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BBC Micro - Blast from the past

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The Shaggy D.A.
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PostPosted: 16:44 - 24 Jul 2020    Post subject: BBC Micro - Blast from the past Reply with quote

Runs in your browser.

https://bbcmicro.co.uk//index.php?rt_R=&rt_B=&rt_M=&rt_P=&rt_U=&rt_W=&rt_L=&search=&sort=p
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Howling Terror
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PostPosted: 17:11 - 24 Jul 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Acornsoft....the little owl....the heat off the main board.
The hours spent hacking code so I could eat the whole maze in Ms PacMan.

[I remember using some primitive music software ...I think it only made keyboard sounds...no sequencing....or was it one of those programs that came in a computer magazine.]

Ahhh BBC model B you were great.
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bhinso
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PostPosted: 21:13 - 24 Jul 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Emulators rule.

The Amiga 500 one is my favourite.
The best bit: You can get like 1000's of games in seconds downloading as they're so small in memory
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MCN
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PostPosted: 10:03 - 25 Jul 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Howling Terror wrote:
one of those programs that came in a computer magazine.


Computer Magazine? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Like Bike Magazines but with computers. 🤣
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Howling Terror
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PostPosted: 10:21 - 25 Jul 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, also similar to the mags for fishing but without the free waggler on the front cover.

Exciting times they were for Post-Punk Geeks.
Many of us PPGs went on to program VCRs for OAPs.

Some of us had real sex, often by mistake and sometimes without the aid of a RS232.

Sure we had floppies but they were big floppies.
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BanditsHigh
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PostPosted: 16:50 - 25 Jul 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Still got a Beeb Model B, Master and my Risc PC ... the good old days Smile
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doggone
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PostPosted: 22:40 - 25 Jul 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh dear just spent a good 30 minutes playing space invaders and it was quite addictive Embarassed
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Nobby the Bastard
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PostPosted: 14:29 - 26 Jul 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Does elite work on it?
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tracks
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PostPosted: 10:27 - 29 Jul 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nobby the Bastard wrote:
Does elite work on it?


I was completely addicted to Elite on the BBC Micro back in the day. A few years ago I received a Vive VR headset as a gift so promptly purchased a HOTAS Warthog and Elite:Dangerous on Steam.

Oh my sweet Lord. What an experience.

Tip: Don't try to fly with flight assist off in normal flight as you'll probably throw up. Switch FA off for combat only.
o7
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The Shaggy D.A.
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PostPosted: 14:57 - 29 Jul 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nobby the Bastard wrote:
Does elite work on it?


Seems to, I really must write the controls down before trying to play Smile

There used to be a bug where you could leave the space station, target a missile, re-enter the space station and sell the missile. You'd leave the station again and fire the (nonexistent) missile, and the inventory would clock round from 0 to 255. Re-enter the station, sell a bunch and kit yourself out with many goodies Smile
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WD Forte
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PostPosted: 13:17 - 16 Aug 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jeez, this takes me back to when my lad and I copied code line by line
from a mag to play a shitty game on an Atari 800XL
Tapes? cartridges? floppies? you lot don't know your born. Laughing
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Easy-X
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PostPosted: 13:23 - 16 Aug 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

WD Forte wrote:
Jeez, this takes me back to when my lad and I copied code line by line
from a mag to play a shitty game on an Atari 800XL
Tapes? cartridges? floppies? you lot don't know your born. Laughing


Aye, I had one of those "52 volume encyclopedia you buy each week" type things, listings for games and things for Spectrum, Beeb, C64 and... my Dragon 32 Smile My dad used to help out typing them in. He was useless with computers but still had keyboard skills from his teletyper days in the army. Happy times Very Happy
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Nobby the Bastard
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PostPosted: 13:41 - 16 Aug 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

It wasn't the typing it in that did it for me, it was the ones that were all code rather than basic and going through it character by character trying to find the fucking number you got wrong.
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bhinso
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PostPosted: 21:15 - 17 Aug 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

This ^^

Any remotely decent game was written in machine code, i.e.:
DATA 3A1FBA78FAEC24....

One slip and it's Game Over (or Game Not Begun).

Towards the end of my career they brought in Checksums, i.e. a code at the end of each line. They printed the code in the magazine and if yours was wrong it meant an error in the line. This helped a lot.
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Hong Kong Phooey
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PostPosted: 22:58 - 17 Aug 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hours playing Chuckie Egg, programming shitty type in games. Trying to create better ones and failing, machine code was not possible for us noobs.

Most fun happened in school, when we installed the speech ROM in a master system, it gave the BBC a robot voice.

We then remoted in over the network from another machine within the same room. Speech was less distinct than even Hawking's primitive voice box, but the teacher understood the computer was telling her to 'fuck right off' amongst other obscenity laden instructions.

