Basics (BBC Micro)

the bbc micro was developed and manufactured by acorn computers in the early 1980s as part of the bbc's computer literacy project released december 1981, it was showcased across several educational bbc television programmes, such as the computer programme (1982), making the most of the micro and computers in control (both 1983), and micro live (1985) created in response to the bbc's call for bids for a microcomputer to complement its broadcasts and printed material, acorn secured the contract with its rapidly prototyped “proton” system, which was subsequently renamed the bbc micro power and av output the bbc micro was powered from a mains plug with a flying lead from the computer itself, and an on/off switch to turn the computer on and off the av output had uhf out which was rf output, video out as a bnc connector which is composite, and finally rgb as the name suggests outputs rgb my preference is an rgb to scart output for great video quality if you want to wire your own rgb cable the pinout is here boot screen when you first turn on the system you should here 2 beeps followed by the boot screen output the text you see will vary depending on the configuration of the system for example, you may see econet station 002 no clock , disc doctor or acorn dfs among other things these are based on what roms are installed basic programming the bbc micro uses a language called basic it stands for beginners' all purpose symbolic instruction code a great manual that came with the computer is below it is worth a read https //archbee doc uploads s3 amazonaws com/j28kvka0c jxcfzcoqq29 vbntigodaycxg wbbrta 20250404 103537 pdf for the bbc master 128 (the version with 128k ram and the m logo at the front right) here are the remastered user manuals https //archbee doc uploads s3 amazonaws com/j28kvka0c jxcfzcoqq29 dpx7cwn6ja2ovyialhng5 20250404 163120 pdf https //archbee doc uploads s3 amazonaws com/j28kvka0c jxcfzcoqq29 93jxrg9fbhjfyuvlyyghp 20250404 163132 pdf in general, you write your code line number first, then the code, and press enter continue this until you have written your program, and then type run and press enter to run it infinite print loop a super simple test is to write the following to print out hello world 10 infinitely press escape to stop the code running 10 print "hello world" 20 goto 10 run to see the current program in memory you can type list to display it to wipe out the program and start again type new counting a quick counting program to add up and display the number is as follows 10 a=1 20 print a 30 a=a+1 40 goto 20 run user input here is an example of asking for a users name and then displaying it 10 print "hi, what is your name?" 20 input name$ 30 print "hello "; name$; ", i'm bbc" make sound to make some basic sound, you can use the command sound the first parameter is which sound channel to use the second parameter is the volume 0 being the lowest and 15 being the loudest the third is the pitch of the sound, the lowest being 0 and highest being 255 and anything higher simply wraps around the forth parameter is the duration of the sound 20 is around a 1 second beep for example to play a 1 second high pitch beep at max volume it is sound 1, 15, 255, 20 to loop all sounds you can do the following 10 a=1 20 sound 1, 15,a,1 30 a=a+1 40 goto 20 robot sound a nice use of the random command is to generate random audio this might remind you of the old school robots in movies of the 70s and 80s 10 a=rnd(255) 20 sound 1, 15,a,1 30 goto 10