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Hi Dave Your comment about ADFS enabled me to fix it. I still don't quite know what the problem was, but in the past I had fitted the AP5 with a 32k EPROM containing ESWMMFS 1.40 and ADFS v1.00 (to enable me to use either BeebSCSI or an MMC card connected to the user port). Both roms showed up OK in...

For the first time in a long while, I have dusted off my AP5/Pi combo and plugged it back into an Electron. This is probably a daft question, but whilst it prints the banner "Acorn TUBE 64k", then Acorn ADFS and RH Plus 1, it does not copy BASIC across. Instead it hangs. I don't have elk_mode=1 in m...

An approximate answer is - about 20k. If using a disc drive there is a bit less, about 18k, but if you don’t need to use the disc again after loading you can reclaim this difference.

Bobbi wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 10, 2020 10:22 pm

An another note, at the risk of starting an emacs-vs-vi style war ... View or Wordwise?

I have noticed that hardly anyone ever mentions using Wordwise. So I guess that means View is more "popular".

Philb beat me to it: There are no filetypes on DFS (or ADFS on the 8 bit machines, for that matter). The only thing you have to go on are the load and exec addresses. I agree, it's quite challenging! As you have noticed, BASIC files are normally load=&1900 and exec=&8023 (for BASIC 2). The exec addr...

Whilst there is something a bit odd here, if you look at the seller's other items they do look consistent with what the note says, ie selling off a late husband's collection. I get the impression that the lady in question is maybe being helped by an experienced, and quite assertive ebayer maybe. Sad...

It's probably the solder joint where the leg of the LED meets the board. The legs are long and bendy - I had one fail like that. Very easy to fix though!

This is a beautifully animated game, but it is way too hard for me! I'm looking forward to those easy levels you mentioned...

I think maybe there was a Speech System ZIF socket (which took serial roms), and later on the option to have a ZIF socket wired for normal sideways roms. So the presence of a ZIF socket doesn't necessarily indicate a speech upgrade. As I understand it, no additional serial roms were ever produced so...

That is definitely Superior Software Speech that you are describing. It was available on ROM, so you must have had that. Incidentally the ZIF socket by the keyboard wasn't actually part of the Acorn speech system, although the "ashtray" was vaguely related to it in some way I think. The ZIF socket j...

The usual course of action in this situation would be to contact Mark Haysman at Retroclinic. He's on this forum as "retroclinic" (so you could PM him), plus he also has a website at www.retroclinic.com.

I have only just spotted this thread even though it is over a year old. I think the original question is an interesting one, and I can suggest another answer besides what others have already said. There actually was a low-cost 2nd processor for the BBC, which quite closely matched the bare bones spe...

Thanks Ian for saving me from myself... I was thinking about buying this, then realised that I don't really need it and probably wouldn't use it! So I think its going to better home, and I won't feel guilty about acquiring more junk.

c0burn wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 14, 2020 3:04 pm

Will a Gotek work with the original, and as you noted, "weird" floppy cable?

Yes, it definitely does.

Yes, that's no problem, just use *DISC for DFS and *ADFS for ADFS. You can even configure which one the machine boots up in as a default. Having a single drive is the best option for you I think. Do you still want a dual drive cable anyway though? This thread includes some photos of inside the machi...

The cable is non-standard and has to be made up by hand. However, I think I have a spare one which I'd be happy to send you. Similarly, if I have a spare EPROM I could make you a DFS rom. There are also other members on here who could do it. The pitfalls with the dual-drive setup are: 1) The fascia ...

After several years of using it successfully, I find that Beeb image is no longer working on my machine (Windows 7). It loads, but then when I try to open an image I get an error message saying "Beeb image has stopped working". I tried downloading the latest version, but it turns out I already had t...

I fitted a Gotek to a Compact recently, but I didn't have any existing floppy drives or the complete front fascia of the machine, so I got a new fascia made with drive slots that were only 25mm high (not the original 32mm). This allowed me to use a standard Gotek case and a standard modern floppy dr...

A fantastic read John, I loved it! And I feel your pain in not being able to afford an Archimedes, although as I'm a few years older than you I had managed to get an A3000 by 1993. I was frustrated by the decline of the BBC micro in 1990, so I can't imagine how it would have been by 1993. Those "pre...

One of the aspects of Elite that always intrigued me was the potential to get trapped in Witchspace and attacked by the Thargoids. On the Electron version, which I had at the time, it was never clear whether this was possible, and there were various rumours suggesting how to make it happen (I seem t...

I didn’t realise until now that the male character in the photos is ‘Wolf’ out of Gladiators. Apparently. It does look like him.

That's my recollection too. Certainly Acorn User ended up insisting that Superior crudely airbrush a dress onto Maria Whittaker. Mark Moxon (the former editor around about that time) is on these forums so might remember just how many angry letters they got. Wikipedia says that in Germany, by contras...

Having read a bit more of this, I realise that my initial comment doesn't do it justice. You really have written an absolutely superb explanation here. I love this kind of thing; very complicated subjects explained in a clear way. It's a joy to read, especially when so much of the technology we are ...

This is fascinating. Brilliant work!

Great! You are getting somewhere! I don't understand what you are saying about supp.zip though. Is there still a problem? It would be useful to understand what is on your hard disc. Is there a !Boot, and is it a file or an application? You can check this by holding Shift and double clicking on it. T...

That doesn't sound quite right. You need to use !Sparkplug to unzip the file "Supp.zip", not the folder !ChangeFSI. It sounds like you have already done the unzipping of Supp.zip on a PC. Step 1 - drag supp.zip onto !Sparkplug Capture.PNG Step 2 - !Sparkplug shows what is inside. At this point the i...

Aha, I thought maybe you might run into that problem. The ADF file is an image of a complete floppy disc. It would be useful with a Gotek drive, but I didn't realise that you don't have one. What you will need is the zip file of the application, and then unzip it using !Sparkplug on the A3010. The z...

I found it and extracted it onto this ADF image for you - along with the Risc OS port of the Great Escape from the Spectrum (which just happened to be on there already...!)

Not sure if this can output sprites?

https://www.dfstudios.co.uk/software/bb ... converter/

EDIT: Just checked and it doesn't. I thought ChangeFSI was on the RiscOS 3 applications disc but I can't find it...

By the way, I have found my old BBC BASIC reference guide (for the Archimedes). This has a chapter on sprites, and tells you to use all the old-fashioned techniques such as *SGET, *SCHOOSE etc. These use the System Sprites area, which does require the user to adjust the size of the area first. I don...