Apologies to my non UK viewers. This monitor may not be specifically *seared* into your brains (although Cub monitors did make it to various countries). But I hope you enjoy the story, nevertheless. If I can obtain an Apple II and a Sanyo monitor in the future, then maybe I can address the balance for those across the Atlantic.
Indeed, my side of the Atlantic had Apple ][ computers in most schools in the 1980s. I started out on the ][+ (in glorious 6 colors!) and shortly afterward would encounter the ][e often in green screen.
Can't help you with an Apple II or a Sanyo, but I do live in Norwich and have an old BBC Master Compact and monitor in storage if you want it for any content. Haven't tried powering it up in 20+ years mind.
I'm in the US and have never used a BBC micro, but I still watched the entire video and learned something new. In our school district we had the old Tandy machines.
damn, you... you nailed it... though we had a POWER!.. pc... in the library... could play organ trail 3, had encarta... FVMS!, so... so many dead animals... I KILLED THEM ALL, and then died of cholera... before I could check out the next disk to continue.
My primary school’s solitary BBC Micro was shared with other schools. It used to come to live at our school for a term before being taken away for the rest of the year.
It sort of saddens me that I grew up in a kind dark age when it comes to coding. The 70s and 80s had microcomputers in just about every school which, due to their limited processing power and storage, necessitated interaction via command line alone, and required kids to learn how to code in order to use them. In the 90s and early 2000s (when I grew up), computers had GUIs, and almost all of our school instruction involved using that to do what we wanted. I really tried to get into coding. I joined the coding club at school, but it was mostly aimed at the older students, so I didn't understand what was going on. I also tried to learn coding myself, but it's hard to do something self-motivated like that when you're an adult, let alone just a child. I remember my IT teacher beaming with delight when he discovered that I had used a simple set of If statements in an Excel based form that was tasked with, because doing any actual "programming" was well above the requirements - _of my GCSE ICT course!_ In the late 2000s, I remember hearing on the news that they were going to reintroduce coding into the national curriculum - after I left school. "Good for them!" I thought, but felt jealous and even a little bitter that I also couldn't have that experience for myself. If coding is the new literacy, then I'm a 17th century peasant. 😥
I also grew up in the GUI era of the 90s and 00s, and programming wasn't a thing for us, either. In fact, I grew up hating programming, having fancied myself a "hardware" person. I knew basic DOS commands and how to edit startup files, but making programs was alien to me. Then much, much later, I entered grad school, and my program required that we learn SAS, a little SQL, some SPSS, and a miniscule amount of R. I thought I'd hate it, but, alas, I actually enjoyed it and became a data analyst intern for the local school district. I still don't know BASIC or any of the explicit programming languages. Not like the kids back then, who had to write their own programs. I just know some data science and statistics stuff. But it's cool to see where things have originated.
Superb! Back in the day I always assumed those Cub monitors simply came as standard with a Beeb, don't think I ever saw a Beeb connected to any other display in my school! Great to hear the story behind them, thanks for making this 😀
Aaah the memories of playing "Frogger" on a BBC micro then after school heading down to the video Club to rent "Cannibal Holocaust" or any other "video nasties" best days of my life.
I remember spending alot of time playing text adventures at breaktime and dinner time at school, we were on the bread line, and couldn't afford a computer at home, but I spent my childhood roaming the streets, finding old TV's and electronics in skips, to learn and teach myself how they worked, one day I was given a zx spectrum 48k that was not working and managed to fix it, and opened up my world the Beebs were basically challenger 2 tanks with a keyboard 😂, I used to watch them being tested as a kid as Vickers defence system was hakp a mile from my house and so was the testing ground, man the stuff we used to do as kids, none of this wrapping you in cotton wool or protecting you from bad words,😂😂
We never had that, though we did have a strange cp/m clone or something named Tiki data (after kontiki), Any norwegian kid about the same age will probably recognize it how british kids recognize this
I worked in a Acorn dealer and repaired BBC micros every working day, in those days all repairs except psu were component level repairs, the BBC B was very easy to work on especially thanks to the amazing service manual.. it was incredibly rare that those Microvitec monitors needed repair. The Computer and the Cumana Disc Drives were far more likely to need repair. The Acorn was certainly the best choice for the BBC educational program, it was far better than anything in its class, not without its faults, but overall very very good.
In 1982 (I was in grade 6) we got a few BBC Micros at our primary school. I'm in Tasmania. The Beeb definitely made its way to Australia (plus Wombles, Jullian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy the dog, and The Goodies). We also got LOGO and the Turtle plotter robot thingy. Impressive for a small island on the other side of the planet. Thanks Poms. $0.02
Can you recall, were you encouraged to learn how to program on the Beebs at all (not just LOGO I mean), or was it more making use of existing programs?
@@mapesdhs597 I don't think my teacher knew what to do, but by then my mates and I were typing in games and saving them to cassettes anyway. This was an era where computer magazine centrefolds were full of fine printed listings of homebrew games.
Each class at my primary school had one Acorn BBC micro and dot matrix printer when I was there about 1995. I remember how exciting it was when it came my turn to use it, either to play Granny's Garden or we had to write a short story about our weekend and then print it off (which took forever!)
I've just been in a Nostalgia Nerd video, well I can tick that off my bucket list. Also best possible topic it is the iconic CRT for the BBC B. I have one that needs servicing that I must get round to at some point.
Those monitors were tough alright. I remember one falling from the top of a trolley and landing face first on the floor, and it still worked afterwards.
It's amazing how forward thinking Britian was in jumping so fast to the pc era in the 1980s yet this didn't change anything in their future. It's not like the UK is the center of innovation now or even in the last thirty years after this huge effort. So I don't think the public interacting with interfaces to control microprocessors helped in innovation at all. Maybe in another timeline where the Cold War continued this huge British effort in spreading computers between the public might have worked. Maybe in this timeline the UK is the center of innovation. Or maybe this world is simply analog and learning how to code is as useless to nature as learning human made legal laws which nature doesn't even recognize. So my guess is that the more abstract the science is the more innovation it might produce. I'd say mathematics is more important than coding. I might even say that 1950s and 1960s analog computers and their straight forward way of modeling differential equations and dynamic systems helped more than coding and numerical analysis. In the end computers don't produce thrust nor can exploit nature without an analog interface. I'd say teaching coding to everyone won't produce innovation anymore more than what you expect teaching legal laws can. I'd say the best innovation will come from public direct interaction with quantum events, chemical phenomenas, electromagnetic phenomenas etc
1:10 I had a to check - Sophie Wilson CBE is an amazing computer scientist who transitioned in 1994. She cameoed in the BBC's docudrama Micro Men as a pub landlady!
