BBC BASIC for the MEGA65?

Quote from Snoopy

Quote from Richard Hallas

Which Dave? David Banks?

Yes, David Banks!

Thought so. He's the person who disassembled that version – I think, before the official source for an earlier version of BASIC IV was released on Github.

He's also the author of the two superb BBC cores (Model B and Master 128, both with second processors etc.) for the Spectrum Next. I tried very hard to get him to port these cores to the MEGA65, but was unable to persuade him, sadly. I really wish he'd do it; the MEGA65 would be a much better machine to run these BBC cores because it has a bigger and better keyboard than the Spectrum Next; it'd be far more usable with a lot of BBC software. (Plus, the presence of the 3.5" floppy drive would mean the MEGA65 would be a superb machine for running a prospective Master Compact core. There's no such thing yet, but it shouldn't be hard to adapt from the Master 128 core, and the MEGA65 would be ideal for using it.)

And he's also responsible for many other modern BBC projects, including PiTube Direct (use a Raspberry Pi to emulate virtually all the various BBC Tube second processors in a BBC model B or Master), MMFS (the SD card filing system) and many other things. He's an amazing chap. Today's 8-bit BBC platform wouldn't be half as interesting as it is if it weren't for him and all the clever extensions he's devised, both in software and hardware.

Quote from Richard Hallas

My only regret is that it hasn't been possible to get a definitive statement about the ownership of BBC BASIC. It's frustrating to be so close and yet unable to proceed as desired!

After some research and mails it seems that most propably the current owner of the BBC BASIC (at least version 2) is a company named Please login to see this link.. And also most propably they don't know about having the rights.

In the year 2005 the rights of the Electron ROMs (which also includes BBC BASIC 2) were in the hands of "Pace Micro Technology plc", which was renamed 2008 to Please login to see this link.:

Quote from copyright.txt in ElectrEm zip file from 2005

The Electron system ROMs are copyright Pace Micro Technology PLC, Please login to see this link.. They do not fall under the GPL.

2016 Pace got together with Arris:

Quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pace_plc

On 22 April 2015, the Boards of Pace and Arris Group announced that they had reached agreement on the terms of a recommended combination of Pace with Arris, [...]

The company received the last of the regulatory clearances needed to allow the merger to proceed in December 2015. The acquisition was completed on 4 January 2016. The resultant combined group is incorporated in the United Kingdom, but operationally managed from the United States, and is owned 24% by Pace shareholders and 76% by Arris shareholders.

And 2019 Arris was bought by CommScope:

Quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CommScope

On April 4, 2019, CommScope completed the acquisition of Arris International, a telecommunications equipment manufacturing company and owner of Ruckus Networks. Both Arris and Ruckus were made brands of CommScope.

You can see the results, if you want to call Please login to see this link. you will land at the site of Please login to see this link.

And CommScope is still active with "network stuff".

I don't want to ask them about the rights, but it's most propably, that they have them (and it's better they never know).

Quote from Snoopy

After some research and mails it seems that most propably the current owner of the BBC BASIC (at least version 2) is a company named Please login to see this link.. And also most propably they don't know about having the rights.

Well, this is interesting, but I'm far from convinced that it's the correct conclusion.

The point is that we already know that Pace Micro Technology (later just Pace) owned such ex-Acorn items as the Electron ROMs etc. because it was Pace that bought most of the Acorn properties, as discussed in my recent long post about where things ended up.

In addition, as also stated in that previous posting, RISC OS Developments Ltd was set up in 2016 and itself acquired all the former Acorn properties from Pace. Well, I say "all"'; I don't with 100% certainty that it was "all" of the ex-Acorn properties, because even RISC OS Developments Ltd doesn't currently know that! Clearly they've inherited a mountain of paperwork and haven't had time to go through all of it in detail. Certainly, it includes all the properties relating to RISC OS and other 32-bit ARM-based developments, because that's what RISC OS Developments Ltd is actively interested it.

However, to the best of my knowledge and understanding, RISC OS Developments Ltd acquired ALL of Pace's former Acorn properties in 2016. And if that's the case, then RODLtd will certainly have acquired those 8-bit rights too (the Electron ROMs and BBC BASIC II). So this is actually good news. The bad news is that actual evidence still needs to be unearthed.

I will contact Andrew (at RODLtd) again to see if any further light can be shed on this. But it seems to me that EITHER CommScope has indeed ended up with the rights in question (and doesn't know about them), as you say – though that seems unlikely to me – OR the rights have ended up with RISC OS Developments Ltd… which would be much better news, because then they would belong to a central member of the Acorn community who actually cares about them.

