Off Topic - BBC Micro Books
Apple2Steward
number of BBC Micro books (15 or so). I saved these from a
thrift store shelf and still have them sitting around.
If someone wants them, I can ship them.
Thanks.
jonny
billion devices today.
You should try posting in comp.sys.acorn.misc
Apple2Steward
news:hebrfb$bng$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
Thanks - posting made as suggested.
larwe
> The BBC Micro, the first machine to use an ARM processor as used in a
> billion devices today.
Well, except that the BBC Micro did not use an ARM - it was 6502 (or
6502+coprocessor) based. The Archimedes was an evolutionary descendant
of the Beeb, yes, but "BBC Micro" means either a BBC Model A, Model B
or Master.
Michael J. Mahon
I'd be interested in them--and I'll be happy to reimburse
you for postage.
I'm at the un-munged email address above.
Thanks!
-michael
NadaNet and AppleCrate II: parallel computing for Apple II computers!
Home page: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon
"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."
Apple2Steward
"Apple2Steward" <no...@none.net> wrote in message
news:hebtsf$2db$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
Thanks to all that responded. The books are spoken for.
Mark McDougall
> Well, except that the BBC Micro did not use an ARM - it was 6502 (or
> 6502+coprocessor) based. The Archimedes was an evolutionary descendant
> of the Beeb, yes, but "BBC Micro" means either a BBC Model A, Model B
> or Master.
As an aside, I understand that there was an ARM co-processor (via the
so-called "Tube") available for the BBC at some point?!?
Regards,
--
| Mark McDougall | "Electrical Engineers do it
| <http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug> | with less resistance!"
Eric Rucker
> As an aside, I understand that there was an ARM co-processor (via the
> so-called "Tube") available for the BBC at some point?!?
If there's any errors, someone please correct me, I'm just going based
on what I've read.
Acorn's strategy for testing out new processors for the BBC's
successor was to put them in a second processor unit. That way, they
could work with their existing environment, but new hardware. Their OS
was designed very well to abstract hardware away from software, so
they could get away with this with only porting to the new CPU
architecture, and the host 6502 handled all I/O.
They also evaluated the NatSemi 32016 and the Intel 80186 in that
manner. The 32016 (and 68000, for that matter,) had some very slow
uninterruptible instructions meaning that it, at 6 MHz, couldn't do
double-density disk writing in software... when their 2 MHz 6502
could. x86 lost because Intel wouldn't license the 80286 to them,
they'd only sell Acorn chips.
I don't recall ever reading why they didn't ultimately go with the
65816 (although they did use it in one machine,) but they visited WDC,
and saw what sort of resources they were using... so Acorn decided to
just design a 32-bit RISC chip, and the rest is history. First code
ran in a behavioral model implemented in 808 lines of BBC BASIC
running on the 6502, then they got a chip under 2 years later, almost
everything worked first try, and ARM Evaluation System was made using
it. Then, they made the rest of the ARM chipset (a custom MMU that
could address 4 MiB RAM (and 4 MEMC1as could be in a system,) a custom
I/O controller, and a custom video/audio controller capable of
1152x864 monochrome, or as much as 640x480 8-bit color and eight
channels of digital audio at 41.667 kHz (or one channel at 333.333
kHz, or anything in between - completely impractical, but it can do
it,)) and built the first prototype machine, the Archimedes 500,
around it. 1987, it came out in the Archimedes 305, 310, 410 (which
may not have actually been sold,) and 440.
It's probably not healthy for me to know this much about machines that
I've only gotten interested in this year, but hey... (And, to be fair,
I did have to look up the VIDC1a's maximum audio sample frequency.)
sicklittlemonkey
> It's probably not healthy for me to know this much about machines that
> I've only gotten interested in this year, but hey... (And, to be fair,
> I did have to look up the VIDC1a's maximum audio sample frequency.)
All good stuff! Acorn did everything right with the Archimedes really.
Including putting a BBC emulator app with the OS in ROM, so there was
a reasonable upgrade path for their earlier 8-bit users.
If only our "favourite" hardware vendor had had such foresight!
Cheers,
Nick.
Eric Rucker
> All good stuff! Acorn did everything right with the Archimedes really.
> Including putting a BBC emulator app with the OS in ROM, so there was
> a reasonable upgrade path for their earlier 8-bit users.
IIRC, 65Host was never in ROM, but it was on disk all along. (Of
course, they also made 65Tube, which simulated a tube-attached 6502.
There's a slight difference in functionality there - 65Host emulates a
BBC Micro, whereas 65Tube emulates a 6502 second processor attached to
the Archimedes. This means that apps running in 65Tube can use the
Archimedes video and sound hardware. I think it was done as a
convenient way for developers to port software from the BBC without
having to convert to ARM assembly, but still being able to use the
rest of the machine as intended.)
