EMULATION
Run a classic BBC Micro under Ubuntu
Les Pounder reminisces about that one time when he caused a core meltdown in a nuclear reactor, then flew away in a spaceship.
Credit: www.mkw.me.uk/beebem
OUR EXPERT
Les Pounder is associate editor at Tom’s Hardware and a freelance creative technologist. He blogs about his retro tech discoveries at bigl.es.
T
he BBC Micro was a popular fixture in 1980s classrooms in the UK. It was developed by Acorn Computers after successfully winning the interest of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) Computer Literacy project with its hastily created Acorn Proton computer. This catapulted Acorn’s fortunes and saw the BBC Micro become a popular, if expensive choice for home computing enthusiasts.
The BBC Micro was also quickly adopted by educational bodies, and children (including us!) learnt programming via this machine. One of this author’s first encounters with a BBC Micro was controlling a simulated nuclear reactor that may have gone critical due to a careless mistake.
The BBC Micro was powered by a MOS Technology 6502/6512 processor running at 2MHz. It came with a plethora of ports, some providing access to a GPIO of sorts: a 15-pin analogue port typically used in science experiments, and a user port which has a digital interface that can be used to control basic electronics.
The most accessible means of demonstrating the power of BBC BASIC and BBCEdit is via the good ol’ 10 PRINT.
Initially, the BBC Micro had two “main” models: the 16KB Model A and the 32KB Model B. But future releases saw further models: the B+, Master and Plus 32. All of these models saw expanded memory options as well as additional ports and functionality while retaining compatibility with the core machines. Fans of the Raspberry Pi will recognise the “Model” names because the Raspberry Pi was directly influenced by the BBC Micro. Yet the legacy of the BBC Micro isn’t just limited to this. The BBC Micro was also used as the test bed for the ARM CPU architecture – a CPU architecture present in the myriad of portable devices that are now a massive part of our everyday lives.
The BBC Micro was a beast! Built to survive the rigours of school children and featuring a great keyboard, this machine was the business!
The BBC Micro lasted from 1981 to 1994, but its legacy has lived on and right now it’s enjoying a resurgence of interest, especially its fantastic BBC BASIC which is stored in ROM ready for use. Based upon the earlier Atom BASIC, BBC BASIC was developed by Sophie Wilson and colleagues at Cambridge University. BBC BASIC is simple to use, and “friendlier” to new users than many others of the era.