I hope it might prove possible to actually get to the bottom of this eventually.

Maybe it's not the badest solution, that noone knows who hold the rights? So noone can sue anyone.

Quote from Snoopy

Maybe it's not the badest solution, that noone knows who hold the rights? So noone can sue anyone.

Well, certainly I think that the chances of getting into trouble over a BBC BASIC port for the MEGA65 are essentially zero. But clarity and explicit permission would be nice, and would allow us to do what was originally wanted, i.e. to built it in by default. And I see that as being the only way of really getting significant take-up, really. As an optional extra installation, I'm afraid it just won't get the same level of interest.

One thing this thread has definitely done: There is now an Acorn Electron here.

I had a good opportunity to get one and grabbed it. The computer came with an introduction tape and a German manual.

Please login to see this attachment.

Being involved with BBC BASIC made me interested in looking at these computers "in real life". The BBC computers passed me by completely at that time. As it turns out, completely wrongly. The BASIC is from 1981 (the Electron from 1983) and really ahead of the other 8bit computers of that time.

Please login to see this attachment.

I love this old hardware: The computer has almost 40 years on the hump and was probably 30 years somewhere on an attic. It arrives, I plug it into the power supply, connect it to the monitor with video cable, turn on the power and it works. No need to "repair, install or register" anything. Just turn it on and begin to work.

Now I can check even more "stylishly" if everything works as it should be "in the original".

Quote from Snoopy

One thing this thread has definitely done: There is now an Acorn Electron here.

I had a good opportunity to get one and grabbed it. The computer came with an introduction tape and a German manual.

Congratulations, and well done!

The Electron's a neat and cute little machine, isn't it? I always felt a bit sorry for the Electron because it spent its time of relevance in the 1980s being sneered at by everyone, including Acorn users with BBCs. I don't think it achieved a lot for Acorn at the time. It was really intended to compete with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, but unfortunately Acorn had production problems with it and missed the vitally important Christmas market, so it missed its intended launch period when it might have achieved good sales. After that, it was just too little, too late, sadly.

It was seen as being just a 'sawn off' BBC with all the good bits removed – and really, that's pretty accurate. Although it shared a great deal in common with the BBC Micro, it was a LOT less powerful. It lacked the teletext support of the BBC (screen mode 7) and just had simple single-channel sound rather than the BBC's sound chip. Worse, Acorn had led its developers to believe that converting their BBC games for the Electron would be a quick and easy job. But when the machine finally arrived, that turned out not to be true at all. Although there was broad compatibility, the Electron was MUCH slower than the BBC and lacked the ability to do video tricks like hardware scrolling etc., which meant that when games were converted for it, they had to be substantially re-optimised in creative ways, and often had to lose features.

So it wasn't really Acorn's finest effort, unfortunately. It was just a cheaper, compromised BBC in every way that mattered.

Despite that, though, there remains a surprising level of affection for the Electron (it seems to be more fondly remembered than many other 80s machines), and actually it did have quite a lot of redeeming qualities, including a nice keyboard and – obviously – BBC BASIC. It was quite a long lived machine, and over time it did acquire a large catalogue of software (more than you might have expected).

I must confess that I've never used a real Electron myself. I'd quite like to pick one up, actually. Especially with the Plus 1 interface (two cartridge ports like the BBC Master series, plus other interfaces) and Plus 3 (disk drive and ADFS filing system), it became a much more powerful system, and I like the modular way these interfaces build on to the basic machine and extend its length.

The Electron had two unique features that I'm aware of, not found on any other 8-bit Acorn machine: 1. an optional BASIC keyword entry system (probably inspired by the ZX Spectrum, but – as I say – entirely optional), and 2. the little Acorn character graphic that appears after "Acorn Electron" when you turn it on! Very cute.

Anyway, congratulations again on finding the Electron. I think, at this point in history, we're actually better positioned to see what a nice little machine it was than we were at the time of its launch, when it just looked uncompetitive against the Spectrum. But still, if you do ever want to get the cream of the crop in terms of Acorn 8-bit machines, the Master 128 is the one to acquire. That was a fantastic machine… and today, there are many modern peripherals that you can get for it cheaply, which we could only dream about back in the 80s. (E.g. there's the VideoNuLA replacement ULA that gives it a huge colour palette and new screen modes… and the PiTube Direct, which uses a cheap Raspberry Pi to give you ALL the optional second processors – Z80, 65C102, 68000, ARM1 etc… – that you could buy expensively and fit to the Tube interface.) The 8-bit Acorn world is actually thriving, so there's lots to explore if you get interested.

