Refurbishing the BBC Master 128
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- Опубликовано: 31 июл 2024
- In this video, I work on refurbishing the old BBC Master 128. This involved thoroughly cleaning the computer, getting the keyboard fully working (no easy feat) and getting the system booting the BBC Master welcome disk. It was a journey but the payoff feels great.
Part 1: • BBC Master 128: The ev...
Part 2: This part!
Part 3: • BBC Master mods and im...
0:00 Intro
0:55 Cleaning and refurbishing the computer
11:35 Fixing the keyboard (Futaba linear switches)
40:32 Creating a new battery pack for the BBC
43:31 Setting up the CMOS settings
45:00 Exploring the BBC Master a little
48:13 Booting software from floppy disk
--- Video Links
Stardot Forums, the best place for BBC Micro/Master information:
stardot.org.uk/forums/
BBC Master 128 Schematics:
stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtop...
My old video showing off the two BBC Micro machines I brought back from the UK:
• I visited the UK and b...
BBC Micro Model B PSU repair and 120v conversion:
• A BBC Micro power supp...
BBC Master:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Master
65C12 datasheet:
archive.6502.org/datasheets/cm...
Performing a CMOS reset on the BBC Master:
lionels.orpheusweb.co.uk/Comp...
Adrian's Digital Basement Merch store:
my-store-c82bd2-2.creator-spr...
Adrian's Digital Basement ][ (Second Channel)
/ @adriansdigitalbasement2
Support the channel on Patreon:
/ adriansdigitalbasement
-- Tools
Deoxit D5:
amzn.to/2VvOKy1
store.caig.com/s.nl/it.A/id.16...
O-Ring Pick Set: (I use these to lift chips off boards)
amzn.to/3a9x54J
Elenco Electronics LP-560 Logic Probe:
amzn.to/2VrT5lW
Hakko FR301 Desoldering Iron:
amzn.to/2ye6xC0
Rigol DS1054Z Four Channel Oscilloscope:
www.rigolna.com/products/digi...
Head Worn Magnifying Goggles / Dual Lens Flip-In Head Magnifier:
amzn.to/3adRbuy
TL866II Plus Chip Tester and EPROM programmer: (The MiniPro)
amzn.to/2wG4tlP
www.aliexpress.com/item/33000...
TS100 Soldering Iron:
amzn.to/2K36dJ5
www.ebay.com/itm/TS100-65W-MI...
EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter:
www.eevblog.com/product/121gw/
DSLogic Basic Logic Analyzer:
amzn.to/2RDSDQw
www.ebay.com/itm/USB-Logic-DS...
Magnetic Screw Holder:
amzn.to/3b8LOhG
www.harborfreight.com/4-inch-...
Universal ZIP sockets: (clones, used on my ZIF-64 test machine)
www.ebay.com/itm/14-16-18-20-...
RetroTink 2X Upconverter: (to hook up something like a C64 to HDMI)
www.retrotink.com/
Plato (Clone) Side Cutters: (order five)
www.ebay.com/itm/1-2-5-10PCS-...
Heat Sinks:
www.aliexpress.com/item/32537...
Little squeezy bottles: (available elsewhere too)
amzn.to/3b8LOOI
--- Links
My GitHub repository:
github.com/misterblack1?tab=r...
Commodore Computer Club / Vancouver, WA - Portland, OR - PDX Commodore Users Group
www.commodorecomputerclub.com/
--- Instructional videos
My video on damage-free chip removal:
• How to remove chips wi...
--- Music
Intro music and other tracks by:
Nathan Divino
@itsnathandivino 
Наука
The reason the machine pauses when the CMOS is reset is ADFS copies the current disc's catalogue into memory. This also means you need to dismount ADFS discs before ejecting. DFS doesn't do this, hence the recommendation to change to DFS to reset the CMOS settings. It just speeds it up. Traditionally on Acorns, DFS is used on 5.25inch drives, and ADFS on 3.5. This isn't fixed, just how it normally went. ADFS is a hierarchical file system, so also supports hard drives.
ADFS is pretty nice as far as 8-bit hierarchical file systems go --- it's a bit slow, and doesn't support fragmented files, but it's pretty light on resources --- but I have no idea why they made it automount the disk when the file system is initialised. On a system like the Master which is intended to be able to operate from cassette, having it just hang on boot is so not helpful, even if you _can_ change the default file system. Very odd.
@@hjalfi It only does it on the none-ARM machines too. When you get to Arthur/RiscOS, it mounts on selection, not boot. But also ADFS on anything 8bit but a master is a PITA. Because that storing of the catalogue in ram moves page up by around 3.5K, from &E00 to &1900 IIRC, so _tonnes_ of electron software won't run with a Plus 3 due to lack of ram.
