BBC Micro - Wikipedia. BBC Micro. BBC Micro Model A/B (standard configuration)Developer. Acorn Computers. Type. Release date. 1 December 1. Retail availability. Introductory price£2. Model A, £3. 35 Model B (in 1. Discontinued. 19. Units sold. Over 1. Media. Cassette tape, floppy disk (optional) – 5. SS/SD, SS/DD, DS/SD, DS/DD), 3. SS/DD, DS/DD), hard disk also known as 'Winchester' (rare), Laserdisc (BBC Domesday Project)Operating system.
Acorn MOSCPU2 MHz MOS Technology 6. Memory. 16–3. 2 Ki. B (Model A/B)6. 4–1. Ki. B (Model B+)1. Ki. B (Master). Plus 3. KB ROM, expandable to 2. Ki. BStorage. 10. In the last few seasons the 49ers played at Candlestick Park, I got into the gate for roughly $50 per game. The swarms of ushers and ticket-checkers customary at. KB (DFS)1. 60–1. 28. KB (ADFS floppy disks). MB (ADFS hard disk)Display. PAL/NTSC, UHF/composite/TTLRGBGraphics. Teletext)Sound. Texas Instruments SN7. TMS5. 22. 0 speech synthesiser with phrase ROM (optional)Input. Keyboard, twin analogue joysticks with fire buttons, lightpen. Connectivity. Printer parallel, RS- 4. Econet (optional), 1 MHz bus, Tube second processor interface. Power. 50 WPredecessor. Acorn Atom. Successor. Acorn Archimedes. Related articles. Acorn Electron. The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, is a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by the Acorn Computer company for the BBC Computer Literacy Project, operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Designed with an emphasis on education, it was notable for its ruggedness, expandability, and the quality of its operating system. An accompanying 1. The Computer Programme" featuring Chris Serle learning to use the machine was also broadcast on BBC 2. After the Literacy Project's call for bids for a computer to accompany the TV programmes and literature, Acorn won the contract with the Proton, a successor of its Atom computer prototyped at short notice. Renamed the BBC Micro, the system was adopted by most schools in the United Kingdom, changing Acorn's fortunes. It was also moderately successful as a home computer in the UK despite its high cost. Acorn also employed the machine to simulate and develop the ARM architecture which, many years later, has become hugely successful for embedded systems, including tablets and cellphones. In 2. 01. 3 ARM was the most widely used 3. While nine models were eventually produced with the BBC brand, the phrase "BBC Micro" is usually used colloquially to refer to the first six (Model A, B, B+6. B+1. 28, Master 1. Master Compact), excluding the Acorn Electron; subsequent BBC models are considered as part of Acorn's Archimedes series. History[edit]. The BBC Micro team in 2. During the early 1. BBC started what became known as the BBC Computer Literacy Project. The project was initiated partly in response to an ITV documentary series The Mighty Micro, in which Christopher Evans of the UK's National Physical Laboratory predicted the coming microcomputer revolution and its effect on the economy, industry, and lifestyle of the United Kingdom.[3]The BBC wanted to base its project on a microcomputer capable of performing various tasks which they could then demonstrate in the TV series The Computer Programme. The list of topics included programming, graphics, sound and music, teletext, controlling external hardware, and artificial intelligence. It developed an ambitious specification for a BBC computer, and discussed the project with several companies including Acorn Computers, Sinclair Research, Newbury Laboratories, Tangerine Computer Systems, and Dragon Data.[3]The Acorn team had already been working on a successor to their existing Atom microcomputer. Known as the Proton, it included better graphics and a faster 2 MHz MOS Technology. The machine was only at the design stage at the time, and the Acorn team, including Steve Furber and Sophie Wilson, had one week to build a working prototype from the sketched designs.[4] The team worked through the night to get a working Proton together to show the BBC.[5] Not only was the Acorn Proton the only machine to match the BBC's specification, it also exceeded it in nearly every parameter.[3] Based on the Proton prototype the BBC signed a contract with Acorn as early as February 1. June the BBC Micro's specifications and pricing were decided.