#microvitec

[retrocgads]

UK 1985

[classictechnology]

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De Acorn Electron

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[zerohour1974]

Day 22 : I never got the fascination with the BBC Micro

Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Day 22 of the daily blog challenge for the month of January.

Today’s topic is pretty self explanatory... The BBC Micro was introduced in December 1981 and I believe it cost around £250 for the Model A and around £350 for the Model B.

Now I know they were introduced into virtually every school in the UK at the time and ours was no exception.

However I always found the BBC a very dull and bland machine even then.

Now I admit I was an owner of a ZX Spectrum but I never felt envious of BBC owners.

They may have had Microvitec monitors and 5 1/4" floppy disc drives but they seemed extraneous to me given the very limited graphical capability of the machine.

I remember trying Repton on one. It may look like a vague Boulder Dash clone but it was far less exciting.  

I'm sure someone will point out the important element I am missing in Repton but nope it just never clicked for me.

Another game they raved on about and still do to this day which I found about as interesting as paint drying was Elite.

The space trading game that has topped many gaming charts for some god unknown reason. I have never played a game that is as slow and uninteresting as it in my life.

Maybe I'm being harsh on the machine as for many this may have been their first opening into things like the world of BASIC.

However as I said the other day I am not really a programmer type so BASIC was very dull to me.

The BBC always seemed to be an underpowered machine. It was a 2Mhz 6502 processor machine.

Now don't get me wrong it seemed to have plenty of expansion and I was very impressed when I think I saw one with a Ceefax receiving card. You could even edit and make your own Ceefax pages with it I believe.

Now obviously as I said it was aimed squarely at the educational market and to be frank if you owned a BBC at the time you were rather middle class.

Maybe that’s another factor as I was just a common kid with my £99 Spectrum so there was definitely a separating factor.

BBC Micro owners always believed they were slightly better than the common Speccy owner because they were featured in programs such as Micro Live.

I have since gone back and tried to see what the fascination was using emulators such as Beeb Em and I really just don't seem to get the magic.

The games are weak, the machine itself while it got better over time with the BBC Master models. Never seemed to click with me.

Some machines I would happily like to own but funnily enough the BBC Micro machines are not highly upon that list.

Maybe I'm missing something and one day it will finally click. As much as I understand the historical significance of the BBC Micro in the history of the micro computing world. Sorry it really just doesn't do anything to endear itself to me.

[retrocgads]

UK 1985

[retrocgads]

UK 1985

[retrocgads]

UK 1983

[retrocgads]

UK 1994

[retrocgads]

UK 1985