 1993....
- Risc PCRisc PCThe RiscPC was Acorn Computers's next generation RISC OS/Acorn RISC Machine computer, launched on 15 April 1994, which superseded the Acorn Archimedes. The Acorn PC card and software allows PC compatible software to be run....