Microvitec Cub monitors always used to give me electric shocks. Especially on the exposed metal bits. I was the "prefect" in charge of my high school computer lab and dreaded having to lean back to flick the power switch, as I would always get a jolt ! Perhaps there was some static electricity build up ? But I do remember the superb resolution and colour from them, especially as all us kids had our home computers hooked up to B&W televisions or the like....
I had a Taxan Kaga Vision-III on my BBC, liked it way more than the cub. Had a great picture and was pleasingly compact compared to the boxy and much less svelte Microvitec.
I must have repaired hundreds of these and their related MicroColour terminals in the 90's, the Cubs were used in the London Stock Exchange if I remember correctly. The video boards seemed to have been spec'd with under rated components, which led to them being very unreliable. Hey ho, they kept me employed for many years :-)
If only Acorn had used the TMS99105A would have allowed Acorn to produce a 16bit personal computer with native floating point execution and no emulator required.
I remember getting suspended for a week in primary school for touching the screen of the cub monitor with one hand and touching the teachers arm with my other hand as it was switched off, cos it electrocuted people as it switched off!
Omg! Why you hid brand name of that TV at 6:16 ? It's like only brand my country ever had.... Also screens made at that company were used in Soviet space mission control room. Šilelis was the name for those who wonder
I worked at Microvitec 1994-97 - great times before being made redundant due to LCD screens becoming the rage and unfortunately they never kept up with the changing times.
It is always going to be a problem running ones existing technology and investing in new lines on a change in that technology - especially as components etc get smaller or integrated and labour costs become more expensive, The west seems to do the heavy lifting of design, while contracting out to other far east etc companies - whom then take the technology and re-badge it. Not helped that investment banks dont always fund sufficiently, or want too much of a take for the risk. But the dedicated and capable staff here show it can be done , in its niche now, to the present day
Wonderful! I was taking a GNVQ at Dixons City Technology College in Bradford and went into the offices for a visit back in 1995 ish. :-). Worked on their 'Creator' software package to demo it too as part of the coursework. LOL. Interesting times!
The CUB monitors were and are excellent monitors. They sometimes get used by arcade cab owners to decase and use them in, as they do really have fantastic image quality (you have to mod a couple of bits on the chassis to change it from TTL to analogue RGB). I picked up a cocktail cab a few years ago which has one in. Also had an upright midi cab which had one in, the chassis had something faulty on it (badly sparking driver transformer if I remember correctly) and I didn't have a spare part at the time so I just replaced it with a compatible 15khz arcade chassis, produced a brilliant picture. I have a 14" CUB in storage, but I also have a 20" CUB as well which is nice, didn't see many of those back in the day, and I haven't seen another one for years. I also have a multisync Acorn AKF monitor for testing 15khz, 24khz and 31khz arcade pcbs on, which I believe is built by Microvitec. I'm glad to own them!
In 1982 , when i was 12 we only had a ZX81 with the 16k pack and a Vic 20 with the 3k Superexpander in school. When my school upgraded to the C64 and Speccy 48k , the Vic was offered at a very small price (50 quid i believe) to any parents whose children were at my school. My dear old dad bought it for me and now i have it in a display cabinet here in the lounge. Thanks for this video , loved it 👍
I just brought two of these babies back to life on my channel. They are very easy to work on and built so well. The other point to mention is that there are many British components internally which seems odd now. They are too important to lose. I love its lack of subtlety. It's literally a cube, its handy for putting things on top. I love it and it'll be burned on my memory forever.
I had my own Beeb B in the early 80s, as well as our school having 1 or 2, my Dad was a teacher so he brought home the cub monitor and 5" disc drives/ games at the weekends, That monitor used to give a right powerful static shock and weighed an absoulute ton!
We never had BBC Micro's at high school. Only at primary school. At high school we had Research Machines LINK 480Z and they were still using them when I got my Amiga 500 in 1987. I'm sure they used the Cub monitor though. A year or so later we had the RM Nimbus which used a 186, meaning it had compatibility issues.
My primary had a 480Z too and a 186 nimbus. 480Z, of course, was pared with a CUB. Sadly, never used a BBC - used to try and program the 480Z but none of my teachers knew how and the library books I now realise were for different BASICs so never worked. Oh well :)
We had RML machines at school, but I think even those had CUBs on them. I remember regularly getting a static shock off the screen and case when they were switched off.
I still use one fairly regularly. I used to enjoy all the tiny static shocks off the screen, like you could trace an invisible line that crackled under your fingertips
I don't think Apple II was ubiquitous at schools anywhere except for US, Canada, maybe some other countries in Americas. USSR had Apple II clone Agat among other more popular options (Yamaha MSX, BK-0010). West Germany i don't think had a single most prominent platform, but some schools i think had Apple II "Europlus".
At the end of the 70s US computers like the Apple ][, TRS-80 etc were expensive compared to their UK competition. I think this might have been due to exchange rates etc. It took a while for the Commodore PET to get traction, mostly because they already had a presence in Europe due to their calculator business, but they got into schools (the school I was at had a RML 380Z and several PETs by the time I left).
BBC micro was also extremely common in Australian schools at that time though not with this monitor. The availability of education-focused software from the UK would have helped the decision. Plus realistically the name probably did count for something given that Australians are well aware of the existence of the BBC as a broadcaster, so anything they'd put their name on would've been perceived as credible despite not being the actual manufacturer.
Hi there, I worked for another monitor manufacturer in the UK which was formed in 1976, we did do a cub equivalent but was more expensive so did not sell that many. The company was called "Digivision" and was based in Leicester were were more an industrial supply company which supplied monitors to British rail, London Underground the national coal board and British Steel, we also supplied lots of mutlisync monitors (Yes we were early in doing multi standard monitors) for the yuppies in dealer desks in London this was really the cause of the company failure during the 1986 financial crash. Most of our orders disappeared over night the company was bought out in 1990 and the name was no more.
This is so interesting because I grew up with Commodore, the Apple IIe and the IBM 8086/8088, and have never seen the BBC micro before. I had no idea it existed. Very cool
I love the way you in detail explain the history of these, fascinating background and amazing quality for its time. However - it's very much an UK phenomena (sans the arcade machines) since the BBC micro was mostly popular in UK, the rest of the world - not so much.
