BBC Micro team to celebrate historic machine's 30th year
Acorn antiques
The brains behind the BBC Micro are this weekend getting together to relive the glory days of the 1980s home computer revolution.
The event, Beeb@30, takes place at ARM's Cambridge HQ, on Sunday, 25 March. Confirmed guests include key Acorn staff: company founders Chris Curry and Hermann Hauser, and BBC Micro design team members Sophie Wilson, Steve Furber, Nick Toop, Andy Hopper, Chris Turner and Allen Boothroyd.
From the BBC side of the story will be George Auckland, Richard Russell, John Radcliffe and David Kitson of the BBC Computer Literacy Project, which started the whole thing off.
Even Chris Serle, co-presenter of the Corporation's The Computer Programme, will be on hand for a bit of 20 GOTO 10 action.
Inevitably, the Raspberry Pi team, will be present too to talk about how their wee machine is the natural successor to the Models A and B.
Tickets cost a pricier-than-a-Pi £78 a pop and are available through eTickets.
Want to relive the great days of the eight-bit micro ahead of time? Check out our BBC Micro, Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX81 retrospectives. ®
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COMMENTS
BBC Basic on the Pi
My youngest has stated he'd like to have a go at programming. And thinking back 30 years, I still think that BBC basic was probably the best beginners language there was.
"Hello world" being one line of code.
Drawing a box on screen 5 lines of code
So please somebody, port BBC basic to the Pi.
Accolades
A few thoughts:
1) I find it deeply satisfying that although Acorn came a cropper, its heritage and technical innovation lives on, and indeed continues to thrive, though ARM. It seemed that when Acorn went under, the PC clones (and companies such as Acorn’s arch nemesis, the dull as ditchwater ‘Research Machines’) had won the day. But the boffins in Cambridge weren’t to be defeated!
2) I remember running Acorn’s PC Emulator on my Acorn Archimedes. In one of life’s little ironies, I now find immense gratification in the knowledge that Microsoft are falling over themselves to port Windows to the ARM architecture.
3) Alas, my parents couldn’t afford a BBC Micro, so I got an Acorn Electron. But I’m not bitter. It was (and is) a great little computer. Plus the fact that I could program in BBC Basic helped me land my first job after leaving school.
4) You can keep your Elites and your Chuckie Eggs. Gisburne’s Castle was, and is, the greatest BBC Micro game of all time. And you can call me Susan if it isn’t so.
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