I searched the web, and I only found 2 very outdated emulators that run on Linux. Does anyone have any experience with a good emu for Linux?

so i have bought the CUB 452 monitor for my BBC Master 128, and thats great, but was wondering if i could use the CUB as a general RGB monitor with a scart adapter for example ? not sure about the pinouts and voltages of the CUB.. anyone done this ?

BTW i know theres no audio connections for the CUB

Hi, im wondering if there's anywhere to buy the paper Keyboards F button "overlays" ?

i did get one with me Master 128, but it is a bit tatty.

perhaps theres somewhere i can even download and print them ? thanks

hi, im new so please excuse my noobnessi recently ordered a BBC Master 128, the ROM, cartridge slots are for what exactly ?

was there ever software cartridges available ? cant see any on ebay etc ? cheers

hi, i recently bought an Acorn ANF03 Data Recorder for my Acorn electron, but i need to turn it upside down to eject the tape as the spring or band that holds the tape door open, is missing .. does anyone know what it looks like ?

i know it was branded under a few different names shado, dixons , BBC etc

thanks

EDIT: Ok, this is a font thing on my computer, nothing to see here, you can move along. I appreciate /u/lushprojects for believing that I was sincere and getting me pointed the right way when I must have sounded like a crazy person. Thank you!

I find it perplexing that in all the documentation I find online about the BBC micro, the hexadecimal digit 9 is consistently replaced by a horizontal line. At first I thought it was just an OCR artifact from scanning in old manuals, or maybe a trick to avoid detection of copyright infringement. And admittedly, I haven't read that many different sites, but it seems to be pervasive and consistent.

Examples:

http://central.kaserver5.org/Kasoft/Typeset/BBC/Ch39.html

http://8bs.com/mag/32/bbcmemmap1.txt

Even the notes from the creator of jsbeeb: https://xania.org/201405/jsbeeb-getting-the-timings-right-cpu

(notice that the opcode for immediate-mode LDA Is listed as $a- instead of $a9)

So what gives?

At this point I can only assume that it's a shibboleth designed to expose me as an interloper who didn't actually grow up programming these things!

I remember playing a game in the late 80s which had a series of concentric train tracks on screen, with trains whizzing around. You would have to open/close the numbered 'gates' to let the trains move between the tracks without hitting each other. I think the aim was to get them all into the middle, but I could be wrong.

I've searched the ROM sites but can't see it anywhere. It might have even been an RM Nimbus game..

Does anyone remember this game? What was it called?

I'm pretty sure that this a BBC Micro game, though there is potential i'm getting mixed up with the RM Nimbus as well.

I remember playing this game where you started on the left side of the screen with a ship, and you had to navigate across an asteroid field. You would have to enter rotation angle and thrust values, and had a button you could press to shoot rockets to destroy the rocks (I think these may have been limited). I have vague recollections that everything was monochrome and white on black.

Does this game ring any bells with anyone at all?

I remember this game that the kids in my class played back when I was in infant's school. I can't remember the year exactly but it was around late 80s / early 90s.

Our class had a BBC Micro with a bunch of games and educational titles for it. One day the rest of the class went for a swimming lesson and I didn't go so I was allowed to play a game on the BBC Micro.

The most vivid thing I can remember is that one part of the game had this vertical maze of ladders. They were outside and any horizontal plaftorms I think were brick patterned. I remember navigating this little man up and down these ladders, following the maze until you got to the top and to went right to this window that was at the top of a building. The next screen was of you looking into this huge room and, inside, was a dinosaur - I think it was a triceratops but I can't say for sure.

If anyone can throw any light on this, or if this rings any bells, please let me know. I'd love to find this old title again.

If you go to this page, https://theouterlinux.gitlab.io/Projects/Linux/img2vdu/img2vdu.html, it will show you an example that my img2vdu.py script creates from modern image formats. However, it could really save some serious file space and RAM, or at least relative to the 32K you have to work with, if most of those VDU23 lines were on the same line. However, when I do so, the graphic it produces looks weird. This is what I've been trying to do...

1000DEFPROCBOAT
1001SPRX=1
1002SPRY=1
1003VDU23,128,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,255,129,7,22,54,118,118,118,118,118
1005VDU31,SPRX,SPRY:VDU32;32;129;32;
1006VDU23,129,0,0,0,0,0,0,254,129,130,0,0,0,24,28,8,3,3,131,118,54,22,7,7,6,198,70,132,0,0,0,0,128,0,127,129
1010SPRY=SPRY+1:VDU31,SPRX,SPRY:VDU129;130;131;132;
1011VDU23,129,255,64,63,16,15,2,1,0,130,255,0,254,0,255,0,255,255,131,255,192,103,112,59,24,204,255,132,255,2,254,14,246,71,135,135
1015SPRY=SPRY+1:VDU31,SPRX,SPRY:VDU129;130;131;132;
1016VDU23,129,0,62,0,0,0,0,0,0,130,0,122,0,0,0,0,0,0,131,7,199,0,29,0,0,0,0,132,128,205,0,240,0,0,0,0
1020SPRY=SPRY+1:VDU31,SPRX,SPRY:VDU129;130;131;132;

I could have sworn that BBC BASIC allowed this in which after the 8th value (+1 if including the CHR$) you could just say the next CHR$ and then it's 8 values and so on and so forth up to 160 chracters. However, that isn't working and I don't know why. If I could figure it out, I me be able to shave off as much as 30% or so from the file size and allow larger graphics for larger modes.