@@hjalfi You could switch to ADFS without mounting the disc with *FADFS.
@@Soruk42 Dammit! Someone should have told me that forty years ago. (Also, why isn't this the default?)
Please do a part 3 and spend some time exploring it. Also.. more cleaning videos please! 🙂
+1 the cleaning videos. I was wondering if the RF module would retain water and be hard to dry out. Sad to see it oxidize so much.
The *HELP command when it stops, press shift and it will carry on. You can also do "*HELP " and it will give you the commands for that ROM, e.g. *HELP ADFS will give you a list of all the ADFS commands.
For the cursors, there are actually two. When you press a cursor key they separate and you control the underline form of the cursor. What you do with this is move the cursor to a position on the screen then press the "Copy" key to copy the text. The idea is that if you'd typed "PRNT" instead of "PRINT", you move the cursor to the "P", press copy twice, press "I", then press copy twice and you've got "PRINT". It's the editing process for the BASIC program. It's also a good reason to check if you've got a working "Copy" key!
View is a word processor built into the machine that can be accessed through the "*VIEW" command (and *BASIC to get out again). Pressing ESC switches between the editor and the command mode. Viewsheet is a spreadsheet, SRAM manages the additional 64k of memory, and Terminal is pretty self explanatory.
This has the details of the mod to get colour on the composite output: www.beebmaster.co.uk/CompColour.html
If you're looking for ROMs and documentation, there's a pretty good collection here: mdfs.net/
There's an archive of games here: www.bbcmicro.co.uk/
Ctrl+N turns on page mode (pause after one page of output) and Ctrl+O turns it off.
Well done Adrian. These machines were really the British Apple II. Such an open architecture for the time
44:30 When you split the cursor, use the COPY key and that will copy the character that is currently on the thin cursor over to the block cursor and advance both by one character. This allows you to hold the copy key to duplicate entire strings of characters as needed from elsewhere on the screen.
The point of that was to edit lines in basic.
Ah you beat me to it! :)
That is the same way it works on the Amstrad CPC for people not knowing.
@@DerIchBinDa yeah - I believe Amstrad “borrowed” it from Acorn. Amstrad had quite an advanced basic which I guess was also inspired by the BBC.
@@memsom I believe that immediately as I see the BBC computers were so good designed they for sure "borrowed" some ideas. 😄
Incredible how the UK was so far ahead in computer design and software and all that is left nowadays is Arm... sad tbh.
If you've any particular questions Adrian, I'm happy to try answer them for you, and if not I'll most likely know the right people to ask :-) Loving the care you given this machine and the restoration you've done on it. I've been involved with Acorn Hardware since the early 1980's, and at one stage in my career even did a small bit of contracting for various Acorn software companies. While I no longer own any physical hardware, I do keep in with the community, and the various emulators, and I still have quite a shelf full of original Acorn Manuals and books on programming the machines. Feel free to shout me if I can help.
BBC Basic is worth dipping into, structured programming including proper functions and inline assembler. It was very common for games to have a BASIC bootstrap app that would load a binary and execute it. Which is where I got into programming way back when, hacking the encryption routines so I could copy games. FWIW some of my favourite games were Rocket Raid, Thrust, Castle Quest, Exile (the encryption for this was insane, I never cracked it) and, of course, Elite.
Great video, not enough BBC Micro content on the web.
I’m astonished that you have a Beeb that was actually used at the Beeb and for Ceefax publishing, no less!
One day I’ll be brave and submerge a PCB in soapy water! I have *insanely* hard tap-water down in southeast England though, so I’ll be sure to give a distilled-water rinse after.
And thank you so much for delving into the faulty keys! I’ve got an Electron with some dodgy keys which I’ve been putting up with. I’ll definitely take another look at that and check those odd little pins.
Yeah basically, remove the switches from your Electron, unscrew the legs and then use something like an X-acto blade to scrape off any tarnish.. and then use something like Deoxit to remove any other tarnish. Perhaps metal polish would work too? The computer has been working great ever since and it's been a couple weeks since I did the keyboard work.
You absolutely have to play Chuckie Egg :)
For video, rather than try to work with the composite, you could use the TTL video output. It should be somewhat similar to CGA signal wise and should connect to a CGA monitor with the appropriate cable
Oooooh I remember Chuckie Egg!
The Beeb's RGB output will drive a CGA monitor but you need a small amount of electronics to separate horizontal and vertical sync from the Beeb's composite sync signal. I made a little box to do this, back when CGA monitors were easier to find than BBC-style ones.
