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BigEd wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 26, 2021 11:49 am

the two-key reset was evidently found not to be necessary (OLD to the rescue).

The BBC Master has a mechanical (screwdriver operated) lock for the Reset key! I don't think OLD is very helpful if you're running DOS on a Second Processor...

On 26th February 1981 John Coll and representatives from BBC Engineering met to discuss their response to Acorn's proposals. From this came a clearer idea of which features would be standard in the Model A and which would be only in the Model B. It was probably as an outcome of this meeting that I o...

I've messaged David King to see if he remembers... I'm pleased to say that I have received a reply from David. He confirms that in respect of the cassette interface hardware he dealt with Kim Spence-Jones, but (with his memory prompted by the names in the MOS ROM ) he thinks the CFS firmware was wr...

That at least should be relatively easily fixable, thanks for the report. I've fixed Ceefax.bbc so that it doesn't abort if you enter a page number with a leading zero. I've restored the timeout to sudoku.bbc , but only when you select Count rather than Solve (otherwise Count could take a very long...

lovebug wrote: ↑

Mon Feb 22, 2021 10:59 pm

actually I stupidly mistyped a page number as 010 it crashes every time

That at least should be relatively easily fixable, thanks for the report.

sorry I crashed the teletext demo :( I hate non-repeatable errors, they are so hard to debug. My guess would be that when the program tried to download one of the BBC's RSS feeds it received corrupted data of some kind, and the error resulted when the program tried to parse it as XML. It probably m...

Everything's fine. Everything's working as it should. Sorry for the false alarm. I suspect you were thrown by an interface designed for a touchscreen being pressed into service in a browser. I know that's not ideal, but in my judgement it's better than not having any kind of IDE and relying solely ...

I can get to touchide.bbc in the "file browser" I'm not sure what you mean by "can get to": examples/tools/touchide.bbc is the program that runs initially in the Android, iOS and in-browser editions. It's also the program the examples CHAIN on pressing ESCape. I can't then seem ...

BigEd wrote: ↑

Mon Feb 22, 2021 8:26 pm

I think I haven't seen that documentation!

I linked to it in my earlier reply, six posts ago in this thread.

I suspect I've been the victim of a massive wind-up.

Ah, context menu - I didn't think of that, didn't expect one. Yes, that works - thanks! So if you didn't find the instructions clear, how would you suggest they be modified? I know they are written primarily from the perspective of a touchscreen on a mobile device, because that's all touchide.bbc w...

I have not found a way to edit the source, other than RENUMBER and inputting new or replacement lines. That's fine, if it's so, but it sounds from what you're saying that I could somehow get into a full-screen editor. What isn't working? Are you not succeeding in opening the 'context menu', or when...

As far as I can tell, line editing is all I have, in the browser. You also have the GUI editor in the IDE, which is how I modified it here to demonstrate that removing the timeout fixed the problem. As I said earlier in this thread the in-browser edition uses the same IDE as the Android and iOS edi...

I don't see how to modify the Basic program in the browser version You can edit it (either using the GUI editor in the IDE or the traditional way at the immediate mode prompt) but it won't achieve very much because the next time you run it it will fetch the old version from my web site again! To ma...

This could be something like a numeric overflow in a chained calculation and quite difficult to track down Actually a quick glance at the code showed that the explanation is much simpler! When the program was written, back in 2008, the only version of BBC BASIC on which it could run was BBC BASIC f...

Richard, not sure where to note this, but your posted sudoku demo finds the T.HARD1 puzzle "Impossible" Hmm. If I run it in BBCSDL in Windows (32-bits or 64-bits x86) it finds the solution, and tells me there is just one. If I run it in Android (ARM) it says it's Impossible. So it looks l...

TobyLobster wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 21, 2021 1:09 pm

Was it Kim Spence-Jones that wrote the cassette interface

I don't think so. I've messaged David King to see if he remembers, but I haven't been in touch with him for several years so I'm not confident of a response.

I'm sorry, I can't. I joined full time just after 0.1 had been put to bed, and there wasn't much work done on CFS after that. Not to worry, I could ask David King if he remembers but it's not a big deal. As you say I think it was somebody brought in specifically to do the CFS/RFS who probably had l...

Yes, I should perhaps have said that MADRAM is a new term to me. That's exactly what I thought you meant, and the term is unfamiliar to me too. On the introduction of new technology it often took a while for terminology to settle down. I suspect only a few of us will remember the acronym FAMOS (Flo...

I'd forgotten the BBC cassette interface was CUTS. Can you remember the name of the guy who wrote the CFS/RFS, in close collaboration with my colleague David King? It was the one part of the MOS to which the BBC made a detailed contribution, but OS 0.1 still managed to ship with bugs in that area (...

Having been awarded the BBC Micro contract, it took Acorn only eight days to prepare a provisional specification of the machine they proposed to build (dated 20/02/81 by Chris Turner). This was Telexed to the BBC on 25th February (remember Telex?):

Although I don't think I have my own copy, I strongly suspect I wrote it! I was keen on WordStar (on CP/M) in those days, and the right-justification makes me think that's what I used. It's even possible that I have that document on 8" floppy (there are a large number in the loft) but my means...

just so happens* that BBC BASIC was the best of the breed.... * EDIT: Sorry Richard in retrospect that sounds very flippant, I fully appreciate your role in BBC BASIC. The only thing to which I might have reacted is the linking of "BBC BASIC" and " was ", having spent so much ti...

on the point of other manufacturers maybe not bidding because they believed they could not meet the price, surely CP/M is a disk-only operating system that does not run from tape. Also, by having an operating system that is loaded from disc you need RAM into which to load that operating system so a...

johnha wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 16, 2021 8:13 pm

Sure, the gifted/persevering will be OK with Linux CLI & Python...

... or BBC BASIC of course.

I don't know when the decision was made to throw the DFS overboard into a sideways ROM As ever, I might have some contemporary documentation to shed light on that, as the BBC would have had to agree. I've not really taken much interest in the records I have from that later period, but there are ple...

The price was always crucial; the bidders were told the basic machine must retail for less than £200. I should add that the price target took into account the BBC's 'red lines' such as the machine having to be suitable for use in a professional business environment, so having a 'proper' keyboard, a...

I'm curious whether price was ever considered The price was always crucial; the bidders were told the basic machine must retail for less than £200. Although I wasn't directly involved, it not being a 'technical' issue, I well remember the consternation when Acorn requested that it be increased to £...

scruss wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 16, 2021 3:35 am

Seems that the "Z80; Must run CP/M" stipulation in the spec was a bit more negotiable than the other bidders thought.

It was always a requirement, but in offering the Z80 Second Processor as the way of meeting it Acorn were perhaps a bit more inventive than some others.

The encapsulated data hiding behind a FILE * under Unix includes: Yes, but it's still not OO in the conventional sense. I can pass an array or a structure to a function as a parameter, and I can pass that same array or structure to another function. You can then argue that those functions 'share' t...

Because without it we're back to the idea of encapsulating data in a way that keeps it private and operating on it only via a set of well-defined methods. There are plenty of libraries that do precisely that and the C stdio was just one example. What and where are the "encapsulated data" ...