Richard Hallas : Thank you very much! And again many thanks for your post with many background information to the topic.

Your posts here in the thread are also significantly "guilty" that I deal more closely with the BBC BASIC of the 8bit generation. As written here before, my first contact with BBC BASIC was an used Acorn Archimedes 3000, which is still here. But I had nothing to do with BBC 8bit computers until recently.

I had a lot to do with UK computers (besides the C64) in the 1980s (Sinclair ZX80, ZX81, Spectrum and QL, Please login to see this link. and Please login to see this link.), but never a BBC computer from Acorn.

The more astonished I was and am, how good and well thought out these computers were at that time. You can see a coherent concept of hardware and software. Basically the opposite of the approach of Commodore.

Alone before the BBC BASIC 2, I really take off my hat! What here - also "under the surface" - of really good thoughts are in it, all my greatest respect! I prefer to spare myself a comparison with BASIC 2 from the C64.

As a teenager I probably wouldn't have been able to appreciate it that much. Topics like "Who can I trade games with for this?" and similar thoughts had priority. But nowadays, looking back, I can only say "Wow!". Some people at Acorn really put a lot of thought into this!

And this fascination awakened in me also led to the fact that I snapped up the Electron offer. Even without the Plus 1 expansion I have a lot of fun programming and testing on it. I still have an old cassette recorder and it is now connected to the Electron and reliably stores and loads my short programs. "Back to the roots" in its purest form!

The keyboard of the Electron is really good for that time and it even offers 80 characters per line (mode 0). I dreamed of this when working on the Spectrum 48k.

I also think that the Electron is the least powerful of the 8bit-BBCs, but to get a taste of "real" programming with BBC BASIC II it serves my intended purpose for now. I just enjoy typing on it and inserting a cassette to load and save and rewind properly. Breathing more "real" 8bit air is almost impossible.

So thanks again for your great posts on this. I always enjoy reading them and take a lot from them on the subject. And who knows, maybe it really wasn't the last 8bit BBC acquisition I made. I find this topic exciting and interesting in any case. Many thanks for your great input!

Quote from ubik

Quote from Snoopy

One thing this thread has definitely done: There is now an Acorn Electron here.

Hey, welcome to the Acorn party

Thank you! You are the second "guilty" who infected me with the BBC virus.

Yes, the Electron looks really nice. He is a "small one", but he can already do quite a lot.

Quote from ubik

(we should take care not to talk too much about these things, otherwise adtbm might cut the heating to our cabins and make us renumber 5000 lines of BASIC2 spaghetti code by hand as a disciplinary measure!! ;)))

You are allowed to use BASIC 2? You lucky man! That's my working place in the cabin:

Please login to see this attachment.

Quote from ubik

I'm the proud owner of this beauty here:

Please login to see this attachment.

Hey, nice TARDIS!

Its display stand isn't too bad either.

Quote from ubik

And although this Master Turbo is 10 times faster and has a SD card adapter builtin, I'd still like an Electron for my collection because I quite like its design Also that big mean ULA that's running half of the Electron could be seen as a distant cousin to the ARM processor since it was the last thing that the team designed before moving on to processors...

Master Turbo? Then you have the internal 65C102 second processor? That's what I had back on my original 1986 Master, too.

I actually sold my Master system in the mid-1990s – with regret – because of insufficient space to keep it, and I really wasn't using it any more. But I always missed it and was sorry it was gone, and about a year ago I finally gave in and bought another one from eBay. I still need to set it up, because I'm even more short of space now than I was in the 90s! So I need to reorganise my office before I can find it a new home to live in. But especially after getting the truly wonderful BBC Model B and Master FPGA cores for my Spectrum Next (which work absolutely superbly and include lots of extras, like an optional second processor), I just knew I had to get another Master. I really regretted selling my original one.

