Internet Resources

Newsgroups

Here are some news groups which might be of interest for BBC or Acorn users, though the traffic on 8-bit Acorn computers is very low. Your best bet is probbaly the misc, hardware or games subgroups.

comp.emulators.misc (FAQ (defunct, here's a mirror))

The comp.sys.acorn hierarchy (FAQ): advocacy, announce, apps, extra-cpu, games, hardware, misc, networking, programmer

James Fidell maintains two BBC related mailing lists. To subscribe, mail majordomo@cloud9.co.uk, and add to the body of the message whichever of the following "subscribe" lines that are appropriate for you, or the word "help" if you would like more detailed instructions. Important note: To unsubscribe, send a mail to the same address, substituting the word "subscribe" with the word "unsubscribe". Do not send "unsubscribe" messages to the mailing lists themselves! Such messages have no other effect than being very annoying for the regular users of the lists.

"subscribe bbc-micro": for discussions on the family of BBC computers (real ones as well as emulators). This is the main list of interest for BBC enthusiasts. Expect between zero and five posts a day.
You may click here to send a message to the list now.

"subscribe xbeeb": for discussions regarding the Xbeeb emulator. Not much is happening on this list, though. Expect between zero and five posts a year... :-)
You may click here to send a message to the list now.

Jon Ripley and Jonathan Harston maintains a BBC Micro mailing list archive, containing over five thousand messages from 21st May 1992 to 3rd March 2003, and counting. There's also an archive of the old defunct Beeb-Emulators list, containing over one thousand messages from 15th July 1994 to 4th September 1998. These archives are searchable.

FTP sites

This section will list various Beeb or Acorn-related ftp resources on the net.

The ftp archive of "The BBC Lives!" is found at ftp://ftp.nvg.org/pub/bbc. Contributions are welcome to rsc@nvg.org.

The Haven BBC Micro Archive, various files of interest, notably a BBC and Ample music archive.

Acorn's ftp site does not exist any more, but here's a mirror of the BBC related contents (mainly application notes and circuit diagrams).

ftp://mic2-atm.lancs.ac.uk/micros/bbc is the BBC section of the HENSA/micros archive. It is mirrored in the BBC utilities section.

Here is Gerben Vos' list of "All known Acorn-related archives on and around the Internet", adapted to HTML by Peter Naulls.

WWW links

Here's a list of other BBC, emulation and games related pages I have come across. New entries are usually added at the top of each section.

Pages related to a specific emulator are usually found in the emulators section.

Acorn micros

James Watson's BBC pages

Paul Weddel's BBC Alive has specialized in providing technical information/assistance on the Beeb.

Elecron Forever has some tape images and Electron related documentation.

The Acorn Electron Lives: Bas Verhoeven's tribute to the Elk

Mark de Weger's BBC micro publications: several classic articles from Acorn User, Micro User and more.

8BS (c/o Chris Richardson): 8BS used to be one of the largest BBC user groups in the UK, and now remains as the largest PD/SW collections of BBC software.

Swattons BBC Micro Pages: home made software and other BBC tidbits. Remember typing in listings from magazines? Brian has the solution of the new millennium... :-)

The comp.sys.acorn.* FAQ

master128.freeservers.com: Robbie Harrison's tribute to the Master 128.

BBC emulation and file transfer: William Andrew Steer's page with utilities for transferring and working with BBC disk images.

BBC Central: a BBC micro start page by Chris Hatton.

The Acorn Emulation Page, for emulators running on Acorn machines, but it also has some details on the ARM emulators in existence.

Colin's unofficial Acorn Atom page

John Allen's Z88 Bits: articles about using the Z88 with a BBC

Kevin Phillips' Acorn page (dead link?)

Rob Sprowson's The BBC B mecca

Mark Cooke's BBC pages

R J Manners: Bob's Computer Museum

Marat Fayzullin: his page on Acorn's early micros

Companies

The "Products" page at Digital Connect Technologies describes most of Gary Partis' contributions to the Beeb experience.

O Wonder (previously Tecnation): about their products, including AMX Pagemaker for the BBC B

Clares Micro Supplies home page

Logotron's home page

Computer Concepts' home page

Mythos Games (producers of the X-COM series of PC smash hits) will soon make their BBC (and Spectrum) productions available for download, after making sure they run with the most popular emulators. Way to go!

Utopia Software's homepage - what's most interesting is that the managing director is Richard Hanson, producer of smash hits like Repton and Speech!.

Games

Greedy Dwarf: Simon Ainsworth web port of his old Beeb game.

Thrust Deluxe: a remake for modern PCs.