@@cmjones01 you can also get the horizontal/vertical sync signals internally, from pins 39 and 40 of the 6845. I'd buffer them first of course...
@@jaycee1980 yes. I built a outside box (only one transistor and a few passives to separate field sync) because I wanted to use it with various Beebs without modifying them all.
Brings back memories of playing 'Frak!' on the BBC computers at school during lunch break. That game was stupidly hard due to the dreadful frame rate and input lag. We preferred playing it on a Master because it seemed to run a bit faster on those. Never completed the game even though it only had 3 levels. 😅
There was the notorious hack version of it going around too. It was a bit naughty. ;-)
@@pitmatix1457Yes there was. It was amusing 😂
Oh! Just a thought - it’s really easy to add SD card storage to a Beeb.
Hardware-wise, all you need it one of those dirt-cheap SD card boards for Arduinos and some ribbon cable to connect it to the User port.
Then burn MMFSv2 to an EPROM and you’re away.
I can recommend the BBC port of the Bad Apple demo. I had no idea the Beeb’s (quite terrible) sound chip could do so well.
I know a ROM exists to interface directly to it -- is there a simple open source project I can build at home?
@@adriansdigitalbasementMMFS is maintained by Hoglet of RGB2HDMI fame and is on GitHub!
All of the raw OS commands are available from BASIC, in fact from any language, by prefixing with "*", so "*configure" at BASIC is exactly equivalent to "co." at the OS prompt (the BBC used dot to shortcut keywords).
*help is showing what's installed in the ROM sockets, not necessarily what's running. The BBC used bank switching between #8000 and #BFFF to allow up to 16 ROMS in the same memory space. When using the DFS/ADFS the OS calls are at the top of memory which swaps out the language ROM for the duration of the disk routine. IIRC View was a word processor, ViewSheet a spreadsheet application and Terminal a dumb terminal emulator for connection to mainframes ! The Master had 64K of RAM mapped into 4 ROM locations, this allowed a special version of BASIC relocated to lower in memory to see 64K of user data instead of the maximum 32K for the ROM version of BASIC.
... to get the disk catalogue, do `*CAT`, which can be abbreviated all the way to `*.`!
That special version of BASIC is BAS128, and is on the BBC Master Welcome disc and tape. The program code runs in "normal" memory, and it uses the "Sideways RAM" as if it were a contiguous 64K block of memory. With all the bank switching going on, it was a bit slower than the "normal" BASIC.
A little word about washing pcb's in water: It is not a problem with old hardware as there are no surface mount components. But with the more modern stuff it can give you some problems. The SMCs are laying flat on the board, water is sucked underneath those parts by capillary force and is not able to evaporate for a very long time. You then get shorts or lowered resistances or corrosion, which is a problem. In those cases you have to bathe the pcb in 90% alcohol which is able to suck the residual water out underneath the parts and then evaporate. I had a small business around that fact in the early 2ks, repairing waterdamaged Nokias, when they were still a thing.
Once again your videos provide a great resource for those wanting to keep retro computers running. I never would have guessed that a key switch would have screw in pins.
32:02 for rethreading anything without cross-threading, give a half-twist /backwards/ with a little pressure until you feel the 'click' of the thread re-engaging with its original cut. This may seem a little strange & awkward to perform at first, but with only a little practice you'll soon get the hang of it until it becomes a habit - a good one to have, as (esp with eg self-tapping screws into soft plastic) it'll not only avoid cross-threading but won't cause the soft plastic threads to fail due to overstress
Yes! The 'Fran' method :)
It's been more than 30 years since I used the BBC B/Acorn Electron/BBC Master that I've forgotten the commands .... ha ha! I used to know nearly all of the commands, and now I only recall basic BASIC commands etc. BBC Basic can also be obtained from R.T.Russell who wrote a very fast emulator for the PC.
Thanks for this upload and the time you put into this, great memories!
It's crazy how those key switches work and how easily serviceable they are. My mind was blown just by the legs unscrewing like that without disassembling the entire key switch itself.
Thanks Adrian. This brings back so much nostalgia for me. My first computer was a BBC Micro 32k. I used to dream of owning a master.
Me too. These machines are a very special part of growing up in the UK in the 80s.
Just seeing the beige/black/red colour scheme brings it all back.
BBC Micro was my 2nd - had a ZX81 first - stupidly I sold my BBC (with monitor, 2x 5.25" 80 track drives, etc) some years back - missed it so got myself a replacement around 2017 and have four of them now plus a Microvitec CUB monitor and a SD card reader. Still have my original Kaga Taxan KP-810 dot matrix printer though
seeing the key switches getting cleaned and working again was very satisfying
Awesome work on the keyswitches! I have an electron keyboard that's mostly great, but the 7 keybis a little iffy, so it's fantastic to see how you removed and cleaned the pins to get them working well again.