But, they did quite a lot of stuff wrong. At launch, they didn't have
an OS, so they took the old BBC OS that they had ported to ARM,
slapped together a primitive GUI in BASIC (which had a file manager
and some desk accessories, but wasn't a desktop environment, just a
launcher much like the Mac or GS finder, and you couldn't use the desk
accessories outside of that BASIC GUI,) and blew some ROMs. They did
remedy that a year later with RISC OS 2, which was really
multitasking, and introduced some legitimate innovations, although
there were some major flaws (poor memory protection, cooperative
multitasking) that survive in the OS to this day.
And, of course, they didn't market the damn thing much outside of the
UK. I know it did get sold in Germany, Australia, and New Zealand, and
I'd be surprised if it wans't sold in Italy (Olivetti owned them at
the time.) They did get it approved as a school computer in Canada,
but I don't see any evidence that any actually got sold, and they
never tried to bring them here to the US, after the epic fail that was
the US version of the BBC B. (Basically, the Beeb ran on the strength
of being sponsored by the BBC, and being in schools, justifying the
high price. No such advantage in the US, where Apple IIs had twice or
four times the RAM and the school advantage, and Commodore 64s were
cheaper and had twice the RAM.)
Oh, and Apple did EVENTUALLY get that foresight... they managed two
CPU architecture jumps, both of them being (relatively) seamless. But,
I have other issues with Apple, so...
Calibrator
>
> And, of course, they didn't market the damn thing much outside of the
> UK. I know it did get sold in Germany, Australia, and New Zealand, and
> I'd be surprised if it wans't sold in Italy (Olivetti owned them at
> the time.)
In Germany they never did well. There were some specialized
shops and clubs but the Archimedes was no contender to the
Atari ST and, later, the Amiga 500/2000 series.
The Apple IIgs didn't do well either as it was very expensive and
most people didn't have an Apple II+/e/c upgrade path anyway.
Then the PCs came and all other systems, except the Mac, died
more or less quickly. Commodore and Atari at least tried to fight
- though much can be said about their marketing and technical
decisions - but Acorn never really entered the battlefield... ;-)
bye
Marcus
Toinet
it was sold in France too and made the cover of the IT magazine SVM.
it was a very powerful engineers' computer with few software.
antoine
sicklittlemonkey
> IIRC, 65Host was never in ROM, but it was on disk all along.
Ah yes, you're right, I had forgotten there were a few disks supplied.
> They did remedy that a year later with RISC OS 2
I had an A5000, so came in at RISC OS 3 and missed the problems you
mention. Sure it would have been better if the OS was pre-emptively
multitasked etc, but these things didn't bother me much at the time.
The Amiga had the edge in some areas, but the Archimedes managed to
compete for a few years there with its strong CPU performance and
various innovations, and many Amiga games were ported to it. Until as
Marcus said, the PC killed them all.
> Oh, and Apple did EVENTUALLY get that foresight... they managed two
> CPU architecture jumps, both of them being (relatively) seamless. But,
> I have other issues with Apple, so...
Yes ... eventually. ;-)
Cheers,
Nick.
Eric Rucker
> I had an A5000, so came in at RISC OS 3 and missed the problems you
> mention. Sure it would have been better if the OS was pre-emptively
> multitasked etc, but these things didn't bother me much at the time.
> The Amiga had the edge in some areas, but the Archimedes managed to
> compete for a few years there with its strong CPU performance and
> various innovations, and many Amiga games were ported to it. Until as
> Marcus said, the PC killed them all.
Of course, I missed the problems with Arthur completely, too - I
didn't get real hardware until April of this year, with a used RiscPC
with 4.02 and Select 4 (RISC OS 6) Preview. ;)
sicklittlemonkey
> Of course, I missed the problems with Arthur completely, too - I
> didn't get real hardware until April of this year, with a used RiscPC
> with 4.02 and Select 4 (RISC OS 6) Preview. ;)
Ah yes, I remember the name Arthur now, said disparagingly. ;-)
And the Risc PC seemed like a great machine, though I never owned one.
A friend and I had a contact at Acorn NZ, and when the first Risc PC
arrived they called us in to test some software.
Our Apple II emulator (written in ARM assembler) failed to run because
the new ARM had a different pipeline, so some calculations using the
PC register were off. We fixed this and tested again, to see the
emulator which had run at near 1MHz on the A5000 run at several times
normal Apple II speed. Email me if you want to check it out.
Hmm, now I feel the need to buy a Risc PC too!
Cheers,
Nick.