Update: BBC Acorn - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

15 Jan 2003

On Jan 15, 10:53, Jules Richardson wrote:

...
  > ARM Evaluation Kit - yep - that's the one.  I
do have various discs and
 > manuals for it, too.  I used to love the "twin" editor - several open
files
...
   at one, and
could cut and paste between them.  Ahead of it's time... 
 yeah, that's it. Without any discs or being able to find anyone who knew
 anything about it I'm afraid mine got put in storage. I believe I've got
the
...
  original polystyrene packaging for it, but no discs or
outer box or anything
...
  (go figure) 
I can copy the six disks for you, but as I mentioned in previous post, my
Disc 1 has a corrupt track.

...
  I've got some other BBC add-on in the same style
housing as the ARM unit, but
...
  can't remember what it is now. It wasn't the
teletext unit unfortunately, as
...
  that could have been interesting to play about with.

Most of the Acorn add-ons came in the same housing.  All the Second
Processors (6502, Z80, 32016) and the Universal Second Processor box (so
you could use Master Series upgrades like a Turbo, Master 512 80186 CoPro,
or the Scientific), Teletext Adaptor, Prestel Adaptor, IEEE Interface, and
probably others.

...
  > They were expensive, but much more expandable
than the spectrum.  At one
...
   point I had
about six of them in my bedroom on an econet network, had
 several on modems running a multi-user BBS. 
 excellent :-)
 I never got into the networking side of things with them (I've got all the
...
  fileserver/network for the RM Link machines which I
believe were the schools
...
  alternative to having BBCs in the UK) 
I had a three-station Econet in the house in 1984 or 1985, and it
eventually grew to include a Master 128, a Compact, and a Filestore.

...
  I seem to remember this machine is way more complex
than the innards of an XT
...
  though, with about 1.5x the board space and a lot of
ULA chips on board.

 I'm sure Ferranti produced much better machines than glorified IBM clones
 though, if that's what this is :-) 
:-)   In my earlier reply, I was thinking of rather older Ferranti
computers.  At least a decade older, maybe two...

-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Network Manager
						University of York