Skip to main content

The BBC Micro - happy days!

The men responsible for the creation of the BBC Micro are meeting up at the Science Museum in London today, to celebrate its creation.

I have many happy memories of the BBC Micro - my Dad was lucky enouguh to have an employer who understood what a revolution these 'computers' were likely to cause in the future. In the mid 1980s (I think) they set up a programme to allow staff to purchase a BBC Micro to use at home and educate themselves on. The initial purchase was actually made by the company, and the (then huge) cost of the Micro was taken out of the salary in instalments. Those who took them up on this offer got a snazzy machine to play with, and I can't say that being able to programme in Basic ever harmed their career prospects!

A side effect of this is that I got to come home from school and , if Dad wasn't using it, play games on the Micro. It was connected to an old TV which was used as the monitor, sitting on a wooden plinth that my Dad had made that fitted over that large 'bum'. I don't remember there being any more colour than a black background and green text, despite the fact that it was a colour TV. Text based games could be loaded onto it (I thought at first they were cassette based, but now I remember they were the original 'floppy discs', which meant they were portable and easy to load.), and my favourite game was definitely Eliza. Me and my friends spent many hours trying to wind her up, and feeling very naughty when we used a swear word! I almost learned to touch type on there too, but was far more interested in playing than typing...

I learned how to programme in Basic on the BBC Micro, which certainly helped me out when I took Computing in secondary school and we were using BBC Micros. Unfortunately, our teacher wasn't actually a Computing teacher, but a Maths teacher who'd done a weekend course. So, when I got stuck, I was stuck for good. I think a lot of peoples terror of hitting the 'wrong' key also comes from BBC Micros - you hit the wrong thing at the wrong time and EVERYTHING went!!

Now, that BBC is up in the loft, securely packaged and insulated. It lives along with various other old computers (Commodore 64 and perhaps an Atari?), in a box sealed by my brother, and bearing the immortal words "Not to be opened until 2010".

The time for opening draws near...maybe we could open it early and take the BBC on a daytrip to next years exhibition at the Science Museum?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When mentoring malfunctions

Mentoring's one of the standard activities that you'll come across in the information profession. We're very caring and sharing like that, wanting to support people in their professional development. As you start your career as an information professional, you'll regularly hear the advice: get a mentor. Or, as you advance in your career and seem to be doing well, you'll be advised to become a mentor. This is fine: yes, both being mentored and being a mentor can be excellent relationships, and very useful for both parties involved. But.....mentoring relationships are like any other relationships: they can go wrong. And they can go wrong in a whole lot of ways. I've heard of mentors and mentees whose relationships have malfunctioned due to mismanagement, wrong focus, disinterest, and inappropriate behaviour. Like any other relationship, bullying and abuse can happen in mentor/mentee arrangements, but it can be very difficult for the participants to escape t...
1 comment
Read more

Careering along

When I look around at the activities of information professional groups, it seems that there’s a disparity. There’s quite often a lot of support and funding available for those who’re just starting out in the profession, but a desert of nothingness for those of us who’re “just getting on with it”. If you’re a new professional, you have lots of groups to support you as you progress in your early career, various prize funds available for essay and report writing, access to bursaries for conference attendance, eligibility for awards for being new and enthusiastic. But what do you get when you’re past that bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed first 5 years (5 years seems to be the approximate cut-off point for becoming “established” and no longer new). What happens when you’ve already received a bursary from an organisation earlier in your career and so wouldn’t be eligible for one now, meaning you’re not able to attend events or training? When you’re heavily involved in a project but not at ...
16 comments
Read more

The mysteries of cataloguing

Cataloguing: an arcane art, where each piece of punctuation is significant, and commas and semi colons are all-powerful. Well, they are in "proper" libraries, where in-depth research of esoteric points goes on, and the precise spelling of Christian names, and information such as when a person lived and died can be crucial in pinpointing obscure facts. Here, we have our own catalogue system. It doesn't have a name, but if it did, it would probably be something along the lines of "I need this book NOW, no I don't care about the precise spelling of the authors middle name, or their date of birth." I know, I know, it's not snappy, but it's accurate. Cataloguing demands are different in a commercial law firm: we don't care about much more than what it's about, who wrote, when, and what jurisdiction it covers. And what we really, really care about is "where the hell is it". Law books are amazing: they have the power to move themselves f...
12 comments
Read more