I finally got around to registering after lurking for a while so thought I'd introduce myself. I grew up with an Acorn Electron, followed by a BBC Master and finally an Archimedes A3000 before I finally succumbed to the PC bandwagon at the end of the 90's. The Master is the machine that is fondest in my memories having taught myself 6502 assembler at a relatively young age and spent an awful lot of time programming all manner of things. It clearly stood me in good stead as I've spent nearly the last 20 years in professional software development (although it's been a while since my code shipped, thankfully.)
I recently dusted off my old Master from the loft and got it all set back up again... only to have the PSU caps go pop immediately, of course. Panic & despair would've set in had I not read all about this common problem on here already! Thanks to your collective advice I got new caps soldered in and all good as new within a week. I now have a setup with a TurboMMC card, video output through my LED monitor (bit weird seeing Elite running at "1080p"
and am busy saving my heritage by ripping every floppy I have left from storage.If there is anything of note in my collection I'll get it added to the archive. I think most stuff is there already but I have some interesting bits & bobs, particularly music, from my BBS days. I grew up in Hull which, through a strange quirk of history, had a private telephone exchange that effectively made local calls free. This meant there was a huge BBS scene and some notable Viewdata boards full of Beeb fanatics - I spent way too much time on CCl4 - shout if this means anything to you!
I have to thank Rich Talbot-Watkins for his fabulous beebasm compiler and seemingly infinite knowledge of Beeb inner workings. I've been enjoying getting back into 6502 and recoding some of the "demos" that I was trying to write In my youth. It's amazing how 10+ years of software dev experience plus the entire knowledge of the Internet at your disposal helps somewhat. I've caught up on all the things I couldn't quite get my head around before like raster chasing, hardware scrolling and creating my own custom screen modes.
. I have increasing respect for anyone that managed to make any sort of half-decent game on a Beeb, let alone the seminal ones like Elite & Exile, given how little you can do with 40,000 CPU cycles in a 50Hz frame...Anyway, that's more than enough nostalgia for one evening. Look forward to getting involved.
Cheers,
Kieran
and binned the M128 
