Re: bbc emulator

[Pigeon <jah.pigeon@ukonline.co.uk>]

On Fri, Feb 14, 2003 at 12:48:14PM -0800, Craig Dickson wrote:
> Vineet Kumar wrote:
> 
> > * Caoilte O'Connor (me@caoilte.org) [030214 03:46]:
> > > Hey All,
> > > I have a hankering for a bbc emulator, but was a bit shocked to just
> > > realise that there isn't one in sid.
> > 
> > ] 2 definitions found
> > ] 
> > ] From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (09 FEB 02) [foldoc]:
> > ] 
> > ]   BBC
> > ]   
> > ]      {British Broadcasting Corporation}
> > 
> > Well, surely that' can't be right.
> > 
> > ]   
> > ]   
> > ] 
> > ] From V.E.R.A. -- Virtual Entity of Relevant Acronyms December 2001 [vera]:
> > ] 
> > ]   BBC
> > ]           Broadband Bearer Capability (B-ISDN)
> > 
> > That I don't quite understand.  Is that what you mean?
> 
> I think he's referring to a 1980s British-made microcomputer
> colloquially called "BBC". I don't recall offhand what its real name
> was.

It was called the BBC Microcomputer; it was made by Acorn and
sponsored or something by the BBC, as an educational thing. Schools
got grants to buy either BBCs or RM 380Zs - nobody bought the RM. It
used a 6502, and had an interface to hook up second processor units;
you could get a faster 6502, a Z80 or a 32016 32-bit chip. Apart from
being a bit short of program memory when you used hi-res graphics
modes, the BBC was the absolute dog's bollocks of home micros. It was
the only one to have any approximation to a real operating system as
opposed to a BASIC interpreter and very little else.

Pigeon