Since you have a Master Turbo, you'll know all about the Tube interface. Are you aware of the modern PiTube Direct add-on? It's really impressive. Basically you can attach a little board with a Raspberry Pi attached (a Pi Zero will do) to the Tube interface and then have access to your choice of any/all of the various Tube co-processor add-ons that used to be available – including the ARM development system. I haven't actually used mine yet (because, as I say, my new Master isn't yet set up), but I've got one waiting for as soon as I can find time to reorganise my office! You could get one for your Master even if you have a Turbo board fitted internally, because the Master (unlike the Model B) offers a choice of internal and external Tube expansions, so you could keep your Turbo board fitted and still have a PiTube Direct neatly attached to the Tube connector in the 'interface well' under the machine. Mind you, of course the PiTube Direct would duplicate the functionality of the internal Turbo board, as well as offering all the other choices. Anyway, it's an amazing and great add-on, and very inexpensive. (I think the board costs about £20 or £25, and then you just need a Pi Zero for about another £5. When you consider the hundreds of pounds each of the Acorn 'cheesewedge' second processors cost in the 80s, to get all their capability in a tiny little add-on for about £30 today is remarkable.)

Anyway, concerning the Electron: yes, it's a cute little machine. The Electron and the Master have definite design elements in common. On the Model B, the design was similar to its predecessor, the Atom, with a diagonal divider between the upper and lower halves of the case (running from the bottom of the case at the front to the top at the back). I was a bit sorry they got rid of that feature, as it was distinctive and stylish, but it didn't make sense if they needed to put ports on the sides, which they did with the Electron. Instead, the Electron had a 'normal' horizontal join towards the bottom of the case… and the Master followed suit. Also, the Electron had a pair of 'side caps' with smooth plastic, then a narrow channel, and then the main body of the machine (with the keyboard) was textured. So it was quite an unusual and nice mixture of mostly textured plastic but with smooth outer ends. And the Master continued that exact same approach, with texturing only on its lid between the side-caps. So, the Master continued to look very much like a BBC, but it took some nice design cues from the Electron too. Overall, I thought the Master was a fantastic design: both really robust (and pretty huge) and a great-looking computer. Nice to have a numeric keypad, too. I think it was easily the best of Acorn's 8-bit range.

I agree about the Electron. It's the least powerful Acorn 8-bit (well, excluding the Atom, of course) and I certainly don't need one, but I'd still quite like one nevertheless. It's cute and has a lot of appeal. Moreover, I've never actually used one.

If you haven't seen it, there's a VERY interesting YouTube video about the Electron, interviewing Acorn's Paul Fellows (whose name I've mentioned here before in the context of BBC BASIC – he was at one time Acorn's Head of Languages). It's a very interesting watch, and gives some good information about the background to the Electron, ARM etc.

Please login to see this link.

Quote from Snoopy

Richard Hallas : Thank you very much! And again many thanks for your post with many background information to the topic.

Your posts here in the thread are also significantly "guilty" that I deal more closely with the BBC BASIC of the 8bit generation. As written here before, my first contact with BBC BASIC was an used Acorn Archimedes 3000, which is still here. But I had nothing to do with BBC 8bit computers until recently.

Thank you for the nice feedback! It's nice to know that you've enjoyed what I've had to say, and that you've found it interesting, useful, inspirational or whatever. Indeed, I'm delighted to have enthused you sufficiently to actually buy an Electron!

Quote from Snoopy

I had a lot to do with UK computers (besides the C64) in the 1980s (Sinclair ZX80, ZX81, Spectrum and QL, Please login to see this link. and Please login to see this link.), but never a BBC computer from Acorn.

Wow! That's some great experience with some interesting machines!

I personally owned a ZX81 and a Spectrum (well, both a 48K Spectrum and later a Spectrum 128) in addition to my BBC Model B (later Master 128). And I started out on a borrowed PET 2001 Series, and later had access to a Commodore Plus/4. I loved the Sinclair machines in particular (the Spectrum was fantastic in so many ways) but the best-designed of all those systems was the BBC, despite its relatively limited capabilities in some ways (only 8 colours and far too little memory).

I've still never actually seen a ZX80 in person, and I never used a QL, so I missed out on those early and late Sinclair machines.

As for the Memotech MTX512… oh, I'd have loved one of those! What a great computer it appeared to be: incredibly stylish in its aluminium case, and pretty powerful and interesting – like the BBC Micro, its BASIC had an inbuilt assembler, I believe. It was destined to be a really good, successful machine, but then some huge deal with Russia fell through and bankrupted the company, which was a tragedy. It's probably the most regrettable computer company failure of the 80s. Memotech had a good reputation and – as you probably know – originally made its name as a manufacturer of interesting and good quality peripherals for the Sinclair ZX81. I actually had a Memotech 16K RAM pack for mine.