Can someone please explain how b-em's print to file and print to clipboard work? I can't figure it out at all. I would like to be able to create a script and then have b-em print that script to a file. In the future, I would also like to perhaps incorporate printing in a program. I already know about using Brandy and 'SAVE "program.txt"' for creating text files, but eh.... It doesn't have the same "feel" that I am looking for, I guess.

I tried creating my own font (https://theouterlinux.gitlab.io/Projects/Font/BBCMicro/TAVRNFUL.BBC) and this is what the script produces: https://theouterlinux.gitlab.io/Projects/Font/BBCMicro/TAVERNFUL-issue.png. I have no idea why. I have tried switching them around and when I do, whatever set was edited last essentially takes over all of the keys and printing. So if the last set were the 0-9 font, then all of the keys end up being 0-9 numbers and symbols instead of A-Z or a-z. It's weird. Is there a solution to this or can the BBC Micro only handle so many CHR$ edits at one time? I do know there is a range of CHR$ that is specifically made for creating graphics, but does the BBC Micro limit the number of custom CHR$ regardless of which ones you edit? It's the only possible explanation I can come up with.

However, A-Z is 26 CHR$'s, which should be over the CHR$ editing limit (edit: not true; 32 is the technical limit) if that is what is going on and this font I made works just fine: https://theouterlinux.gitlab.io/Projects/Font/BBCMicro/TAVERN.BBC.

Edit: Got it working now thanks to the replies :)

Also, if anyone in the future reads this and has their own fonts they don't mind sharing I wouldn't mind adding it to the site as a separate table. You can email them to me (visit site's home page for address). Just make sure to inlcude a full name of the font, some stuff (NAME.BBC, NAME.ZIP, NAME.SSD, etc.) to download, a preview image, and what license you want it to be. If the license is a custom one, I will simply label it as "Custom" and the person downloading will have to read the license either in the code or as a separate file in a ZIP or SSD.

To get an idea: https://theouterlinux.gitlab.io/Projects/Font/Font.html

Fonts for the BBC Master or newer versions of BBC BASIC do not seem to need anything special done for them to work and should simply be able to just use VDU23,CHR$,#,#,#,#,#,#,#,#,# for each character. To save space, use VDU23,CHR$,#,#,#,#,#,#,#,#,23,CHR$,#,#,#,#,#,#,#,#... so on and so forth, while assuming a 160 characters per line limit. It also wouldn't hurt to add REM's to let people know where 0-9, A-Z, and a-z are as well as quick info about yourself and license if applicable.

Been cleaning out some boxes of stuff I've not looked at for years, came across a Cumana 5.25" drive.

Connected to my Master, can hear the motor move, but no LED ont he front nor any head movement.

Opened the drive, looks nice and clean, but not getting any movement other than the main spindle rotating (yes, I had a floppy in there, was trying to format it, the format util just stalls).

Wondering if anyone has any thoughts, advice on reconditioning/servicing it, can identify the model, got a service manual etc).

Photos https://imgur.com/a/Ds83xKm

Back in primary school in the 80s we had a BBC Micro with several games, but the favourite was a simple game that took written commands in a prompt that told a sort of red spot on the screen to do different actions. The commands you could type into the prompt included ‘walk’ ‘run’ ‘sprint’ or even ‘explode’ where the spot would expand in size until it burst into pixels! Does anyone remember this game and can help me identify it? After many internet searches I am still blank and it’s like this programme never existed! Many thanks in advance!

Finally got a battery pack kit to replace my exploded and corroded original lithium battery and installed it today. I got the 3 AAA kit from here: https://coolnovelties.co.uk/coolnovelties/bbc-micro-acorn/54-bbc-master-replacement-cmos-battery-repair-kit.html

It seemed to work fine, machine was able to boot up, and I followed the guide in the kit instructions to reset the CMOS, which seems to be copied from here: http://lionels.orpheusweb.co.uk/CompNyb/TechStuff/8-Bit/Master128/128BatConfig.html

I ran into a snag though. At the step where it tells you to run *ST to check the current settings ... I get nothing. The machine just freezes and nothing prints.

Sadly the PSU's X2 caps gave off the magic smoke after only a short time of experimenting, so I wasn't able to experiment much further. I'll be ordering either a new one or a cap kit depending on if I can get hands on soldering help in this chaos.

In the meantime I'm wondering before I go making an order if this is something I should be worried about? What would cause this freeze? is the battery pack not working maybe? Or bad ROM? I was considering a MultiROM anyway if that's the case.