Acorn and the BBC Micro did see usage in other Commonwealth countries. But as a whole you are correct to say it was very much a UK phenomenon. Also what was not mentioned that while they dominated the schools market. They struggled to get a foothold in the home market which in the 80’s was mainly dominated by Commodore, Sinclair and Amstrad. Acorn went on to create the ARM processor which they first used in their Archemeaies range of desktop computer and successor to the Micro. But they stopped making computers by the late 90’s due to dominance of Windows
I so need one of these monitors. It will complete my setup with my twin Cumana disk drives! Hey, can't have everything at once! Great follow up video, mate :)
Great video, brings back a lot of happy memories (remarkable considering I hated school). In our primary school we had 3 or 4 Beebs with these monitors as well as two Acorn A3000s, the latter were popular thanks to the game "The Crystal Rainforest". I think we also had an Archimedes but my memory is fuzzy now. When we went up to secondary school we had 2 beebs left with the computer of choice being the Acorn Risk PC 600, though the IT head had a Risk 700 and some RISC handheld device which he infamously crushed one day after leaving it in his back pocket and sitting down on a desk. They also had 4 IBM PCs and an old Amstrad, the PCs were networked and had Doom 2 installed, ah happy days ;)
Thorn EMI merged with the Swedish Telecommunications giant Ericsson (in the U.K.) I believe to become Thorn Ericsson although the merger didn’t last long and they ended up renaming to just Ericsson Ltd in the U.K.
I remember these with much fondness, as I used them at school in Computer Studies O'Level classes on the BBC Micro. What stood out to me was how sharp they were and how bright the colours were compared to the blurry black and white image of my ZX81, or the dot-crawling, blurry colour TV picture of my friend's issue 1 ZX Spectrums. Of course the most use I got out of them was playing the Acorn arcade rip-offs Planetoid, Snapper, and Rocket Raid at lunchtime in the School computer room, and these games truly looked arcade quality on them. Fun times!
@@fightswithstairs6292 My first computer program was written in 1977 on optical cards in maths class. You had to write out your BASIC program on paper, manually translate the ASCII codes to binary, then use a soft pencil to colour in the 'holes' that represented the binary code. The cards would be sent off to a university to run on their mainframe, and two weeks later you'd get a printout back with 'syntax error at line 30' printed on it.
My school had a philips and a cassette drive, I tried computer club once, decided that it was too much aggro for the results back out in the time availible, but went to work with computers after college - inc IBM, DEC, Thorn EMI Fujitsu and others , from hard disk packs to many other loading and software. Cannot say I coveted a BBC - got a cheap 8088 IBM colour PC and used that at home and sold it for what I paid for it
all we had in school in the 80s were apple 2's and maybe 1 or 2 macs in the whole school.. us public schools didnt teach us anything about them though... they just gave us disks of Oregon Trail and Odell Lake and said play games..
My computer school teacher must have broken at least 6 of these monitors because when the vertical hold went rather than trying to fix it his quick way was to just slap them hard on each side For my computer studies project I programmed it to make a simple “windows Explorer” file menu programme for the BBC The ones we had at school all had disc drives not cassette tapes
Just bought my second working Cub monitor. (BTW You forgot to mention that the Cumana floppy drive was synonymous with the trifecta - so I had to get one ! Got Sentinel, Thrust and Elite too) I have 2 x Amstrad (colour) CTM644s, 1x CBM 1085-D2, 1x CBM 1084S-D1, 1x CBM 1701 (the brown one), 1 x Philips CM8833 Mk II, and the 2 Microvitec Cub 1431S4Cs (and 7 CRT TVs for my light gun and other games). No other display can take me back to 1985/86 (my Computer Science class) just by showing the micro's boot screen. Going to try and re-cap them all to preserve them till my last days. I had to buy a second Cub as I would have been heartbroken if I had lost my only one.
3:22 - it's interesting to note that The Computer Programme's first broadcast run was mid-afternoon, 3.05pm. It was repeated on Sunday mornings, and it wasn't until its third outing that it was finally shown in the evenings, but it was one of the last programmes of the day, typically between 11pm and midnight.
I was in Primary school from 1980 to 1986 (where I passed my 11+ and went to Grammar). I remember the BBC Micro, the CUB monitor and the disc drives with a Vivid fondness . VERY vivid memories as these were my first intro to computing and computers. 1984 I seem to remember. x. Another excellent video. Thanks. :)
Ah, the Microvitec CUB. :-D 'My' first proper computer was a BBC B with twin 40/80 track FDD's and one of these monitors on loan from my dad's work... (Easily the best computer set up I have ever had the pleasure of using when compared to anything else available at the time) ...oh, how I came down with a bump when his work wanted it back and my parents could only afford a ZX81.
I have three of those CUB monitors, love them to bits. :D Fascinating tale, I didn't know anything of the monitor side of the Beeb history. Mindblown btw you have a CUB with its original box, and in such good condition too, awesome! I have various other models of monitor aswell, but the CUB reigns supreme.
Aaahh yes.. The many hours I spent playing Fat Man Sam on the BBC Micro. I also learned how to upgrade the BBC Micro to have the ability to use a mouse and to talk with a speech synthesizer, though the speech did sound very mechanical and robot like, it worked and was easy to understand. I was always the "go to person" by school staff if they had problems with their computers, was a great skive having teachers/staff "borrow" me from classes. At the age of 15 (1990) I even trained the staff how to use Windows 3.0 when IBM PC's started making their way into schools. Me teaching the teachers was a weird sort of ego boost, lol. There was a TV modulator you could get for those CUB monitors to allow you to watch TV on the monitor, was quite cool.
I'm 37 and never saw a BBC micro, my elementary school had a computer lab with Apple computers in them and we played Oregon Trail... Or just Buffalo hunting for some of the kids
My first introduction to the BBC Micro was watching a Let's Play of _L - A Mathemagical Adventure_ by *ahope1* (aka Ant). Love British humour. I enjoyed this video of a BBC Micro peripheral.
in Denmark we had RC Piccoline forced upon schools (and they came with RC monochrome monitors) - RC is an akronym for "Regnecentralen", the state department probably best known for creating DASK. Not entirely sure what the hardware was in the Piccoline, but almost every Danish kid who went to public school in the 80s was exposed to them, and to us they're possibly just as iconic as your BBC Micro
I’m a 48 year old Canadian. No idea about this monitor but great video anyway. It was all Commodore Pet for me. Also remember the Icon computer with built in trackball in high school.