As for the Elan Enterprise… that too looked as though it was going to be a really interesting machine, but it came out too late and never really took off. I'd have liked one, but I don't think there was really any software for it. It may possibly have been more popular in Europe than it was in the UK; interestingly, I've noticed quite a number of 'new' Enterprises on eBay recently, and they all seem to have European keyboards (AZERTY rather than QWERTY).

Quote from Snoopy

The more astonished I was and am, how good and well thought out these computers were at that time. You can see a coherent concept of hardware and software. Basically the opposite of the approach of Commodore.

Alone before the BBC BASIC 2, I really take off my hat! What here - also "under the surface" - of really good thoughts are in it, all my greatest respect! I prefer to spare myself a comparison with BASIC 2 from the C64.

As a teenager I probably wouldn't have been able to appreciate it that much. Topics like "Who can I trade games with for this?" and similar thoughts had priority. But nowadays, looking back, I can only say "Wow!". Some people at Acorn really put a lot of thought into this!

Yes, I agree: nowadays, having grown up and gained both experience and the benefit of hindsight, it's now much easier to judge these old machines on their merits and appreciate what an amazing job Acorn actually did. Back in the 80s we'd have been much more interested in the games catalogues for the relative machines, and so the Electron would have been dismissed very quickly when compared to both the Spectrum and the Commodore 64 in particular. But now that our perspectives have changed, we can make a better judgement about the machines on their own merits.

I like all the platforms – don't get me wrong, I don't mean to bash anyone here – and they all had their good and bad points. But I really feel that it boils down to this:

• Acorn (notably the BBC Micro): absolutely BY FAR AND AWAY the best company of the lot in terms of the underlying quality of their designs, for both hardware and software. Yes, they made mistakes and had weak areas (as did everyone else!), and the whole Acorn 8-bit range was crippled by having insufficient memory and very outdated-looking graphics capabilities, but the hardware and software were both exceptionally well thought out and forward-thinking. This is easily proven when you consider the very considerable extent to which Acorn's later 32-bit ARM-based machines are very much successors to the 8-bit designs. They're vastly more capable and powerful, but the modular, extensible approach (in both hardware and software), the backwards compatibility, the extension of existing concepts (e.g. the screen mode system) make them very much a development of the family that really started with the BBC. And although Acorn's 32-bit machines never really achieved much success beyond the UK education market, that's not representative of their quality. In reality, if we lived in a fairer world, they should have taken over and become the standard (rather than the PC), because they were just incomparably better than anything else (PC, Mac) for well over a decade.

• Commodore (notably the C64): Commodore was unlike the other companies because it had been around for a long time (the PET was really the first ever 'proper' personal computer to be released) and it had a lot of experience in business and education around the world, not just the home market. So it had lots of people to sell to and experience in doing so, globally. And there was a lot to like about Commodore machines… but also, a lot not to like, unfortunately. The C64 was designed much more as a games machine than most others, with its very advanced sound chip, extensive (if dull) colour palette, sprites etc. and a cartridge slot. It's easy to see why it was popular and long-lived. Yet it had an appalling version of BASIC (sorry, but it's true) that was easily the worst on the market and made it a rotten choice of machine for learning programming. And the stand-out peripherals for being awful were the ones you needed to save and load programs, which is mind-blowing when you think about it. On the one hand, you had no option but to buy Commodore's Datasette and/or 1541 disk drive; unlike the other machines you couldn't use a regular tape recorder or enjoy a choice of affordable third party disk drives (which was particularly true on the BBC). Then, the tape machine was an unbelievably slow 60 baud (is that REALLY true…? I read it recently) – and the 1541 disk drive made continental drift look fast. The 1541 was, I believe, only a 300 baud device. That made it FIVE TIMES SLOWER than the ZX Spectrum's TAPE interface! It's remarkable to me that the Commodore 64 managed to be successful in spite of such awful storage options. And that Commodore didn't do a more competent job with them in the first place.

• Sinclair (notably the Spectrum): Sinclair was the absolute master of compromise. Every possible corner was cut in the quest to produce a computer as cheaply as possible. And yet… and yet… just look at the fantastic final result. The Spectrum was really great. It was indeed cheap, but it wasn't nasty. It may not have been as deeply thought through as Acorn's machines, but it was certainly well conceived. It was well designed and manufactured, it came with an outstandingly good manual that taught you how to program in BASIC (also true of the BBC), and its version of BASIC was also excellent. It was a decently fast machine, especially given that it had no graphics/sound support chips, so the processor had to do everything. Its screen was a genius design that allowed you to use the machine's full resolution and all 16 colours freely at the same time, and yet took less than 7K of RAM out of a total of 42K available. (Compare with the BBC: to get full colour you had to use a 20K low-resolution screen mode on a machine with much less than 32K of available RAM.) The compromise was mixing pixel-level monochrome bitmap graphics with character-level colouring… but it was a GOOD compromise that gave the machine a lot of its individuality, and overall it was more a benefit than a hindrance. Oh, and the Spectrum had the best, most reliable and fastest tape interface of any 8-bit computer: 1500 baud. (Even the BBC only did 1200.) In terms of overall capability, value and performance, I firmly believe the Spectrum was the best 8-bit computer on the market in the UK.