[6]Market impact[edit]. The keyboard of a Model B in close- up. The machine was released as the BBC Microcomputer on 1 December 1. Nicknamed "the Beeb",[8] it was popular in the UK, especially in the educational market; about 8. British schools had a BBC microcomputer,[9][1. BYTE called the BBC Micro Model B "a no- compromise computer that has many uses beyond self- instruction in computer technology". It called the Tube interface "the most innovative feature" of the computer, and concluded that "although some other British microcomputers offer more features for a given price, none of them surpass the BBC .. As with Sinclair's ZX Spectrum and Commodore's Commodore 6. For some months, there were long delays before customers received the machines they had ordered. Efforts were made to market the machine in the United States and West Germany.[1. By October 1. 98. US operation reported that American schools had placed orders with it totalling $2. In October 1. 98. US dealer network, Acorn claimed sales of 8. British schools, and delivery of 4. That December, Acorn stated its intention to become the market leader in US educational computing.[1. The New York Times considered the inclusion of local area networking to be of prime importance to teachers.[1. The operation resulted in advertisements by at least one dealer in Interface Age magazine,[1. The success of the machine in the UK was due largely to its acceptance as an "educational" computer – UK schools used BBC Micros to teach computer literacy, information technology skills and a generation of games programmers.[3] Acorn became more known for its model B computer than for its other products.[1. Some Commonwealth countries, including India, started their own Computer Literacy programs around 1. BBC Micro, a clone of which was produced by Semiconductor Complex Limited and named the SCL Unicorn.[1. The Model A and the Model B were priced initially at £2. The Model B price of nearly £4. Acorn anticipated the total sales to be around 1. BBC Micros were sold.[1. The cost of the BBC Models was high compared to competitors such as the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 6. Acorn attempted to counter this by producing a simplified but largely compatible version intended for game playing, the 3. K Acorn Electron.[citation needed]Description[edit]Hardware features: Models A and B[edit]The Model A had 1. KB of user RAM, while the Model B had 3. KB. A feature that the Micro shared with other 6. Apple and the early Commodore models was that the RAM was clocked twice as fast as the CPU,[6][2. CPU and the video display controller.[2. This gave the BBC Micro a fully unified memory address structure without speed penalties. To use the CPU at full speed (2 MHz) required the memory system to be capable of performing four million access cycles per second. Hitachi was the only company, at the time, that made a DRAM that went that fast. So for the prototype the only four 4. Most competing microcomputers with memory- mapped display incurred CPU speed penalties depending on the actions of the video circuits (e. Amstrad CPC and to a lesser extent the ZX Spectrum) or kept video memory completely separate from the CPU address pool (e. MSX). The machine included a number of extra input/output interfaces: serial and parallel printer ports; an 8- bit general purpose digital I/O port; a port offering four analogue inputs, a light pen input, and switch inputs; and an expansion connector (the "1 MHz bus") that enabled other hardware to be connected. Extra ROMs could be fitted (four on the PCB or sixteen with expansion hardware) and accessed via paged memory. An Econet network interface and a disk drive interface were available as options. All motherboards had space for the electronic components, but Econet was rarely fitted. Additionally, an Acorn proprietary interface named the "Tube" allowed a second processor to be added. Three models of second processor were offered by Acorn, based on the 6. Z8. 0 and 3. 20. 16 CPUs. The Tube was later used in third- party add- ons, including a Zilog Z8. Torch that allowed the BBC machine to run CP/M programs. Separate pages, each with a codename, were used to control the access to the I/O: [2. Codename. Page. Description. FRED0x. FC0. 0 – 0x. FCFF1 MHz bus. JIM0x. FD0. 0 – 0x. FDFF1 MHz bus / paged RAMSHEILA0x.
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