4 ms·

Acorn Electron World

22 points by paublyrne 11y ago

jacquesm 11y ago
The Electron was a BBC 'B' light, you can get an emulator here: http://elkulator.acornelectron.co.uk/ http://elkulator.acornelectron.co.uk/ Which makes a nice companion to the site linked.
- SixSigma 11y ago
  The BBC 'B' (32k memory) light would be the BBC 'A' (16k memory) The Electron was the machine Acorn had already built before they got the BBC contract. Programs for the Electron were transmitted via Teletext on BBC before the BBC was around. 12 year old me transcribed them by hand and read the source code to try and learn programming while my BBC was on back order (little knowing it was tokenized!). My BBC still sits here in the room with me, I still use it occasionally for fun.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    > The Electron was the machine Acorn had already built before they got the BBC contract. I thought that was the 'Atom'... The electron was from '83, the Atom pre-dates the BBC Micro. And yes, the 16K version of the BBC existed as well, I'd forgotten about that, those were pretty rare though, I've never even seen one (and I've seen 100's of beebs on account of having very close ties with the Dutch distributor and two of the distributors clients). I can probably still wire in a solidisk without reference to the schematics :)
    - pja 11y ago
      Yup: The Electron came later & was a cut down BBC Micro. Unfortunately for Acorn, they ramped production right into the early 80s home microcomputer slump & the ensuing financial problems eventually forced the sale of the company to Olivetti.
jamiek88 11y ago
Fantastic trip down memory lane! A few years ago I set up an emulated bbc econet network using images of my old server disks we hacked in school. My friend and I got suspended for hacking the network, giving ourselves extra storage (a massive 200k) and remotely changing our computer ID to make it appear that it had been done from the teachers own machine. It drove him crazy. Sorry Mr Pollard. We only got caught 'cos one of our friends told a guy who blabbed. great days.

22 points by paublyrne 11y ago

The Electron was a BBC 'B' light, you can get an emulator here: http://elkulator.acornelectron.co.uk/ http://elkulator.acornelectron.co.uk/ Which makes a nice companion to the site linked.

SixSigma 11y ago
The BBC 'B' (32k memory) light would be the BBC 'A' (16k memory) The Electron was the machine Acorn had already built before they got the BBC contract. Programs for the Electron were transmitted via Teletext on BBC before the BBC was around. 12 year old me transcribed them by hand and read the source code to try and learn programming while my BBC was on back order (little knowing it was tokenized!). My BBC still sits here in the room with me, I still use it occasionally for fun.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > The Electron was the machine Acorn had already built before they got the BBC contract. I thought that was the 'Atom'... The electron was from '83, the Atom pre-dates the BBC Micro. And yes, the 16K version of the BBC existed as well, I'd forgotten about that, those were pretty rare though, I've never even seen one (and I've seen 100's of beebs on account of having very close ties with the Dutch distributor and two of the distributors clients). I can probably still wire in a solidisk without reference to the schematics :)
  - pja 11y ago
    Yup: The Electron came later & was a cut down BBC Micro. Unfortunately for Acorn, they ramped production right into the early 80s home microcomputer slump & the ensuing financial problems eventually forced the sale of the company to Olivetti.

jamiek88 11y ago

Fantastic trip down memory lane! A few years ago I set up an emulated bbc econet network using images of my old server disks we hacked in school. My friend and I got suspended for hacking the network, giving ourselves extra storage (a massive 200k) and remotely changing our computer ID to make it appear that it had been done from the teachers own machine. It drove him crazy. Sorry Mr Pollard. We only got caught 'cos one of our friends told a guy who blabbed. great days.