X-Nico

6 unusual facts about BBC Micro


Beeb

The BBC Micro home computer from 1982, built for the BBC by Acorn Computers Ltd

Caret notation

Acorn operating systems for the Atom, BBC Micro, Archimedes and later RISC OS machines use the vertical bar character | in place of the caret.

George Auckland

During his time as a BBC executive he worked on some of the key educational landmarks in British interactive media including the BBC Micro computer and the BBC Networking Club.

John Coll

He later wrote the BBC Microcomputer User Guide which was supplied by Acorn Computers with the BBC Micro and appeared regularly on the television programmes Making the Most of the Micro and Micro Live which featured the computer.

Roland MC-4 Microcomposer

After writing the tracks for the album, they were programmed into a BBC Micro computer, running a UMI sequencing program, to get the arrangements right.

Single-board computer

SBCs also figured heavily in the early history of home computers, for example in the Acorn Electron and the BBC Micro.


Adventure International

The games were written using an in-house adventure creator with text compression and a sophisticated command interpreter running on a BBC Micro and a graphics tool running on an Apricot F1.

Chuck Peddle

The most famous member of the 650x series was the 6502, developed in 1976, which was priced at 15 percent of the cost of an Intel 8080, and was subsequently used in many commercial products, including the Apple II, Commodore VIC-20, Nintendo Entertainment System, Atari 8-bit computers, Oric computers and BBC Micro from Acorn Computers.

Elite: Dangerous

Elite 4 was to be the third sequel to 1984's Elite, a game that David Braben and his former associate, Ian Bell, wrote for the BBC Micro computer, and ported to most other platforms of the day.

Firetrack

Firetrack is a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up computer game programmed by Nick "Orlando" Pelling and released for the BBC Micro and Commodore 64 platforms in 1987 by Electric Dreams Software. It was also ported to the Acorn Electron by Superior Software in 1989 as part of the Play It Again Sam 7 compilation.

Frak!

Frak! is a 1980s computer game originally programmed by Orlando (aka Nick Pelling) for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron and published by his own 'Aardvark' software label in 1984.

Graham Gooch's Test Cricket

Graham Gooch's Test Cricket is a 1985 cricket game released for the Acorn Electron, BBC Micro, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum by Audiogenic.

Loopz

Audiogenic also published versions of the original game for the Acorn Electron, BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, and IBM PC in 1990 and 1991.

Making the Most of the Micro

John Coll was the main technical 'bod' (he had also written the User Guide for the BBC Micro along with other manuals) and Ian Trackman also featured - he wrote most of the software that was used for demonstrating certain features of the microcomputer, not only for this series but also The Computer Programme and Computers in Control.

Nintendo S-SMP

The Sony SPC 700 is the S-SMP's integrated 8-bit CPU core manufactured by Sony with an instruction set similar to that of the MOS Technology 6502 (as used in the Commodore 64 and Vic 20, Apple II, BBC Micro and the original NES).

Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less

A text adventure game adaption based on the book was developed and published by Domark, and released in 1987 for the Amstrad CPC, Atari XL, BBC Micro, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum computers.

ST Robotics

The arms were programmed in the programming language BASIC and would run on any of the popular makes of computers of the time such as Apple (Apple II series), Acorn Electron, Atari, BBC Micro or the Commodore Pet.

Superman: The Game

This included all of the previous versions as well as new conversions for the Commodore 16/Plus/4, BBC Micro and Acorn Electron.

Torch Triple X

Both VMEbus and a BBC Micro-compatible "1MHz bus" expansion buses were provided, as was a SCSI host adapter, and an optional Ethernet interface.


see also

Econet

Hermann Hauser and Chris Curry agreed to allow the BBC Micro to be offered with Econet fitted, as they had done with the Disc Filing System.

Firetrack

On the BBC Micro version, it automatically detects sideways RAM expansion if present, which allows more detailed graphics on the levels, without any changes to the underlying gameplay.