CBM 8032 and other things

I thought the 8050 was compatible with the 1571. Am I mistaken? I know it's not compatible with the 8252 (or whatever it's called - the double sided 8050 that's also built into the 8296D) which is silly and v. annoying. Absolutely. I have a couple of amusing tales about this. In 1983-84, a friend, M J Richards, and I (aged 15 and 16 respectively at the time) developed an adventure game for the BBC micro. But we started by typing in all the text on an 8032, followed by compression and encryption. We then wanted to squirt this module across to the Beeb. Alas, MJR's Beeb only had OS version 0.10, which didn't support input on the serial port. Also alas, the 8032SK uses IEEE-488 (GPIB) style connectors for the user port and we didn't have any. In the end, we used the cassette motor output on the PET and the analogue input on the BBC. Data rate was 30 baud as I recall! Later we wanted to produce a full program listing from a disassembler program on the BBC. By then, 8032 had returned to Dad's office, and the only printer we had left was a Teletype ASR33. Alas again! The BBC serial port didn't support 110 baud. PET to the rescue again - I had an old ROM 8K machine. A few wires and a transistor later, I had an interface - PET received data at 4800 baud on one pin of the user port and transmitted it (via the transistor) to the Teletype on another pin. Finally, we wanted to port the software to other machines. Acorn Electron port was easy - it actually runs on the BBC micro if you try hard enough - but Commodore 64 port was more difficult. I cannot remember if I had upgraded my PET to 32K by then - I think probably not - but we somehow got it across the same 4800 baud link and onto tape, whence it was loaded onto a 64. On my list of things to do now is finish the PET port of the game... I'd be interested to hear from anyone who actually played the game - it was licensed to a software house called Alligata who sold it as "Xanadu Cottage" - about 400 copies were sold, I think (BBC model B only). Also, if anyone wants a copy for their BBC B / Electron / C= 64, please get in touch. There are still slight bugs in the tape routines for saved positions, afaik, but otherwise it runs well. Finally, who would like to see / play / beta-test a PET version? And what model(s) of PET do you have? Terms for software distribution will be shareware - if you want to pay for the game, a suitable donation to a charity caring for Hodgkins' Disease (of which MJR later died) is requested. Philip.