A few years ago I had a HP dc5800 SFF that was crashing either on boot or soon after. I spent quite a while switching out RAM, CPUs, Drives and Power Supplies and searching for bad capacitors without success. Finally, after watching one of your videos, I washed the Motherboard in soapy water and let it dry overnight and reassembled it with the original components. It has been working flawlessly ever since.
This brings me back. I used the BBC Master and the B model at school. We had a computer lab that had a Master with optional ROMs and a Hard Drive, this was connected to a fleet of Masters and B models using Econet. We learned how to do BASIC and how to make Teletext pages as part of the class.
In Technical Studies class we used them to control robotics using Technic Lego and Fischertechnik which had controller boards that plugged into one of the ports underneath.
Cut to a few years laters and I work for the Local Authority in IT and was on the tail end of them being in schools in the late 90s, a common task was desoldering and replacing the keys, we had bags of spares! Our workshop had a few CUB monitors for working on them. Loved the Master’s keyboard.
When you mention using them to control robotics - I was surprised and depressed at a conference recently to see people in suits wowing over a robotic arm that could write their name, which was no more advanced than what we had with the BBC Micros in primary school in the 80s!
@@BlameThande haha, yes. I made a pneumatic 4 leg flight simulator that could run to a preset program or could be controlled by a pneumatic joystick 🕹️
Washing PCBs... At university, while my classmates were using BBCs, I was the one Speccy guy. Wrote my final paper on it, taught myself Z80 machine code, etc. Imagine my horror one day to come back to my student hovel to find my door broken open and water pouring through the ceiling following a burst pipe in the room above mine. The wet mattres and clothes wasn't my biggest concern, or the sparks around the light fitting... my poor Spectrum 48K was full of water.
My landlord gave me a stack of 50 pence pieces to put in the gas meter and I ended up dismantling the Speccy and drying over the gas fire for a few days before risking a power on. It still works to this day 😂
Thanks for another great video!
I love Ceefax and Night Owl. That's so cool.
Re drying - in Electronic manufacturing we sometime bake older boards to remove absorbed moisture prior to any reflow work (>6 mths you should always bake electronics, otherwise you get blistering). For wet electronics post cleaning and drying I usually bake them at about 70-80C in the oven for 6-12 hours. Drying for reflow is usually 120C for 48hrs.
You need to run defender or elite and of course write your own program, interface with the I/O ports.. Try making a capacitance meter using the analogue joystick port and cassette controller relay (if the master has one I did it on my BBC), all accessible via basic.
38:35 I hit the ceiling - I haven't seen that screen for 40 years but it's burnt into my childhood memories, far out! Thanks for that, never had a dopamine surge from nostalgia like that before!
One of my first jobs was repairing BBC computers. I am reminded off a computer that was brought to us that had (we think) 240v put through the Video in connector. After two days of work - that included replacing the (6502) CPU that had a crater where the silicon used to be - I had the Acorn Computers, BBC Computer shown on screen, though not steady. The memory of the fault finding - for example finding a snapped chip because I felt heat when my hand was near - and fixing needed -running entirely new tracks because the copper on the board had vaporised - over those two days makes me grin even now. I'm a teacher now and I some time try to explain the students the enjoyment that can be found from fault finding. They are rarely convinced. Thank you for this trip down memory lane. BTW. If it will not load from tape it will be the little 8 pin chip just by the tape socket - 40 years ago I could have instantly told you the chip number!
Very educational video! Enjoyed it thoroughly. Loved all the cleaning and conditioning methods. THANK YOU!
For a short while in the late 80's you could download software and current satellite weather maps from Teletext if you had the costly Acorn Teletext adaptor, which I didn't but my school did and lent it to me. It was useless to them anyway as the TV reception at my school was really poor and you needed a rock solid signal to get accurate teletext reception.
European here: I liked TELETEXT when it was a thing, it was something from the future, before having access to the Internet :)
Just imagine if people had 10% of your enthusiasm. I look forward to your dedicated retro computer presentations.
Great video, looking forward to part 3!
That hang at the end with the Welcome Disk is worrisome. Pressing BREAK should never do that --- it's wired up to the 65c02's NMI line, and should always reset the OS. There could be a hardware fault.