So: Commodore for home users who cared more about games than learning to program. Sinclair for the budget-conscious who wanted a great all-round machine that could tackle anything. And Acorn for the better-off people who wanted the best machine in terms of learning what computers are (or should be) all about, and/or who wanted to do advanced projects that interfaced with other things, including custom hardware and electronics projects. All three platforms were good general computers, of course, but the BBC was certainly the best designed overall. And oddly enough, although the C64 was the best for games on paper, I think it's fair to say that the Spectrum ended up with the best overall games catalogue, both for quantity and quality, in spite of the machine's apparent technical limitations. I do suspect that that has a lot to do with (a) its affordability and (b) its accessibility to amateur programmers, who went on to become really good.

Anyway, the BBC was a bit too expensive for a lot of people to afford (and they tended to get Spectrums instead), whilst the Electron was a bit too little, a bit too late. Nevertheless, the BBC was so widespread in schools in particular that a lot of kids did indeed learn to program very well on it, and in fact many of the software releases that came out for it were written by school children who'd learnt on the machine itself. It was certainly a fantastic machine for learning about computers, not least because, on the one hand, it was so extremely well designed and, on the other hand, there was a vast amount of excellent technical documentation for it.

Quote from Snoopy

The keyboard of the Electron is really good for that time and it even offers 80 characters per line (mode 0). I dreamed of this when working on the Spectrum 48k.

Yes. Again, the Spectrum's screen was a brilliant compromise in lots of ways. Although it does seem on the small side now (32x24 characters, 256x192 pixels), it was a decent size for its day and big enough to be genuinely useful, and bigger than the compromised screens of other machines. The VIC-20 (which was a Spectrum competitor in its early days) had only 22 characters per line, and that really wasn't enough. The BBC Micro and Electron had graphical modes (especially the full 16-colour mode) that only displayed 20 characters per line, which I personally hated… but at least they also had restricted-colour 40-column modes and monochrome 80-column modes. (Plus, on the BBC, the very efficient 1K Teletext mode, which had some aspects in common with the Spectrum's screen.) The original Spectrum offered just the standard screen mode and no other alternatives (though, interestingly, the unsuccessful US Timex Sinclair variants did offer high-res modes as well… and these have survived in some later clones, such as – I think! – the Spectrum Next, which also offers various other new screen options, including much higher resolutions and far more colours, without the character-resolution restriction of old).

So, the Electron certainly had some useful potential for word processing and other serious software, with its 80-column screen modes. Indeed, if you got the Plus 1 expansion, you could get cartridges containing VIEW and ViewSheet, the leading word processor and spreadsheet for the Acorn range. These really were superb for the time, and eventually developed into a combined, integrated program called PipeDream. This was launched on the Cambridge Z88 portable machine – a MOST interesting computer. It was the last machine that Sinclair produced, after he'd sold his name to Amstrad. (Otherwise I suppose it'd have been the Sinclair ZX88.) That was actually a really good machine and quite remarkable in many ways, because it was almost half Sinclair, half Acorn. Although it was Sinclair's product and (like the Spectrum) based on the Z80 processor, it had PipeDream as its integrated software – and PipeDream was the direct successor to View Professional, which was the all-in-one suite that VIEW, ViewSheet and ViewStore (database) etc. had developed into, and which was available on the BBC series. Moreover, after the Z88, PipeDream was launched for the Acorn 32-bit RISC OS machines and became a 'killer app' on that platform for many years. I think a Windows version may also have appeared; I'm not sure as I'm not an MS Windows fan. Anyway, PipeDream first appeared under that name on the Z88, which made the machine of considerable interest to Acorn users. Moreover, the Z88 also came with BBC BASIC built in! So, again, it seemed almost more like an Acorn machine than a Sinclair one.

Quote from Snoopy

So thanks again for your great posts on this. I always enjoy reading them and take a lot from them on the subject. And who knows, maybe it really wasn't the last 8bit BBC acquisition I made. I find this topic exciting and interesting in any case. Many thanks for your great input!