School and computers... at least not in the 80s here in Germany in primary schools. When i came to what you might call middle school, here in Germany it branches of into Hauptschule, Realschule, Gesamtschule and Gymnasium, we had 386es with some no-name B&W screens.
Yup, I grew up at a school with a lab full of Masters and these monitors. Lovely things. I've always liked the subtle industrial design to them, with the non-nonsense practical cube and the contrasting dark brown plastic trim at the front with the symmetrical CUB logo and power light adding two spots of colour. Simple but surprisingly subtle. I've always wondered how stackable they were, and whether it'd be possible to make a video wall from them.
Had one of those monitors with a BBC Micro. Remember later trying it out with Castle of Illusion on the Mega Drive via RGB and it looked absolutely beautiful…
This monitor is seared into my brain because I accidentally smashed one when I was nine. The teacher asked me to push the computer trolley down the corridor from the classroom to the store room at the end of the day. In the rush to complete the task quickly so I could go home, I forgot about the small step at the store room doorway. The wheels smacked into it, the trolley tipped over, and the monitor flew off and hit the concrete with an almighty crash. Surprisingly I didn’t get into any trouble!
These last two vids bring back some memories! Please can you do a follow-up on the Archimedes (and Virus, Interdictor and all the other games that we played in the computer lab in the late 80s!)
You could give yourself or a fellow classmate a nasty static shock upon switching on the monitor. Just wipe off screen static and touch the metal outer rim of the screen (probably happened by accident for most) or swipe and touch a friends skin for some laughs . Chucky egg, manic mole and frenzy were a favourite at my school in the late 80s early 90s on the BBC
Interestingly, one of the most expensive parts of the BBC was for the 80 column display as required by the BBC, which these monitors could not use. Hmmm
Great video and remember them so well. All the ones in my school had a great picture, some even had attachments like a touch screen to go along with the other crazy peripherals such as the concept keyboard!
Cool little background story! Frankly as a cross canal dweller, I’d never thought about this. The BBC was even rarer here than the already rare Speccy. But now that you mentioned it, it’s always the same monitor and I had quietly assumed that these were bundled deals from the BBC. Everyday you learn something new :)
@@GeoNeilUK here in NL it was mainly C64. And the odd MSX on schools (obviously since Philips made MSXs). I only ever seen one Schneider CPC at a friend’s house. I guess here in NL we were pretty much standardized on the C64 - even the Amiga didn’t really become as big as it was in Germany and the UK. Germany had more Schneiders for sure but also a massive C64 community. Speccies and BBC’s were and are about as rare as unicorns 😜
@@CallousCoder Yeah, I heard the CPCs and maybe Orics were big in France (though I'm guessing their schools were full of Thomsons) and behind the Iron Curtain it was all Speccy clones. And up in Scandinavia it was all about Nintendo!
@@GeoNeilUK I think you could be right. The DDR had the u880 (which I recently discovered when fixing an East German chess computers in my channel). So apparently they had a lot of Speccy clones I think. France was Amstrad domain for sure. Spain too, also a lot of MSX in Spain.
High schools in New Zealand were still using the BBC Micros with this monitor running off a giant hard drive (11 inch ?) in 1993. Still remember programming Axel F. Those were the days.
Wow brought back some great memories we had one at home due to some slightly dodgy family friends so by the time I my brother's and I went to primary school we were showing the teachers how to use the system they wer gobsmacked started a life long passion that not so little BBC micro and cub partnership great memories thanks for bringing back some beautiful life long memories
Apologies to my non UK viewers. This monitor may not be specifically *seared* into your brains (although Cub monitors did make it to various countries). But I hope you enjoy the story, nevertheless.
If I can obtain an Apple II and a Sanyo monitor in the future, then maybe I can address the balance for those across the Atlantic.
ya. never heard of it. north america used american computers. apple ][e and commodore.
Indeed, my side of the Atlantic had Apple ][ computers in most schools in the 1980s. I started out on the ][+ (in glorious 6 colors!) and shortly afterward would encounter the ][e often in green screen.
Can't help you with an Apple II or a Sanyo, but I do live in Norwich and have an old BBC Master Compact and monitor in storage if you want it for any content. Haven't tried powering it up in 20+ years mind.
I'm in the US and have never used a BBC micro, but I still watched the entire video and learned something new. In our school district we had the old Tandy machines.
damn, you... you nailed it... though we had a POWER!.. pc... in the library... could play organ trail 3, had encarta... FVMS!, so... so many dead animals... I KILLED THEM ALL, and then died of cholera... before I could check out the next disk to continue.
These tech history docs are gold!
Getting computers into schools was one of the most forward looking things the UK government ever did.
In 1989, we had one in a school of 1000 pupils. They properly hosed it. The kids in that clip did not go to my school.
My primary school’s solitary BBC Micro was shared with other schools. It used to come to live at our school for a term before being taken away for the rest of the year.
And then it was all backwards regressive nonsense from there
It sort of saddens me that I grew up in a kind dark age when it comes to coding. The 70s and 80s had microcomputers in just about every school which, due to their limited processing power and storage, necessitated interaction via command line alone, and required kids to learn how to code in order to use them.
In the 90s and early 2000s (when I grew up), computers had GUIs, and almost all of our school instruction involved using that to do what we wanted. I really tried to get into coding. I joined the coding club at school, but it was mostly aimed at the older students, so I didn't understand what was going on. I also tried to learn coding myself, but it's hard to do something self-motivated like that when you're an adult, let alone just a child. I remember my IT teacher beaming with delight when he discovered that I had used a simple set of If statements in an Excel based form that was tasked with, because doing any actual "programming" was well above the requirements - _of my GCSE ICT course!_
In the late 2000s, I remember hearing on the news that they were going to reintroduce coding into the national curriculum - after I left school. "Good for them!" I thought, but felt jealous and even a little bitter that I also couldn't have that experience for myself. If coding is the new literacy, then I'm a 17th century peasant. 😥
You should be happy.😔😟 If you would have made something mildly successful 💰💰💰 you might have end up on Bill Gates his hitmen list.🥺🥺🥺😯
it’s never too late to start!
@@mrkitty777 what.
