______ ______ ______ 
|_ _ \|_ _ \ .' ___ |
| |_) | | |_) |/ .' \_|
| __'. | __'.| |
_| |__) || |__) \ `.___.'\
|_______/_______/ `.____ .'
|_ \ / _|(_)
| \/ | __ .---. _ .--. .--.
| |\ /| | [ | / /'`\][ `/'`\] .'`\ \
_| |_\/_| |_ | | | \__. | | | \__. |
|_____||_____[___]'.___.'[___] '.__.'
My history with the Beeb
If you live in the UK and are of a certain vintage, or attended
an under-funded state school in the 90s-00s you will be familiar
with the Acorn BBC Micro in conjunction with the governments
computer literacy programme it launched the careers of many in
the tech industry. Rolling off the production line in 1981 until
1994(!) its status is legendary. There is a wealth of information
about the Beeb around the interwebs (I'll link to a few of my
favourites below) so instead of reinventing the wheel I thought
I'd tell you about my personal experience.
I recieved my BBC Master 128 (the "successor" to the BBC Micro
Model B) as my first computer as a hand-me-down from my brother,
who had in turn recieved it as a hand-me-down from my dad when
it was retired from its use at the family business...where I
think it was used for invoicing (and most likely games). This
would have been in the early 90s, quite late in to the Beebs
life cycle. We had a few editions of The Micro User (a Acorn
specific magazine) all from the 80s which I used to pour over,
learning how to program in BASIC and reading about different
expansions for the Beeb. My Beeb was fairly stock with a few
peripherals.
Oddly considering its original use case, I had very little
software for the Beeb, but quite a few games. I had a few
Play it again Sam discs (6 and 7), a Beebug disc with a few
compilations of games on, Sim City and some vaguely
educational titles a stocks and shares trader, a running the
UK government game and an around the world trip game. These
last few were on tape. I was peeved to learn that they were
also missing in action online until recently (2023) but
thankfully someone has now found and archived them.
At some point in the late 90s the PSU on my Beeb gave out and
my dad took it to the tip (I assume)...I was pretty annoyed
about this! The replacement was an Amstrad PC20386 which was
night and day difference to the Beeb and took some adjusting
to.
I never quite shook the Beeb bug, having really only ever
programmed in BASIC, and BBC Basic is (I would argue) the best
BASIC that there is. For a few years I used BeebEm (a great BBC
Micro emulator) but eventually in 2009 I purchased a BBC Master
128.
...now you're up-to-date you can read about what I've done/do
with my BBC Master from the main BBC Micro page.