The hardest part was suppressing the laughter.
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Nobby the Bastard
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PostPosted: 23:28 - 17 Aug 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hong Kong Phooey wrote:


Most fun happened in school, when we installed the speech ROM in a master system, it gave the BBC a robot voice.

We then remoted in over the network from another machine within the same room. Speech was less distinct than even Hawking's primitive voice box, but the teacher understood the computer was telling her to 'fuck right off' amongst other obscenity laden instructions.

The hardest part was suppressing the laughter.


We.did it by putting a delay in (for next loop of a suitable size) so that the next lesson got told to fuck right off just as they sat down.

The teachers learnt quite early to turn them off and on again between lessons.
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Hong Kong Phooey
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PostPosted: 23:36 - 17 Aug 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Nobby the Bastard wrote:
Hong Kong Phooey wrote:


Most fun happened in school, when we installed the speech ROM in a master system, it gave the BBC a robot voice.

We then remoted in over the network from another machine within the same room. Speech was less distinct than even Hawking's primitive voice box, but the teacher understood the computer was telling her to 'fuck right off' amongst other obscenity laden instructions.

The hardest part was suppressing the laughter.


We.did it by putting a delay in (for next loop of a suitable size) so that the next lesson got told to fuck right off just as they sat down.

The teachers learnt quite early to turn them off and on again between lessons.


Being there to witness it was the best bit, but yes it got switched off and on again rather quickly.
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blurredman
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PostPosted: 09:09 - 18 Aug 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Got plenty of old pc's here and software.

Notibly the cpc 464 and 6128 and an Acordn Archimedes a3010 w/ ethernet module.

Of course the pc1512- but seeing as that's XT then that doesn't count to me as 'old' or any different to what a PC is now.
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bhinso
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PostPosted: 21:13 - 18 Aug 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hong Kong Phooey wrote:
Hours playing Chuckie Egg, programming shitty type in games. Trying to create better ones and failing, machine code was not possible for us noobs.


Yeah I learnt to code in BASIC from about age 8 to 13. The good thing was it stood me in good stead for things like mathematics and logic in future life.

The problem, as you say, you could only get so far with BASIC. The last game I wrote was flying a plane round the world, shooting stuff down. I made the plane move across the screen, which then refreshed to the next screen once it reached the edge.

What I really wanted was 'scrolling', i.e. the plane stayed fixed but the background moved. You needed not only 'scrolling' but 'screen memory'. I actually asked an expert at a games convention how to do this and they said forget it lol.
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Hong Kong Phooey
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PostPosted: 21:37 - 18 Aug 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

bhinso wrote:
Hong Kong Phooey wrote:
Hours playing Chuckie Egg, programming shitty type in games. Trying to create better ones and failing, machine code was not possible for us noobs.


Yeah I learnt to code in BASIC from about age 8 to 13. The good thing was it stood me in good stead for things like mathematics and logic in future life.

The problem, as you say, you could only get so far with BASIC. The last game I wrote was flying a plane round the world, shooting stuff down. I made the plane move across the screen, which then refreshed to the next screen once it reached the edge.

What I really wanted was 'scrolling', i.e. the plane stayed fixed but the background moved. You needed not only 'scrolling' but 'screen memory'. I actually asked an expert at a games convention how to do this and they said forget it lol.


Not too bad if you're moving only the x axis, you're adding one column and deleting the other. Your small plane foreground sprite must have been drawn over the top of whatever was there before. A lot of memory limited game backgrounds are procedurally generated, so modified sine waves for hills, parallax effect with two sets of hills then draw player over the top.
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BanditsHigh
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PostPosted: 19:58 - 20 Aug 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hardware scrolling on the BEEB is simple ... can't remember the registers you write too, but it's basically high byte / low byte of screen start address.

To move the entire screen left or right you added/subtracted 8 bytes of the start address, up/down was 640 bytes (well for MODE 0,1,2 anyway).

The scrolling was 8, 4 or 2 pixels at a time horizontally (depending on mode ) and 8 pixels vertically.

The beauty of hardware scrolling was that you only had to redraw the edge which had just moved onto the screen, and any objects you had moving independently ... was amazing how fast you could get things moving!

Elite was special .... it mixed modes on the one screen ... I think main flight display was MODE 1, the console was MODE 2 ... clever stuff!!
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bhinso
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PostPosted: 21:08 - 24 Aug 2020    Post subject: Reply with quote

My 10 year old nephew is really interested in coding and wanted to learn.

I remembered this post and downloaded a decent Amstrad CPC emulator.

Funnily enough, he's amazed with the programming despite the severe limitations of the system (16 colours, 188kb disk space, LOL)

Brings back a lot of memories too Thumbs Up
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