I also grew up in the GUI era of the 90s and 00s, and programming wasn't a thing for us, either. In fact, I grew up hating programming, having fancied myself a "hardware" person. I knew basic DOS commands and how to edit startup files, but making programs was alien to me.
Then much, much later, I entered grad school, and my program required that we learn SAS, a little SQL, some SPSS, and a miniscule amount of R. I thought I'd hate it, but, alas, I actually enjoyed it and became a data analyst intern for the local school district.
I still don't know BASIC or any of the explicit programming languages. Not like the kids back then, who had to write their own programs. I just know some data science and statistics stuff. But it's cool to see where things have originated.
ohhh no it is not
…yet?
Superb! Back in the day I always assumed those Cub monitors simply came as standard with a Beeb, don't think I ever saw a Beeb connected to any other display in my school! Great to hear the story behind them, thanks for making this 😀
Aaah the memories of playing "Frogger" on a BBC micro then after school heading down to the video Club to rent "Cannibal Holocaust" or any other "video nasties" best days of my life.
I remember the massive static shock I would get leaning over the monitor to reach the power switch on the back. Happy primary school memories :)
Me too. You could hear the static crackling when you turned the screen off also.
Yes!
Getting suckered into being zapped was kind of a rite of passage for many schoolkids.
I was just going to mention this.
When you turned them off, you could put your hand on the screen and zap your class mates my touching them.
I remember spending alot of time playing text adventures at breaktime and dinner time at school, we were on the bread line, and couldn't afford a computer at home, but I spent my childhood roaming the streets, finding old TV's and electronics in skips, to learn and teach myself how they worked, one day I was given a zx spectrum 48k that was not working and managed to fix it, and opened up my world the Beebs were basically challenger 2 tanks with a keyboard 😂, I used to watch them being tested as a kid as Vickers defence system was hakp a mile from my house and so was the testing ground, man the stuff we used to do as kids, none of this wrapping you in cotton wool or protecting you from bad words,😂😂
Never had any BBC Micros - we have 4 ZX-81, an Apple IIe and an ITT 2020 that I passed my Computer Studies O-Level on.
We never had that, though we did have a strange cp/m clone or something named Tiki data (after kontiki),
Any norwegian kid about the same age will probably recognize it how british kids recognize this
I worked in a Acorn dealer and repaired BBC micros every working day, in those days all repairs except psu were component level repairs, the BBC B was very easy to work on especially thanks to the amazing service manual.. it was incredibly rare that those Microvitec monitors needed repair. The Computer and the Cumana Disc Drives were far more likely to need repair. The Acorn was certainly the best choice for the BBC educational program, it was far better than anything in its class, not without its faults, but overall very very good.
In 1982 (I was in grade 6) we got a few BBC Micros at our primary school. I'm in Tasmania. The Beeb definitely made its way to Australia (plus Wombles, Jullian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy the dog, and The Goodies). We also got LOGO and the Turtle plotter robot thingy. Impressive for a small island on the other side of the planet. Thanks Poms. $0.02
Can you recall, were you encouraged to learn how to program on the Beebs at all (not just LOGO I mean), or was it more making use of existing programs?
@@mapesdhs597 I don't think my teacher knew what to do, but by then my mates and I were typing in games and saving them to cassettes anyway. This was an era where computer magazine centrefolds were full of fine printed listings of homebrew games.
Each class at my primary school had one Acorn BBC micro and dot matrix printer when I was there about 1995. I remember how exciting it was when it came my turn to use it, either to play Granny's Garden or we had to write a short story about our weekend and then print it off (which took forever!)
Grannys garden! Loved playing that in primary school!
I've just been in a Nostalgia Nerd video, well I can tick that off my bucket list. Also best possible topic it is the iconic CRT for the BBC B. I have one that needs servicing that I must get round to at some point.
You’re a Cub monitor?
@@SproutyPottedPlant 🤣
Early to the party. Loved the BBC. Loved my Acorn Electron at home too.
Those monitors were tough alright. I remember one falling from the top of a trolley and landing face first on the floor, and it still worked afterwards.
It's amazing how forward thinking Britian was in jumping so fast to the pc era in the 1980s yet this didn't change anything in their future. It's not like the UK is the center of innovation now or even in the last thirty years after this huge effort. So I don't think the public interacting with interfaces to control microprocessors helped in innovation at all.
Maybe in another timeline where the Cold War continued this huge British effort in spreading computers between the public might have worked. Maybe in this timeline the UK is the center of innovation.
Or maybe this world is simply analog and learning how to code is as useless to nature as learning human made legal laws which nature doesn't even recognize. So my guess is that the more abstract the science is the more innovation it might produce. I'd say mathematics is more important than coding. I might even say that 1950s and 1960s analog computers and their straight forward way of modeling differential equations and dynamic systems helped more than coding and numerical analysis. In the end computers don't produce thrust nor can exploit nature without an analog interface. I'd say teaching coding to everyone won't produce innovation anymore more than what you expect teaching legal laws can.
I'd say the best innovation will come from public direct interaction with quantum events, chemical phenomenas, electromagnetic phenomenas etc
I still have my Beeb and the Cub monitor and both work perfectly.
1:10 I had a to check - Sophie Wilson CBE is an amazing computer scientist who transitioned in 1994. She cameoed in the BBC's docudrama Micro Men as a pub landlady!
Microvitec Cub monitors always used to give me electric shocks. Especially on the exposed metal bits. I was the "prefect" in charge of my high school computer lab and dreaded having to lean back to flick the power switch, as I would always get a jolt ! Perhaps there was some static electricity build up ? But I do remember the superb resolution and colour from them, especially as all us kids had our home computers hooked up to B&W televisions or the like....
i have never seen one of these monitors or a bbc micro in my life we had commodore 64 and apple 2 and other stuff.
Ooh Sinclair QL bottom left. I used to have one of them as well.
I wouldn't be shocked if my local school still has theirs with a BBC Micro hooked up.
I had a Taxan Kaga Vision-III on my BBC, liked it way more than the cub. Had a great picture and was pleasingly compact compared to the boxy and much less svelte Microvitec.
Just got a pair of these,am glad I wouldn’t have bought either without the other..
The BBC Microcomputer and the Microvitec Cub 452 are like strawberries and cream, cheese and biscuits or fish and chips as they work so well together.