Also, if you do *ROMS you'll get a list of all the installed ROMs on the system, which should should what that EPROM is. *EDIT is the text editor; use the overlay strip you found to get at the commands. There is _also_ a word processor, *WORD (it's called View and it's functional but primitive). Once in it, use ESCAPE to toggle from command line mode to edit mode. There's a spreadsheet, too, called ViewSheet --- use *SHEET to enter.
love it ♥Thanks for a wonderfull video. I have a non working Master myself, and this refurbishment makes me want to get down to working on it. Keep on the amazing work, looking forward to more 😋
Your excitement after fixing that first unthreaded switch was infectious. :)
Great video, I'm so glad that your perciviered with the keyboard.
I love the affection you have for everything but it is especially good to see your enthusiasm for this British classic.
If you want to see what a master can do, try and bitshifters demo or their Prince of Persia and Stunt Car Racer ports.
The RGB output on the BBC isn't actually TTL (only the synch signal is). You can plug it straight into the monitor used on the Amstrad CPC and it will work fine.
The BBC RGB output IS about 4V, for TTL monitor inputs. To get 1V into a 75 ohm input a 270R series resistor is recommended.
Would you need some kind of adapter?
@@blackterminal Nope. Pinout is compatible.
This is wonderful, Adrian. I have encountered all the same keyboard problems on my Camputers Lynx computer (a British Z80 home computer) - which uses the same Futaba keys. I assumed I'd never be able to source replacements key switches - but now I'm excited to have a go at restoring the ones I have. So far, I've only used the contact cleaner/million presses approach (with some success - although with flaky results), but cleaning the pins seems like a much better solution. Thank you! 😀
Congrats on your success so far with this system - your persistence and troubleshooting is inspiring.
Very good. You never disappoint. I thought the keyswitches part very interesting.
The COPY key is for editing lines in BASIC - you use the cursor keys to move the [copy] cursor, then press the COPY key to copy the character under the copy cursor to the input buffer
This was a BBC Micro feature that I still miss to this day, used to make fixing code so much easier...
Those legs on the switches are really interesting how they can come out. Glad you where able to clean them and get them working again! Also to me the cleaning the plastics is very satisfying along with final assembly once you've fixed everything up!
CEEFAX was amazing. In the UK, it hung around for years - it was easy to use, had recipes, quizzes, horoscopes, news, sports results - it was basically the next best thing to the Internet for a long time! The other TV channel in the UK - ITV - called it’s teletext service ‘Oracle’ for a while, before changing it to ‘ITV Teletext’. They were into advertising, so their service had ads - and you could book holidays on there as well. And the most famous page in the UK was Channel 4’s quiz ‘Bamboozle’ - I kind of miss those days.
Great video - looking forward to the next one!
From what I remember from my early years in first/primary school (1994-1999), what you'd call "elementry school", to boot from a floppy from the BASIC prompt was simply a case of holding SHIFT then tapping BREAK. However, it's been about 25 years since I used a BBC Master, so there's probably some things I'm miss remembering.
I was going to post exactly this, Shift break would load from the disc and run it.
Cool Stuff, I really enjoy you videos. I wish I had time to do this kind of stuff. But watching you do it is just as good!
"P." for print.
Awsome machine, thank for restoration.
You can also just type "BEEP" also.
The empty EPROMS are for stuff for eg a "speech chip", which sounded better than early google and iPhone.
Good work with with the space bar they are a "bic" to get back on.
If that had been me, I never would have guessed that the pins themselves that you pulled out of the switched, were actually the contacts for the switch. I never would have thought that. That is such a foreign design concept to me.
I love these machines. A lot of them had a tough time in schools and colleges, but they are built like tanks and the Tube interface is something very special for the time.
Such a satisfying hobby! Thanks for sharing!
Once again amazing video. Really appreciate.
The technique for cleaning the key switches and the battery hack! Absolutely brilliant (and the battery hack supports a "system reset" method).
I never realised how future modern the BBC series of computer was...if not for the IBM PC, this platform could have been the standard (or maybe the Amstrad CPC)
Teletext was a staple of the 90s household, whether it was for news, weather reports, financial updates, or even games (Bamboozle on 4Tel being the best known), it was something often seen on our tellies back in the day, and for the names, Ceefax for BBC, Oracle I think for ITV (which later became simply Teletext), and Channel 4 had "4Tel", all the same basic standards, just their own names... :)
Great work as usual. Thanks for taking us along for the ride!
