______ ______ ______ |_ _ \|_ _ \ .' ___ | | |_) | | |_) |/ .' \_| | __'. | __'.| | _| |__) || |__) \ `.___.'\ |_______/_______/ `.____ .' |_ \ / _|(_) | \/ | __ .---. _ .--. .--. | |\ /| | [ | / /'`\][ `/'`\] .'`\ \ _| |_\/_| |_ | | | \__. | | | \__. | |_____||_____[___]'.___.'[___] '.__.'

My original game set

For reasons best known to myself I've decided to write this page which focuses on the BBC Master 512 (a standard BBC Master 128 with a 80186 co-processor fitted to the internal Tube bus with an additional 512 kb of ram) using the standard BBC Master 128 in the stock 6502 mode using View. If you want to see a page that was written in 512 mode using the 1st Word Plus word processor in GEM under DRDOS Plus 2.1 then check out the Phlog-post 2025-05-05 DOS and life (no links here this is a text file after all!) This page is to talk through my M512 setup, the software I use and how it holds up some ~35 years later. So first things first lets address the elephant in the room, do I have a Master 512? No, no I do not. I have a Master 512 in the way that most people had a Master 512 in the later 80s and early 90s, I have a Master 128 that has an internal 80186 I'm not sure on sales figures but I don't think people were running out to buy the M512. If a person wanted one it was quite likely they already had some iteration of a BBC Micro that could easily be upgraded to a DOS-adjacent machine. I have an education catalogue from '94 where they're still being marketed to schools on the same page as RM and Amstrad 386 compatibles; but I find it hard to believe even the most heavily invested acorn ecosystem school was buying this oddity. Hardware -------- Anyway, I digress...my machine is also a modern take on the 512 in that despite 80186 co-pros being flogged at bargain basement prices just a year after their release they are now worth more on ebay than my car, so it's a RPI Zero running bare-metal 80186 emulation over the Tube courtesy of a PiTubeDirect. For a brief period it was running as a 80286 but I think this was taken back to a 80186 in later updates, but don't quote me on that. I have a Watford Electronics Beeb mode via the user port for Watford Electronics Wapping Editor, AMX Art, Max, Stop-Press et al. I struck lucky with the mouse, it was from eBay early 2000s when this stuff was still considered junk. I also have 2 AMX mice...aesthetics aside; they're awful! The WE mouse is definitely the best. I have a 1mhz PiSCSI for a harddrive and twin floppies (3 1/2 and 5 1/4"). Software -------- Much of what I have learnt about the M512 comes from the wonderfully named, and wonderful in general website cowsarenotpurple.com. Operating System I am running Dos Plus 2.1, with XIOS 1.3. I have recently learnt that there is a modded version of XIOS which has some bug fixes, however have not installed it yet. There is an earlier version of Dos Plus (V1.2) but whilst it has a smaller footprint, some software is not usable with it. Dos Plus 2.1 is by Digital Research and not 100% IBM compatible but does retain compatibility with CP/M86. Consequently a LOT of DOS software will not run on a M512. The main issue is the serial port needed legal OS calls to function. I have only found 1 piece of comms software to do this. Operating System I would consider the following as essential Addons tools to use with DosPlus: PCCE - Fixes a lot of Beeb specific incompatibility problems, the other option is Problem Solver however I've yet to find a program it fixes that PCCE does not. Mouse Drivers - Hosted on cowsarenotpurple are two mouse drivers a Command Line mouse (which allows you to use the mouse instead of cursor keys in DOS applications) and a MOUSE.COM for the Beebs mouse for Dos applications with Mouse support that are not GEM applications. Intercom - A great CLI tool to recall commands at the command prompt similar to Linux. Ramdisc - A replacement RAM Disk that allows you to assign any letter rather than just M: and any size. It also has a smaller overhead than the official Dos Plus alternative. Econet Driver - Something I'm struggling to get working but with allows you to network you DOS Plus partition with your Econet server using D: as the drive letter. Slow to start up and has problems with 10 character filenames. But once working very useful. Max directory sixe 16mb. GEM Desktop Here there are a few different options, GEM1.2 (pre-apple lawsuit) has moveable windows, trash can, desktop icons for lawsuit two fixed windows (top and bottom), no trash can or desktop but same features everywhere else. GEM 3 same as GEM 2, uses more memory, but is needed for later GEM applications. You can also mod GEM with the Freegem AES and Desktop which allows for multiple windows, the Desktop 1.2 features returned and 3D UI effects for radio buttons, scroll bars and the like. I have read that Desktop 1.2 is compatible with GEM 3, however I've had no luck getting it working. Freegem is a great version to run, but the Beeb realy does struggle with it's 1mb of ram. So I run GEM 3.13 with the B&W screen driver giving a full resolution of 640x256, the 4 colour screen driver gives 320x256. I use Q-Edit and MicroEmacs, both do an excellent job of basic text editing for programming or editing batch files. Q-Edit is part of a suite of Q-* applications ... no not Q*bert and is shareware. It has a nice menuing system which makes use of the cursor keys to navigate. MicroEmacs is a great editor, you just have to select the correct graphics driver for it to function correctly (CGA Mono). I have not found a basic text editor for GEM. Word Processor 1st Word Plus is a GEM based word processor that comes well recommended. It can probably do everything you want a word processor to do. There is also GEM Write, which whilst it looks like a notepad-esque program is also a full word processor that will cover 95% of your requirements without the overhead of 1st Word Plus. None GEM offerings include WordStar, WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, PC-Write..and I'm sure many more. Graphics Not really my area of expertise I know of GEM Paint, GEM Draw Plus (formally GEM Draw), Artline and Doodle (which is a sample program from the GEM programmers toolkit). GEM Paint is a bitmap editor, whilst GEM Draw Plus and Artline (V1) are vector editing programs. DTP Here you're spoilt for choice (although all look strikingly familiar), GEM Publisher, GEM Publisher V2, Publish-It, Key Publisher and Ventura Publisher. GEM Publisher 1.5 and 2 both require GEM 3 but require a lot of memory, on beeb you will need to disable the desktop applets (by renaming them in the gemsys directory). Not as fully featured as Ventura but much easier to get running. Publish-It and Key Publisher are the same package rebranded, these a slimed down DTP for GEM, however if you're low on memory or disk space are a good option. Finally the daddy of them all Ventura Publisher, you will be able to run Versions 1, 1.1 and 2.0 (although I would recommend loading them from DOS as they open their own GEM runtimes). Ventura 3 can be problematic, it is 7(!) floppies, GEM 3 and memory intensive. It can be persuaded to run, but once it's running it is painful to use. All work with GEM fonts, graphics from GEM Paint, Draw and in the case of GEM Publisher 2 even Artline. Another notable mention is a DOS based DTP PFS First Publisher, it's not integrated with graphics from GEM but it less resource intensive. Spreadsheet I've not used GEM for speardsheets, there was an an application called GEM MipsCalc but I'm yet to find a copy. There is GEM Graph which is good for creating charts of various types. Failing that there is always the DOS options of Lotus 1-2-3, SuperCalc and Express Calc the latter being 40 column so may support 4 colour CGA mode on the beeb. Comms Just two...Deputy is a shareware offering that does everything you need a comms package to do including Z-Modem transfers. It even supports Viewdata and Mintel...not that it viewdata looks particularly good in monochrome! The second is just called Terminal, it was a sample file for C development by Digital Research in both ACC and APP form. It is a dumb terminal with ASCII transfer support. For some reason it doesn't support the | character so 40 column BeeBS does not look great!