I must have repaired hundreds of these and their related MicroColour terminals in the 90's, the Cubs were used in the London Stock Exchange if I remember correctly. The video boards seemed to have been spec'd with under rated components, which led to them being very unreliable. Hey ho, they kept me employed for many years :-)
Found a BBC model b in the greenhouse still works
Aged 32 now and I can confirm was still in the classroom when I was 7 !
Nostalgia Nerd has pretty modeling hands.
Old skool, literally 😊❤️
If only Acorn had used the TMS99105A would have allowed Acorn to produce a 16bit personal computer with native floating point execution and no emulator required.
also used in a lot of 1980 video game consols
I remember getting suspended for a week in primary school for touching the screen of the cub monitor with one hand and touching the teachers arm with my other hand as it was switched off, cos it electrocuted people as it switched off!
Did you ever see the Cub modification that switched it to RGB and allowed it to be used with an Amiga??
We had a room dedicated to it being full of BBC micros at school.
Omg! Why you hid brand name of that TV at 6:16 ? It's like only brand my country ever had.... Also screens made at that company were used in Soviet space mission control room. Šilelis was the name for those who wonder
Oh and btw this exact model of TV had a "remote control" in form of a button on a wire that could scroll channels forwars only :)))
Well said.
Nothing better than playing bootleg time pilot when the teachers weren’t looking 😉
Why did you show a photo of Roger Wilson when you said Sophie Wilson?
Dunno... this all sounds alot like comminism to me... Is that the Iron lady handing out all those socialized computers or is that THE IRON CURTON!
@Nostalgia Nerd do you know where I can find that book, id love to give it a read myself and I think it may make a great Christmas gift for someone.
Good research in checking how to pronounce Microvitec 👍
Less than a minute in and I'm already put in my place
I saw the last video and man I loved it! I def subbed so fast! Hopefully we get some more like it!
All seeing eye @3:02
I worked at Microvitec 1994-97 - great times before being made redundant due to LCD screens becoming the rage and unfortunately they never kept up with the changing times.
I hate it when companies do that
It is always going to be a problem running ones existing technology and investing in new lines on a change in that technology - especially as components etc get smaller or integrated and labour costs become more expensive, The west seems to do the heavy lifting of design, while contracting out to other far east etc companies - whom then take the technology and re-badge it. Not helped that investment banks dont always fund sufficiently, or want too much of a take for the risk. But the dedicated and capable staff here show it can be done , in its niche now, to the present day
So did I. My dad worked on the design team ;)
Wonderful! I was taking a GNVQ at Dixons City Technology College in Bradford and went into the offices for a visit back in 1995 ish. :-). Worked on their 'Creator' software package to demo it too as part of the coursework. LOL. Interesting times!
was not so much the rage it was the Power usage.. lcd saves home hundreds now over there life time
The CUB monitors were and are excellent monitors. They sometimes get used by arcade cab owners to decase and use them in, as they do really have fantastic image quality (you have to mod a couple of bits on the chassis to change it from TTL to analogue RGB). I picked up a cocktail cab a few years ago which has one in. Also had an upright midi cab which had one in, the chassis had something faulty on it (badly sparking driver transformer if I remember correctly) and I didn't have a spare part at the time so I just replaced it with a compatible 15khz arcade chassis, produced a brilliant picture. I have a 14" CUB in storage, but I also have a 20" CUB as well which is nice, didn't see many of those back in the day, and I haven't seen another one for years. I also have a multisync Acorn AKF monitor for testing 15khz, 24khz and 31khz arcade pcbs on, which I believe is built by Microvitec. I'm glad to own them!
In 1982 , when i was 12 we only had a ZX81 with the 16k pack and a Vic 20 with the 3k Superexpander in school. When my school upgraded to the C64 and Speccy 48k , the Vic was offered at a very small price (50 quid i believe) to any parents whose children were at my school. My dear old dad bought it for me and now i have it in a display cabinet here in the lounge. Thanks for this video , loved it 👍
I just brought two of these babies back to life on my channel. They are very easy to work on and built so well. The other point to mention is that there are many British components internally which seems odd now. They are too important to lose. I love its lack of subtlety. It's literally a cube, its handy for putting things on top. I love it and it'll be burned on my memory forever.
Got sick of the electric shock if you touched metal case and turned the monitor off or on
I had my own Beeb B in the early 80s, as well as our school having 1 or 2, my Dad was a teacher so he brought home the cub monitor and 5" disc drives/ games at the weekends, That monitor used to give a right powerful static shock and weighed an absoulute ton!
Had these in the classroom when I lived in Germany (British army school). We had one Windows PC and about 5 of these! Oh the memories!
We never had BBC Micro's at high school. Only at primary school. At high school we had Research Machines LINK 480Z and they were still using them when I got my Amiga 500 in 1987. I'm sure they used the Cub monitor though. A year or so later we had the RM Nimbus which used a 186, meaning it had compatibility issues.
RM I used to loove those!
Ironically, I think they chose the Nimbus because it had compatability with BBC Basic.
My primary had a 480Z too and a 186 nimbus. 480Z, of course, was pared with a CUB. Sadly, never used a BBC - used to try and program the 480Z but none of my teachers knew how and the library books I now realise were for different BASICs so never worked. Oh well :)
Nimbus were glorified word processors.. was disappointed that my high school got a load of them. And only 2 Archimedes.
@@AcornElectron they had Snake and that train game... :)
We had RML machines at school, but I think even those had CUBs on them. I remember regularly getting a static shock off the screen and case when they were switched off.
Metal cases clearly had their ups and downs.
Even Sony PVMs are sometimes a bit shockey indeed.
I still use one fairly regularly. I used to enjoy all the tiny static shocks off the screen, like you could trace an invisible line that crackled under your fingertips
You needed to touch someone else’s arm first 🙂
The static shocks from those things were brutal!
I guess the "apples for students" program wasn't international and the UK had these instead of Apple II computers
Correct. You had Apple II's with Sanyo screens, we had BBC Micros with Cubs
I don't think Apple II was ubiquitous at schools anywhere except for US, Canada, maybe some other countries in Americas. USSR had Apple II clone Agat among other more popular options (Yamaha MSX, BK-0010). West Germany i don't think had a single most prominent platform, but some schools i think had Apple II "Europlus".
At the end of the 70s US computers like the Apple ][, TRS-80 etc were expensive compared to their UK competition. I think this might have been due to exchange rates etc. It took a while for the Commodore PET to get traction, mostly because they already had a presence in Europe due to their calculator business, but they got into schools (the school I was at had a RML 380Z and several PETs by the time I left).