Well, thanks again for your kind words. I'm pleased to have made some kind of positive contribution, if only a minor one! It's a pleasure to reminisce, actually. I know the relevance to Commodore is a bit tenuous at this point, but we're all simply fans of old computers at heart, aren't we?!

Anyway, enjoy your Electron… and if you ever get the chance to acquire a BBC Master, jump at it! If you like the Electron, you'll absolutely love the Master…

I saw this ad from 1982 while reading in old "Acorn User" magazines last night and I just wanted to post it here without further ado.

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Quote from Snoopy

I saw this ad from 1982 while reading in old "Acorn User" magazines last night and I just wanted to post it here without further ado.

Heh! Isn't that how we all work today? I know I do.

That TV in the advert… I'm sure my grandparents had one exactly like it. Good luck reading the BBC's video output from that distance, especially in an 80-column mode!

Quote from Richard Hallas

Good luck reading the BBC's video output from that distance, especially in an 80-column mode!

it’s interesting how perspectives change.

at around the time my school got it’s first BBC micros, I had a VIC-20. I loved it - and much preferred programming it to the BBCs. Perhaps the biggest reason being Commodore had a pretty decent screen editor in BASIC from the outset; the BBC's glass-teletypewriter approach with the 'copy' key just seemed so awful by comparison (at the time, at least)

Only now, after a long career as an IT software bod can I look back and see how well thought out the BBCs MOS, BASIC and sideways ROM ideas were.

it’s fascinating to read the discussions here about BBC BASIC and the MEGA65 — and, indeed, almost all home computer retro. But is the aim to port 6502 BBC BASIC to the MEGA65 or to create a BBC-like BASIC for it? After all, even BBC BASIC from the '80s could be considered creaking with old age by now. I wonder, with a modern eye, what would make a good modern BASIC — while still keeping simplicity and the highly interactive nature of writing BASIC programs.

Quote from tpear

But is the aim to port 6502 BBC BASIC to the MEGA65 or to create a BBC-like BASIC for it?

Originally my intention was to use the existing source codes for the BBC-BASIC IV and to transfer it as 1:1 as possible to the MEGA65. For this I have occupied myself more near with the BBC BASIC, read a lot about it and also led with some "BBC cracks" mails discussions about it. With the C65/MEGA65 I occupy myself already somewhat longer.

Finally it turned out that the hardware of the BBC and the C65 are simply too different, in order to take over the BBC BASIC "identically". The source code of the BBC-BASIC IV for example would have to be adapted and reworked to at least 25% to be executable on the MEGA65 at all. And then you would have "only" a version which could neither recognize nor use the extended memory "banking". Not to mention graphics and sound. This would make little sense and the ratio of effort to benefit would be much too low.

Since some time I follow a different approach and take the existing BBC-BASIC 2 sources and try to "rebuild" the BBC-BASIC for the MEGA65. So it should not be a 1:1 conversion with 100% conformity to "all memory addresses", but a BBC-BASIC for the MEGA65 which should be as compatible as possible to the BBC-BASIC, but should also be able to use some advantages of the MEGA65.

I am here "still at the beginning", program first test attempts and read me still more detailed into the BBC-BASIC ROM, in order to be able to convert as exact a compatibility as possible. What goes and is meaningful take over, but also a few changes "accept". For example, using the full screen editor of the C65 instead of the line based input with COPY key. I see this for example as an advantage, which justifies for me a break to the 100%-BBC-BASIC.

But - as written - there I am still "at the beginning" and it will surely take some time until something can be delivered on this. Family, homeschooling of the children and regular work slow this down unfortunately again and again.

Here a 32bit ARM machine turned into a 80s style Basic Computer.

(480MHz, 800x600 VGA up to 65536 colours, does 260000 lines Basic per second)

Please login to see this link.

(130€ on polish webshop)

Please login to see this link.

And here a more modern Basic Compiler.

Runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS (and Amiga).

Please login to see this link.

(License cost 79€)

By the time I get more and more the idea that this two alternatives make much more sense to people who just want to start again with Basic programming.

And that much cheaper than a Mega65 will ever be.

Also both Bascis are so much more powerful than the Basic V10 for Mega65, faster and almost without limitations compared to all old 8bit Basics.

People who like the limitations of 8 bit machines are what the Mega65 is for.

Or the Spectrum Next or the MiSTer with all the emulated old 8 bit machines.