I know you’re not in a hurry to exercise the socket, but pulling the EPROM would be an easy way to tell what’s on it. It’s funny, at one point I found myself covering the EPROM with my hand when I walked into daylight. “Tell me you’re an OG Geek without telling me you’re an OG Geek!” 🤣
Do *ROMS and see what shows up in ROM socket 8. 0-3 are the cartridge sockets, 4-7 are either Sideways RAM or ROM sockets (selected via a jumper), 8 is a 16K socket by itself, and 9-15 are in the Master OS 1Mbit ROM.
Amazing! That keyboard fixing shows how important is archiving information on Internet. One post on a forum can save you. It made me remember a time when I wasn't able to find why a pendrive was losing connection while copying files. I finally found a lost post that explained that some part on them couldn't keep up with some speeds for copying files and would fail. So I started to use "Ultracopier", that had in older versions a cool option to limit speeds and... Voila! Problem solved to that! I thought it was my USB ports and tried a lots of things (drivers, configurations on the O.S., and so on...) and it was just a low quality part on some pendrives that can't handle some transfer speeds for long time.
Looks amazing. Fantastic, amazing job.
With *help and some other things, its 'shift' to get to the next page.
Loading from disk is usually shirt+break
With the arrow keys, that confused you, you can hit the copy key, and it will copy whatever you have moved the cursor to.
'Mode 7' teletext is the classic start up mode, for classic feel.
Disks where is heavy use, I'd not bother with tape.
If you want to reset. and just hitting 'break' doesn't work, try ctrl+break.
If you want to type basic, you can save some keystrokes, using the period. The interpreter will try and guess the rest of the keyword from the period. So "P." turns into "PRINT".
If you want to see whats on the disk, type "*." which is short for "*CAT". If there was a basic program on disk, you can LOAD "filename". Or CH."filename". Scripts are *EXEC. Machine code *RUN. Pressing shif+break usually does '*exec !boot', which is usually a short script that just chains some basic program.
What software... its a personal thing. Most would suggest running elite. Personally I enjoyed playing repton. I see you had VIEW - a respected common word processors, although interword was better. I typed a lot so i'll stop here.... i fricking loved the beeb!
Yup ... CHAIN "filename" for running programs brings back such good memories as does *RUN "filename". Damn I wish I hadnt sold my setup. Ok I am off to find a BeebEm so I can play Elite again. I wonder if the bundled novella is online? I did always like an Iron Ass.
Great effort. Your persistence paid off. Good tips for others too.
The BBC master was my very first computer experience. My infants school (in the UK this is for children 4 - 7) had one of these. It pretty much sat in the corner collecting dust until I became obsessed with it 😂 The teachers didn't really know how to use it apart from loading programs from one of the many many floppy disks it came with. Great memories
Ditto
Well, that was hard work… yet, I love the excitement you express all the way through that restoration.
This brings back some memories - I remember in the early-mind 90s our High School had 3 suites - 2 had these connecting to the ECONET network. The 3rd suite was kitted out with Acorn Archimedes A3000 which was the computer that introduced me to Lemmings - Not sure the teachers were happy that one though
If ever Adrian get's the chance to, he really should get his hands on the A3000 as well
Same here! I would play Lemmings on the Archimedes at school. That was when I wasn't playing Chuckie Egg and Killer Gorilla on the BBC! I was special needs, and the teachers let me do what I wanted as long as I got my work done.
LOL a school A3000 introduced me to Lemmings 2!
@@Firthy2002 I'm glad I'm not alone 😂 the music in lemmings was amazing and it sounded the best on the Acorn
Also when you drag a window on the A3000 the contents remain visible. Windows couldn't manage that until several years later
@@jameshare1848 Yes you needed the plus pack on windows 95 as I recall. We had a single A5000 at school along with an assortment of A3**, A4** and A3000s and I was amazed at how fast the A5000 was compared to anything else I'd used at the time.
Growing up, BBC Micros were a common sight in UK classrooms until around 1989. Thanks for sharing your awesome BBC Master computer video! It was informative and engaging. Appreciate your effort!
Absolutely, it was a wildly successful scheme in my opinion, it got me my first real contact with a computer and I never looked back, and I know this is true of a great many other Brits of a certain age. I did not actually pursue a career in IT in the end but I owe my computer literacy today to the Beeb to a great extent.
Extremely interesting and useful video, it was also long! :D
Thank you very much.
Another great video! I have had good luck "sun brighting" many of my retro computers incl the Beep. Try leaving it outside in the bright sun a day or two
2:23 Teletext is still fully operational, as it is part of the DVB standard, so most stations still provide it - really gives me 90s flashbacks.
It all depends on the metals used in the keyboard switch pins but scraping them with a scalpel may allow the base metal, usually copper, to corrode again. I'd be tempted to use a tin plating solution on them to prevent them from tarnishing again. Just a thought, great video by the way!
