The BBC Micro - 30 years!

[Cody]

The BBC Micro... ahhh!

[Fatleaf]

Keeping the thread we also have.... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11082701

[Killer Wolf]

loved the Beeb, loved the BASIC. it's about the best language i've ever used, and probably the resent i don't like JS etc, lol.

[JazHaz]

OMG! 30 years? Has it been that long? I'm so old!

[DaddyHoggy]

OMG! 30 years? Has it been that long? I'm so old!

Most of us are...

(I was on a course last year - got talking to one of the American Developers, we swapped stories about our C64 days, both had visited the one in the Smithsonian in DC and I mentioned that I still had my original C64, still boxed, still working and offered to bring it in and show him. He was delighted and I duly turned up next day with said computer - not only in its original box, but in it's original shipping box - dated Jan 16th 1983 (our first was bought in Nov. 1982, but it died a few days after Christmas). One of the guys from Qinetiq who was also on the course leaned over, saw the date on the box and said, "Your computer is 3 years older than I am.")

[Thargoid]

First one I ever owned was a Vic 20 (now who's showing their age ). And learned to program on a Model B, BASIC is essentially the only computer language I ever learned (with me not pretending to know JS enough to claim to have learned it.

[DaddyHoggy]

First one I ever owned was a Vic 20 (now who's showing their age ). And learned to program on a Model B, BASIC is essentially the only computer language I ever learned (with me not pretending to know JS enough to claim to have learned it.

I had the keyboard and RAM cartridge for my Atari 2600 VCS - but couldn't program for toffee on that (c. 1979 - I was 8!), the C64 was the first proper computer I owned (from Christmas 1982 onwards) - C64 basic was a pig, a world of Peeks and Pokes and you definitely needed a copy of the Commodore 64 Reference Manual and a monthly subscription to Commodore User to get anywhere. I also bought "Simons' Basic" (cartridge) and "Simons' Basic Extension" (5.25" floppy) - which was good fun, before dabbling in Assembler - mainly to get faster, glitch free sprites and screen effects.

[drew]

One of the guys from Qinetiq who was also on the course leaned over, saw the date on the box and said, "Your computer is 3 years older than I am.")

Fab.

Some of the devs here don't even know what a BBC is. Infact, I don't think they realise there was an 8 bit age!

Cheers,

Drew.

[Killer Wolf]

i remember the school's PETs and getting them getting a ZX80.
the joys of early basic.
10 print "Killer Wolf"
20 goto 10

show kids today that, they're just not impressed.

[Selezen]

First one I ever owned was a Vic 20 (now who's showing their age)

Aha! I knew there had to be someone else!! I too began my computing life with a Vic20!

I fondly remember the main screen.

CBM Basic V2

3283 bytes free

Ready

>_

3283 bytes of memory. 3K. How far we've come.

[Thargoid]

Yup. And how people could write a whole game (a certain wireframe space trading game for example) in the kind of filespace that M$ Ooffice these days needs to save a blank empty file...

I always find it a sobering thought that there is probably more file storage capacity currently hanging on my keyring than was available in all the machines I had access to before I got to university.

I can remember the first gigabyte hard drive arriving at our uni lab (and the 8 hours it took to format the damn thing) and that was only about 15 years ago. I now have 8x that on my keys, and those are small flash drives by today's standards.

And don't get me started on the actual chips themselves (I work in the industry and the progress made in the basically one lifetime is staggering).

[CommonSenseOTB]

Vic 20 and TRS-80 model III(trash 80) were my first experiences programming with BASIC.

[DaddyHoggy]

Yup. And how people could write a whole game (a certain wireframe space trading game for example) in the kind of filespace that M$ Ooffice these days needs to save a blank empty file...

I always find it a sobering thought that there is probably more file storage capacity currently hanging on my keyring than was available in all the machines I had access to before I got to university.

I can remember the first gigabyte hard drive arriving at our uni lab (and the 8 hours it took to format the damn thing) and that was only about 15 years ago. I now have 8x that on my keys, and those are small flash drives by today's standards.

And don't get me started on the actual chips themselves (I work in the industry and the progress made in the basically one lifetime is staggering).

I was at a workshop on Wednesday - with IPG (the creators of CarMaker and TruckMaker) - they let me (and everybody else in the room) keep the thumb sticks that had an eval copy of the CarMaker software on it - to my delight it was a 4GB stick. Last year Saab Training gave me some white papers and a Demo video on a 2GB stick and a year before that Boeing gave me some photos for my research on a 1GB for me to keep. So I'm quite looking forward to my first free 8GB stick in 2012...

(Having just checked my Keyring I have access to 10GB: 4GB IPG stick, 4GB Rhienmettal stick (very lovely chrome job - also a freebie) and the 2GB Saab Stick - I used to have a 2GB Microsoft stick as another freebie - it had a 300K white paper for ESP on it - and like ESP it spontaneously combusted - I kid you not - it started to smoke when it plugged in to a work PC shortly after they gave it to me)

(The first ever Hard Drive I encountered was in 1984 at School - we had a very progressive Computers Teacher - we had our own Intranet running on a suite of BBC Model Bs - with a BBC Master hooked up to a 5MB Winchester Hard Drive. My first ever personally owned Hard Drive was a A590 for my Amiga A500 - a whopping 30MB. I still have my first ever laptop - a HP 800CT it has a massive 1.4GB HD!!!!)

[Killer Wolf]

http://www.yellow-llama.com/whats-being ... his-plane/

[Selezen]

(Having just checked my Keyring I have access to 10GB: 4GB IPG stick, 4GB Rhienmettal stick (very lovely chrome job - also a freebie) and the 2GB Saab Stick

Oh dear. I probably shouldn't say this but in my jacket pocket right now I have:
2x 2GB PNY sticks - one for my portable email app and one for car MP3 music
1x 4GB PNY stick, containing nothing, really
1x 8GB Learning Tree freebie stick, won on a VB.NET course in London 2 months ago
1x 16GB Sandisk Cruzer stick on which I store all of my important files (including WIP novel, 3D models, all Elite/Oolite data, artwork, various project data and some non-confidential work stuff)
1x 12GB Maxell portable mini HDD, on which I store documentation for various appliances

In the two breast pockets I have:
1x 320GB Maxtor portable HDD on which I store movies and other multimedia info
1x 250GB Seagate portable HDD on which I store my full MP3 collection and eBooks (almost full).

I win.