Acorn BBC Microcomputer Model B

The BBC Micro was my newest acquisition and the first Acorn machine I had owned in quite a while. Anyone who went to school in the UK during the 1980s will likely recognise this rugged workhorse instantly. So far I've bought it an MMC Card reader and an RGB to SCART lead. There are lots of mods and upgrades available.

I had installed some Sideways Ram. This is useful for some games, but I'm not much of a gamer. The SW Ram can also be used to load ROM images and then use them as if you had the ROM installed inside your computer. I used to use it frequently to load the Beebug help ROM.

Also installed was a raspberry pi which is used to emulate various processors. These include a version of the BBC Microcomputer's own 6502 processor, but runs considerably faster than the hardware one. The Pi also allows you to run BBC Basic Programs on an emulated ARM processor at crazy speeds.

The machine is no longer around. It started to have problems and eventually I got fed up with it. I still have the case and keyboard, but these days it houses a ZX Spectrum clone known as a Harlequin.

April 2024