Amazing, at high school "Computer Studies" class we had one row of Commodore PET's and a row of BBC Model B with printers, the teacher had the BBC Master! and it had Econet network and a modem! it was the only lesson in school I would not want to leave :) after the second year, things got more relaxed, especially if you had done all your work, you could play games, remember playing Knight Lore and Elite :)
Great video. Really cool fix on those key switches! Radical design, makes me wonder if they planned for that fix when they designed those key switches?
Yeah I wonder! Once I got the hang of it, it's much easier to service them than Alps SKCC switches from Mac/TRS-80/Apple II/TI99.
Not sure if someone else has already mentioned it, but "?" is the BBC BASIC equivalent of "PEEK" and "POKE" (so "PRINT ?&70" and "?&70=0" will work); and "!" does the same for 32-bit words (rather than single bytes).
(And, yes, "&" is the BBC BASIC prefix to indicate a hexadecimal number.)
Also, "View" is Acorn's word-processor - use "*WORD" to switch to it; the "unidentified" key-strip is, I suspect, the one for "View".
The Wikipedia page for POKE and PEEK covers how they work.
and $ works for strings. BBC BASIC has byte, 32-bit word, and string pointers, which allows some really handy tricks. Want to write a string to memory at location &7C00? Just do $&7C00="Hello world" and it's done.
I used to tepair these for schools in the UK back in the day. I had no idea about the pin removal and clean. Used to just replace the keyswitch.
Of course they were readily available then, I had a big bag of them.
Love your perseverance and delight when you have success.
Great video, nice to see an old Beeb Master getting attention. I would have loved a BBC back in the day, great architecture and one of the best Basic's ever with a nice assembler built in.
Awesome to see my favourite retro computer featured by one of my favourite RUclipsrs. Great video, thanks.
I once found a Das Keyboard (one of those with the all-blank key tops) with "blue" mechanical switches, where something had clearly been spilled on it. I could even see the splash pattern from which keys were sticky.
I tried a few things, but in the end I had to desolder every sticky key (about a third of them!), disassemble the key, clean the bits with a cotton swab, then reassemble and resolder. Then the fun part was realizing that the different rows of *blank* key caps were molded differently! It took me a while to get them all put back, but it helped that the key tops had mold codes inside.
Im in the same place as you with regards using the bbc, only just got mine. i did use one at school but that was 40yr ago so starting from scratch also. btw there is a motherboard jumper to solder in if you want colour out on the composite connector, but an rgb cable will give amazing picture
Love the Max headroom reference on the bottom of the case!
You can check the current draw on the CR2030 by putting the DMM probe on the battery, and pushing the holder side contact sideways with the other probe so the current passes through the DMM. It would be interesting to know the current draw on those old computers, because a modern-ish PC is about 4uA.
Cool stuff. I really enjoyed this video.
Great to see this getting attention across the Atlantic. I've had a BBC Model B for a while but got frustrated because I can't get the screen to output properly via RGB/SCART on anything other than text mode. This might encourage me to seek out more info.
I went through school on these computers (primary school to highschool) there were books that we would get from the library and copy basic code from the book to create games on the computer. one hidden feature we found (bear in mind this was 30 years ago) was if you press shift and any function key then type it would change the colour of the text. (great for text based RPG) from memory 0 would make them flash.
I can hardly believe it's been over 40 years since I took delivery of my BBC Model B -- about the only thing in my life I actually preordered. Had to wait months before it finally arrived, but it was worth the wait. Sadly, I sold it a few years later after upgrading to the 16 bit generation -- an Atari ST.
The BBC was an excellent gaming machine for its time, and as others have already suggested, you should definitely have a session with Elite, perhaps the most famous game for the BBC Computer, and Chuckie Egg. David Braben, who co-created Elite with Ian Bell, is considered one of the most influential game developers of all time, and was a cofounder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation to boot. Elite pushed the BBC hardware to the limit, actually switching graphics modes mid-frame to provide high-res black and white wireframe graphics for the main display while using a lower resoution 4 colour mode for the cockpit control panel, not to mention programming an "open world" universe with two thousand unique star systems to visit and trade with in about 24k of RAM available for the game code and data.
There's also some excellent versions of the arcade classics from Acornsoft like Snapper (Pacman), Planetoid (Defender), Hopper (Frogger), and Arcadians (Galaxian). The Repton line of games are also classics, and there's dozens more, too numerous to mention.
It really was an excellent machine for its time, and while in hindsight the BBC probably should have opted for a cheaper design for its educational computer (e.g. from Acorn's rival, Sinclair) I certainly never regretted forking over 335 quid of my hard earned summer job income for it while I was a student.
