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I picked up an Oric-1 recently (it was one of the possible choices BITD before we got a Beeb) and having got a SCART cable (superb picture) and got it to load from a TZXDuino (well, got told how to do it) I have been enjoying a bit of Manic Miner. The music is great but it is so LOUD! Is there any w...

Not so much retro affecting but I have mild osteoarthritis down my right side and my right wrist crackles horribly when I rotate it (crepitus I believe). For a couple of years I had to mouse with my left hand while it calmed down. I don’t have a mouse for the Beeb so doesn’t affect that too much. Us...

I have implement the first stage of a memory cruncher - it removes all spaces (except in strings) from the tokenised file. In the part done Banzai adventure this removes around 900 bytes from the program. Stage 2 will be to go through the procedure names and variables are ensure they are all as shor...

Somebody wants it! A bid has been placed.

I also spotted this one - viewtopic.php?f=8&t=20142#p282248

sirmorris wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 04, 2020 7:44 pm

I didn't know there were any?

Really? No idea at all?

In my defence... Nope. Got nothing.

Nothing to do with me (I wouldn’t sell it ) but there is a black Atom up for sale on eBay:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/363067145835

I didn't know there were any?

Ooo that's very nice. I wonder if it is actual BBC Micro number 834. Can we see it from the back? My issue 2 has the newer logo on the function key strip and smoother case, and standard PSU, so it's probably an old board in a newer case. Probably been explored before, but do we know when the case w...

A fairly early (I assume based on the PSU) issue 2 model B. It switches on and boots to the 32K BBC BASIC prompt! (It was sold untested) Do these type of PSU need servicing / caps replacing? B9AB894D-A088-4369-B7D6-BF5313870545.jpeg 4F90A8A8-F750-4B2A-B06D-C2A044C6CFC4.jpeg Lots of little patch wire...

A working Oric 1 (no thanks to being badly packaged). It just gave me garbage on the screen the first time I plugged it in but after a few power cycles seems ok. Do these suffer similar capacitor related problems to Spectrums? If so I will crack it open and recap it. Also it is missing a foot. Any i...

Welcome. +1 for Mark at Retroclinic!

The adventure now prints out the directions from a room automatically rather than replying on message text to show them. This reduces the size of the message file somewhat. I have also improved the ToUpper function based on the thread https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20072. Attached...

Welcome on board! Once you get one they get lonely so you need to get several!

I did consider forcing a particular case...

I wonder why. Still, it's not quite as early as mine so I won't be bidding :) Is the serial number actually accurate in as much as it is genuinely low? I have seen a number of different serial number formats on beebs so while it may be low for that manufacturer it may not signify a low order in the...

I think I will review my use of them. LOCALs (and formal parameters, which are internally equivalent) are invaluable, but if you are trying to minimise memory use you can reuse the same names in multiple FNs and PROCs. So if you have several functions that need a local string, use the same name (e....

I assume that it can't be affecting the global variable - is it making a local variable to contain the string instead? BBC BASIC doesn't have true 'local variables' (as C and other languages do); all variables in BBC BASIC are 'global' in the sense that they have global scope and once created they ...

Looking forward to giving this a go. Need to find a non-1770 beeb out of the loft then by the sounds of it.

8271 wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 29, 2020 6:34 am

An Issue 2 Model B - I have not seen one below issue 3 - looks almost pilot production. Also has the linear powersupply.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Acorn-BBC-Mo ... SwImxe73kU

Interesting one. Its been relisted a few times.

What does FNtU("") give you? I suspect it will crash as it tries to get data from a position in a string that does not exist. In my usage scenario this is extremely unlikely to occur however. It is called in two places - one is where data is loaded into memory, in this case verbs, nouns and object ...

Does it run faster declaring the 32, 96 and 123 as integer variables? Presumably it means that BASIC doesn’t have to convert the typed numbers into an actual number each time for the comparison?

Its interesting that with the extra lines it is about 20% slower.
Its logical that it would be slower as there are extra bytes to process but that much is quite a surprise!

Maybe this?
Might not have the syntax quite right.

M$ is defined elsewhere as a string of 256 chars to avoid it growing in use. A gotcha to watch out for (I think!?): if you're using STRING$ to initially define M$, then the length param should be 255, not 256: 10 M$=STRING$(255,"x") 20 PRINT M$'LEN(M$) 30 M$=STRING$(256,"x") 40 PRINT M$'LEN(M$) :id...

Thanks. Will give that a go. I figured there was probably a bitwise way of doing it but can never quite seem to get my head round it in BASIC.

Good luck with the recovery Joe.

Same here for Elite and any Acornsoft languages, preferably 8bit so I don’t end up with yet another growing collection...

I am looking for an efficient (small / fast) implementation of a function to convert a string to upper case. The function only expects text so I am not too fussed about checking for special characters etc. The best I have so far is: DEFFNtU(T$):LOCAL C%,P%,L%:M$="":L%=LEN(T$):FOR P%=1 TO L%:C%=ASC(M...

Looking good!

I’m a bit of a lurker rather than poster. Despite working computers since my first in 1980, years with Beebs since 1984, years with PCs, networking and electronics, developing my own products and business that was acquired for the technology I still feel somewhat inadequate amongst the impressive a...

Thanks for the info all! I guess the only real downer is the lack of Tube. Hmmm.

Thanks Mark.

Is an econet module available for these? Not sure if it uses the same one as the Master. If I can connect it to my econet the disc drive etc. is less of an issue.