I like the whole engeniering and the ideas to extend the 8bit CPU that powers the Mega65. The CPU extensions, the memory map and how to use the memory above 64k.

But I think by far the most fun and enjoyment have the developers of the Mega65. A really huge project that impresses very much people, also me.

The BBC Basic is just another fascinating Basic from the 80s.

Not less and not more.

just my point of view.

Quote from igel65

By the time I get more and more the idea that this two alternatives make much more sense to people who just want to start again with Basic programming

I think no one who only wants to start with BASIC again would buy a MEGA65 for that.

There are many good BASICs for modern PCs (e.g. Please login to see this link.) and even some BBC-BASICs for it (e.g. Please login to see this link., a fork of that: Please login to see this link. or Please login to see this link.) all for free. So there is really no need to spent some money only for programming in (BBC) BASIC.

And of course the MEGA65 is only "for fun". No one would use it in an actual productive way. It's a hobby project and will be used for hobby experiences. Everything (and I mean really everthing!) regarding to the MEGA65 was, is and will be only for fun. But at lot of fun!

Quote from tpear

it’s interesting how perspectives change.

at around the time my school got it’s first BBC micros, I had a VIC-20. I loved it - and much preferred programming it to the BBCs. Perhaps the biggest reason being Commodore had a pretty decent screen editor in BASIC from the outset; the BBC's glass-teletypewriter approach with the 'copy' key just seemed so awful by comparison (at the time, at least)

Only now, after a long career as an IT software bod can I look back and see how well thought out the BBCs MOS, BASIC and sideways ROM ideas were.

Yes, the full-screen editor was, I think, the one really big advantage that the Commodore machines had over the competition back then.

As I've probably stated already on this thread, my very first computing experiences were on a Commodore PET 2001 Series, and at this point in my life I'm absolutely certain that it was the full-screen editor that made the computer so fun and exciting to use. I'd never used a computer before, so I'd no idea, even, what they could do, let alone how to make them do anything. Moreover, what little documentation I had initially was all but useless: the manual covered only the most rudimentary basics of BASIC programming, so it was actually really hard to learn anything useful initially. Later I got some magazines and type-in listings etc., but at the very start, all I could really do was to use the full-screen editor to draw pictures on the screen using the PETSCII graphics. And then, by adding a line number and print statement at the start of each line, I could turn the picture into a program to print my picture out again, and save it to tape. This seemed quite magical to me at the time. It seems laughably childish and primitive now, but it was my first introduction to computing.

Had I had access to a different brand of computer as my first introduction, I think it would have gone very differently. I wouldn't have been able to use a full-screen editor and character graphics to draw pictures… but, on the other hand, I'd almost certainly have had a much more useful manual to explain how to use the machine, so perhaps I'd have got off to a better start, learning how to write 'proper' programs. Who knows? Anyway, I happened to really like drawing at the time (I used to spend ages with a notepad and pencil just doodling things at that age), so the PET introduction was actually pretty good for me.

It left me absolutely desperately wanting a VIC-20 as my first computer… though I did realise at the time that its 22-character-wide screen was pretty disappointing compared with the PET, even given that it had nice colours. Not much later, the Commodore 64 was announced, and that had a PET-sized screen with colour, so that became the new object of desire.

Nevertheless, what I actually got as my first computer was a ZX81. And rather than feeling let down by it, I actually loved it. It was actually surprisingly capable in many ways, and very interesting and accessible, and – best of all – it came with a great version of BASIC and a superb manual that really taught you well how to program. So I started out on that and moved up to a Spectrum soon after. The BBC came just a little later. I never did own a Commodore back in the 80s, though I continued to like them.

Anyway, with hindsight, I have slightly mixed feelings about the full-screen editor. In many ways it was great… but it could also lead to a certain amount of confusion, I think, in that it wasn't always necessarily certain where you were, or what would be accepted when you pressed Return, if the screen was full of junk. Not a big problem; just an opportunity for confusion.

I agree that the BBC's line editor, with the Copy key, was a little cumbersome. It worked well enough, but it was a bit of a chore to copy out a lengthy selection.

I actually liked Sinclair's approach, despite some annoying shortcomings. It was easy to use and it made it impossible to enter a line with a syntax error in it, instead beeping, showing you where the error was and forcing you to fix it before the line was accepted. Later, the Spectrum 128 got a full-screen editor that retained that interactive syntax-checking idea, and that too worked pretty well. It wasn't any good for drawing pictures like on the PET(!), but as a programming editor it was pretty slick.