That was an intense keyboard fixing, was in the point of my seat.
Nothing wrong with washing a mobo. Done it with many machines, both old and new. I usually soak in alcohol afterwards to remove any water or soap residue.
But then i let them sit for a couple of days, to ensure that ALL of the liquids have evaporated.
Thank you so much for all your videos! I will always be a supporter of your awesome entertainment >:) Gotta keep those 8 bits together!
Funny to think that in the 64 bits of todays computers, the first 8-bits are always these machines ^_^ (so to speak)
Thanks Adrian!
You're welcome and thanks!
The music is great. Very up and shiny. heh. Thanks for the great vid.
That brought back a memory of when I was at school... we had a network of beeb b's controlled by a master with a co processor and a big noisy winchester in a huge enclosure... for part of our course work we had to design then build a teletext system to browse and book holidays or something like..... I also have 2 beebs in the loft and a cumana 'I think' 5¼ drive... I keep thinking of powering them up but never have....😅 keep em coming...
I always wanted a Beeb and the master was I suppose the ultimate version, but I could never afford one so had species and C64s. I think they are so gorgeous and beautifully designed and built. Really enjoyed watching this, thanks so much!
Nicely done! The Coleco Adam has a lot of really intersting things about it and you don't need the printer anymore to run it. The keyboard is really nice too.
Were you watching a different video to the rest of us?
@@SimonSideburns it's a running gag.
Hi Adrian. You have a couple of options when reading disks on the BBC.
*. will read the disk contents.
Shift+Break will run a bootstrap from the floppy if enabled.
As well as the LOAD command, you also have CHAIN which will chain together a number of files on the disk using a primary load file.
I programmed these at school in 1980’s. Literally every British school had a couple of these. BASIC was such a good foundation as a developer in my career.
Ceefax/Teletext really felt amazing at the time. A very early taste of the internet. I've forgotten them now but until not that long ago I could recall all the page numbers for things I was interested in (401 for TV listing I think!)
Remember the games on Ceefax? :)
I still use 'Teletekst' every day in the Netherlands. Fist thing I check in the morning. 101 News, 601 Sports, 801 Football, 818 Football live scores, 703 Weather forecast today, 704 Weather forecast week, 705 Current weather measurements 730 Traffic Information. Only takes two minutes and I'm ready to start the day.
@@almerian It is often the first thing I do after waking up, even before watching the morning news bulletins. The remote control is ideal when you are still lying horizontally.
Excellent content. The BBC Micro range were/are truly fantastic machines. I have just finished restoring a very sick BBC model B adding an RPI as a second co processor to the tube IF (running my old basic code at nearly 1ghz is a hoot), DFS, and a micro SD interface that has truck loads of software. Moving on to the Apple ][ line of computers now which is a system I am totally new to.
I recall the great excitement when my primary school got their first BBC Micro in the early 80's. If you were lucky, you got rewarded with some time working on the machine! I don't know much about MicroFax, but I did work on Teletext decoder chips in my first job out of university in the 90's. Interesting to see two old technologies in the same video!
Congrats on getting this beautiful machine up and running again!
Wrt composite video, the mod will do the job but it'll be to the detriment of picture quality (ask me how I know). Best to use the RGB, or better still an RGB2HDMI. That way you get to keep the wonderfully crisp monochrome output on composite whilst enjoying wonderfully crisp colour via RGB.
Just to repeat myself from another thread, I think Adrian's Acorn monitor has the same kind of DIN connector used on the ADF32 monitor supplied with the Master Compact. So, the appropriate 6-pin to 8-pin cable might well do the trick.
35:00 If you hold ctrl while pressing break, thats the machine reset sequence. Saves having to turn it off/on in most circumstances.
Such an Amazing machine which shows great British Engineering... Thanks for restoring this one Adrian.. great video...
Great Video - I love old 80s computers - always wanted a BBC Micro ( so I could do my own Ceefax - and add music ! ) but always too expensive
Is there a jumper or solder pads behind the composite jack like the model b if there is if you add a jumper or short the pads you should get colour
I fashioned a replacement battery for my M128 with a small lithium-ion cell, with the diode, and used a miniature USB to lithium charger module to take the 5V supply and charge the battery in a controlled manner. It fits in the side to the left of the keyboard where the original 3AA battery pack lay.
I've got a few model B's, a couple of B+'s and a Master. Love (non-destuctively) upgrading them and designing new hardware for them as well.
Really love your videos! Which reminded me that I have a Philips P2000 in the shed. If you are interested I would be happy to send it your way. 😊