Yup. I remember doing the coupon program to get my elementary school Apple IIs.
BBC micro was also extremely common in Australian schools at that time though not with this monitor. The availability of education-focused software from the UK would have helped the decision. Plus realistically the name probably did count for something given that Australians are well aware of the existence of the BBC as a broadcaster, so anything they'd put their name on would've been perceived as credible despite not being the actual manufacturer.
Hi there,
I worked for another monitor manufacturer in the UK which was formed in 1976, we did do a cub equivalent but was more expensive so did not sell that many.
The company was called "Digivision" and was based in Leicester were were more an industrial supply company which supplied monitors to British rail, London Underground the national coal board and British Steel, we also supplied lots of mutlisync monitors (Yes we were early in doing multi standard monitors) for the yuppies in dealer desks in London this was really the cause of the company failure during the 1986 financial crash. Most of our orders disappeared over night the company was bought out in 1990 and the name was no more.
I never heard of them in the '80s. The Atari 800 was standard in North American Schools.
This is so interesting because I grew up with Commodore, the Apple IIe and the IBM 8086/8088, and have never seen the BBC micro before. I had no idea it existed. Very cool
I love the way you in detail explain the history of these, fascinating background and amazing quality for its time. However - it's very much an UK phenomena (sans the arcade machines) since the BBC micro was mostly popular in UK, the rest of the world - not so much.
I wish there was still an easy way to filter out American content.
Acorn and the BBC Micro did see usage in other Commonwealth countries. But as a whole you are correct to say it was very much a UK phenomenon.
Also what was not mentioned that while they dominated the schools market. They struggled to get a foothold in the home market which in the 80’s was mainly dominated by Commodore, Sinclair and Amstrad.
Acorn went on to create the ARM processor which they first used in their Archemeaies range of desktop computer and successor to the Micro. But they stopped making computers by the late 90’s due to dominance of Windows
wow brings a lot of memories studying Computer Science in the 90s
I so need one of these monitors. It will complete my setup with my twin Cumana disk drives! Hey, can't have everything at once! Great follow up video, mate :)
Does any else remember running their hand round the edge of the cubs screen and getting a rather nasty static shock?
Great video, brings back a lot of happy memories (remarkable considering I hated school). In our primary school we had 3 or 4 Beebs with these monitors as well as two Acorn A3000s, the latter were popular thanks to the game "The Crystal Rainforest". I think we also had an Archimedes but my memory is fuzzy now. When we went up to secondary school we had 2 beebs left with the computer of choice being the Acorn Risk PC 600, though the IT head had a Risk 700 and some RISC handheld device which he infamously crushed one day after leaving it in his back pocket and sitting down on a desk. They also had 4 IBM PCs and an old Amstrad, the PCs were networked and had Doom 2 installed, ah happy days ;)
Thorn EMI merged with the Swedish Telecommunications giant Ericsson (in the U.K.) I believe to become Thorn Ericsson although the merger didn’t last long and they ended up renaming to just Ericsson Ltd in the U.K.
I remember these with much fondness, as I used them at school in Computer Studies O'Level classes on the BBC Micro. What stood out to me was how sharp they were and how bright the colours were compared to the blurry black and white image of my ZX81, or the dot-crawling, blurry colour TV picture of my friend's issue 1 ZX Spectrums.
Of course the most use I got out of them was playing the Acorn arcade rip-offs Planetoid, Snapper, and Rocket Raid at lunchtime in the School computer room, and these games truly looked arcade quality on them. Fun times!
@@fightswithstairs6292 My first computer program was written in 1977 on optical cards in maths class. You had to write out your BASIC program on paper, manually translate the ASCII codes to binary, then use a soft pencil to colour in the 'holes' that represented the binary code.
The cards would be sent off to a university to run on their mainframe, and two weeks later you'd get a printout back with 'syntax error at line 30' printed on it.
My school had a philips and a cassette drive, I tried computer club once, decided that it was too much aggro for the results back out in the time availible, but went to work with computers after college - inc IBM, DEC, Thorn EMI Fujitsu and others , from hard disk packs to many other loading and software. Cannot say I coveted a BBC - got a cheap 8088 IBM colour PC and used that at home and sold it for what I paid for it
all we had in school in the 80s were apple 2's and maybe 1 or 2 macs in the whole school.. us public schools didnt teach us anything about them though... they just gave us disks of Oregon Trail and Odell Lake and said play games..
My computer school teacher must have broken at least 6 of these monitors because when the vertical hold went rather than trying to fix it his quick way was to just slap them hard on each side
For my computer studies project I programmed it to make a simple “windows Explorer” file menu programme for the BBC
The ones we had at school all had disc drives not cassette tapes
Just bought my second working Cub monitor.
(BTW You forgot to mention that the Cumana floppy drive was synonymous with the trifecta -
so I had to get one ! Got Sentinel, Thrust and Elite too)
I have 2 x Amstrad (colour) CTM644s, 1x CBM 1085-D2, 1x CBM 1084S-D1,
1x CBM 1701 (the brown one), 1 x Philips CM8833 Mk II,
and the 2 Microvitec Cub 1431S4Cs (and 7 CRT TVs for my light gun and other games).
No other display can take me back to 1985/86 (my Computer Science class) just by showing the micro's boot screen.
Going to try and re-cap them all to preserve them till my last days.
I had to buy a second Cub as I would have been heartbroken if I had lost my only one.
3:22 - it's interesting to note that The Computer Programme's first broadcast run was mid-afternoon, 3.05pm. It was repeated on Sunday mornings, and it wasn't until its third outing that it was finally shown in the evenings, but it was one of the last programmes of the day, typically between 11pm and midnight.
I was in Primary school from 1980 to 1986 (where I passed my 11+ and went to Grammar). I remember the BBC Micro, the CUB monitor and the disc drives with a Vivid fondness . VERY vivid memories as these were my first intro to computing and computers. 1984 I seem to remember. x. Another excellent video. Thanks. :)
Ah, the Microvitec CUB. :-D
'My' first proper computer was a BBC B with twin 40/80 track FDD's and one of these monitors on loan from my dad's work...
(Easily the best computer set up I have ever had the pleasure of using when compared to anything else available at the time)
...oh, how I came down with a bump when his work wanted it back and my parents could only afford a ZX81.
I have three of those CUB monitors, love them to bits. :D Fascinating tale, I didn't know anything of the monitor side of the Beeb history. Mindblown btw you have a CUB with its original box, and in such good condition too, awesome! I have various other models of monitor aswell, but the CUB reigns supreme.
Aaahh yes.. The many hours I spent playing Fat Man Sam on the BBC Micro. I also learned how to upgrade the BBC Micro to have the ability to use a mouse and to talk with a speech synthesizer, though the speech did sound very mechanical and robot like, it worked and was easy to understand. I was always the "go to person" by school staff if they had problems with their computers, was a great skive having teachers/staff "borrow" me from classes. At the age of 15 (1990) I even trained the staff how to use Windows 3.0 when IBM PC's started making their way into schools. Me teaching the teachers was a weird sort of ego boost, lol. There was a TV modulator you could get for those CUB monitors to allow you to watch TV on the monitor, was quite cool.
I'm 37 and never saw a BBC micro, my elementary school had a computer lab with Apple computers in them and we played Oregon Trail... Or just Buffalo hunting for some of the kids
My first introduction to the BBC Micro was watching a Let's Play of _L - A Mathemagical Adventure_ by *ahope1* (aka Ant). Love British humour. I enjoyed this video of a BBC Micro peripheral.
in Denmark we had RC Piccoline forced upon schools (and they came with RC monochrome monitors) - RC is an akronym for "Regnecentralen", the state department probably best known for creating DASK. Not entirely sure what the hardware was in the Piccoline, but almost every Danish kid who went to public school in the 80s was exposed to them, and to us they're possibly just as iconic as your BBC Micro
I’m a 48 year old Canadian. No idea about this monitor but great video anyway. It was all Commodore Pet for me. Also remember the Icon computer with built in trackball in high school.
School and computers... at least not in the 80s here in Germany in primary schools. When i came to what you might call middle school, here in Germany it branches of into Hauptschule, Realschule, Gesamtschule and Gymnasium, we had 386es with some no-name B&W screens.
I was an 80s kid, and this is not recognisable to me whatsoever. Let alone "seared into mind". UK-centric on a global platform .
My primary school in the eary 80's was one of the single digits to buy a cheaper Spectrum with its "very" sticky keys after 1 days use!
Yup, I grew up at a school with a lab full of Masters and these monitors. Lovely things. I've always liked the subtle industrial design to them, with the non-nonsense practical cube and the contrasting dark brown plastic trim at the front with the symmetrical CUB logo and power light adding two spots of colour. Simple but surprisingly subtle. I've always wondered how stackable they were, and whether it'd be possible to make a video wall from them.
Hah, the blurred logo on TV is Šilelis, made way back when in Lithuania.
Parents had one of those.
Had one of those monitors with a BBC Micro. Remember later trying it out with Castle of Illusion on the Mega Drive via RGB and it looked absolutely beautiful…
I hope not literally. More seriously, though, I love these long form retrospectives of yours.
This monitor is seared into my brain because I accidentally smashed one when I was nine. The teacher asked me to push the computer trolley down the corridor from the classroom to the store room at the end of the day. In the rush to complete the task quickly so I could go home, I forgot about the small step at the store room doorway. The wheels smacked into it, the trolley tipped over, and the monitor flew off and hit the concrete with an almighty crash. Surprisingly I didn’t get into any trouble!
You actually _killed_ a Cub?
That is an amazing achievement!
I remember these monitors very well
Would love to see a BBC running on a modern rock-stable flat screen monitor which is capable of talking to the BEEB?
These last two vids bring back some memories! Please can you do a follow-up on the Archimedes (and Virus, Interdictor and all the other games that we played in the computer lab in the late 80s!)
I'm kind of wondering which video will come first, Cumana or Watford Electronics?
In the U.S. we didn't have that. We had the Apple 2e instead. This was the early 90's which was way after the apple 2e was new.
You could give yourself or a fellow classmate a nasty static shock upon switching on the monitor. Just wipe off screen static and touch the metal outer rim of the screen (probably happened by accident for most) or swipe and touch a friends skin for some laughs .
Chucky egg, manic mole and frenzy were a favourite at my school in the late 80s early 90s on the BBC
Interestingly, one of the most expensive parts of the BBC was for the 80 column display as required by the BBC, which these monitors could not use. Hmmm
yes they could
In my mid-70s. A computer when I went to school was human whoso job was in numbers.
Great video and remember them so well. All the ones in my school had a great picture, some even had attachments like a touch screen to go along with the other crazy peripherals such as the concept keyboard!
Cool little background story!
Frankly as a cross canal dweller, I’d never thought about this. The BBC was even rarer here than the already rare Speccy. But now that you mentioned it, it’s always the same monitor and I had quietly assumed that these were bundled deals from the BBC. Everyday you learn something new :)
Wasn't it all Commodore 64s, MSXs and the still British (but probably rebadged) Amstrad CPCs over there?
@@GeoNeilUK here in NL it was mainly C64. And the odd MSX on schools (obviously since Philips made MSXs). I only ever seen one Schneider CPC at a friend’s house. I guess here in NL we were pretty much standardized on the C64 - even the Amiga didn’t really become as big as it was in Germany and the UK.
Germany had more Schneiders for sure but also a massive C64 community.
Speccies and BBC’s were and are about as rare as unicorns 😜
@@CallousCoder Yeah, I heard the CPCs and maybe Orics were big in France (though I'm guessing their schools were full of Thomsons) and behind the Iron Curtain it was all Speccy clones. And up in Scandinavia it was all about Nintendo!
@@GeoNeilUK I think you could be right. The DDR had the u880 (which I recently discovered when fixing an East German chess computers in my channel). So apparently they had a lot of Speccy clones I think. France was Amstrad domain for sure. Spain too, also a lot of MSX in Spain.
Quick round of Grannys garden anyone? Thats not a euphemism
That was lovely, it's amazing that a Government initiative actually did some good!
A CONSERVATIVE Government initiative no less.
@@tibsie Absolutely!
High schools in New Zealand were still using the BBC Micros with this monitor running off a giant hard drive (11 inch ?) in 1993. Still remember programming Axel F. Those were the days.
Screen burn-in goodness…
Wow brought back some great memories we had one at home due to some slightly dodgy family friends so by the time I my brother's and I went to primary school we were showing the teachers how to use the system they wer gobsmacked started a life long passion that not so little BBC micro and cub partnership great memories thanks for bringing back some beautiful life long memories