EzeeBeeb: Doug Wheller's BBC gaming site, with downloads, playing tips, and a one-file download with BeebEm and games ready-to-go.

L - A Mathemagical Adventure

PC Exile: Symo's port of the most impressive 2D BBC game ever.

AI2 BBC Micro Games: Tony Bartram's Beeb games page

The Retro BBC Emulation Site: Dextrovix' site with some hard-to-find games and ROMs.

Remakes: Tracks many remakes of classic microcomputer games.

Ultimate Play the Game: Rare reveals its past as publisher of some very influential 8-bit titles.

Dave's Emulator Page: David Bell's page about BBC emulation, with a collection of games for download. The BBC system ROM images are also available.

BBC Micro Games Archive: John Bishop's page has some disk images available for download.

Elite: The New Kind is a project for reengineering the original BBC Elite, and recreating the experience on modern computers.

Ian Bell's Elite home page is back! It provides all the best Elite conversions for download, as well as the sources for the original BBC micro version.

Tantric Eggs, Tom Newman's Chuckie Egg worship page.

Frontier Developments Ltd, founded by David Braben, continues the Elite legacy.

Only the best BBC micro games: a nice archive by "Doctor Beeb"

BBC hi-scores, collected by Tom Lindberg. Mail him your records!

The Stairway to Hell by dllm is a new comprehensive BBC games database, with loads of cover scans. Much more information is continuously being added.

Repton ADL: Arjan de Lang's Repton port for DOS.

Michael Foot's BBC emulator (BeebIt), software and games cheats page

Electron and BBC tape covers, a collection scanned and provided by Joost Heesters.

DirectX Chuckie Egg, Mike Elson has written a faithful Chuckie Egg for Windows.

Level 9 adventure interpreters for PC, Amiga, Archimedes, ...

The BBC Games Archive: Crispin Boylan's comprehensive database with information on most BBC games in existance.

The Repton Shrine (dead link?)

The Chuckie Egg Appreciation Society: right next to Elite, this seems to be the game that everybody wants to play again.

!6502Em Games compatability, list compiled by Gareth Moore

The Acorn Elite Pages

Repton 3 for DOS by Jasper (dead link)

Nectar and other games for Repton Infinity by Alex Card.

Tolkien computer games for the Acorn BBC - some specs

Details of Elite missions (dead link)

Software

JBF Software, the web site of Johan Paul Hendriks. He has made some of his BBC games and tools available for download.

Telesoftware, as remembered by Alan Pemberton

Z Productions: home of BBC/Mac interfacing, The Fluffy Tamagotchi, The Hamburger Duplicator, and other bizarre BBC projects... :-)

Greygum Software has some classic educational BBC software for sale.

Project Babel by Mark Usher, deals with software and hardware for networking PCs and Beebs.

The BBC BASIC Website by Simon Sheppard promises to provide tidbits and information on the best BASIC dialect ever.

Terje Larsen's public domain software for Acorn micros, including the Maya Electronics Terminal Emulator

AODIS - A 6502 disassembler, able to produce HTML code with linked branches.

David Thomas' notes on BASIC VI/V programming - some of this even applies to good old BBC BASIC 2 (dead link?)

Inside Hybrid's Music 5000, explained by creator Chris Jordan, webified by Colin Fraser.

Extra Rheolism: A one-liner giving you a game of Tetris? Here's one for Acorn BASIC V, by David Moore and Martin Hollis. Maybe somebody can make it work on a Beeb?

John Kortink's pages containing RISC OS software, including 65Link, and his A & B Computing articles.

David Alan Gilbert presents his BBC utility to program an Atmel AVR microcontroller using the Beeb's user port.

BBC to Modem Link Cable: describes how to connect a modem to the BBC, by Charlie Cole.

References

BBC Micro Documentation Project by Mark Usher.

Pete Robinson's Acorn documentation page, with HTML versions of many manuals, and a very good quick reference for BBC BASIC commands.

Mike Cook's pages with old articles and software from the "Body Build" series in The Micro User and/or Acorn Computing

James Fidell: BBC Micro Emulators info (defunct)

Gerben Vos: Gerben's Acorn page - loads of Acorn links. (dead link)

Dave Walsh: Long live the BBC microcomputer - an overview of freely available educational software for BBC micros.

Acorn's application notes for the BBC models (This is a local mirror of the original page, which is now gone from the web. Go here for a local mirror of the actual appnote archives.)

Documentation on Acorn Archimedes computers - collected and provided by Robin Watts. (dead link?)

Archimedes techinal information at the Acorn Computer User WWW Server.

Unsorted/misc.

Lawrence Edwards' page on running BeebEm, BBC-related links, and various game screenshots.

Brandy: Dave Daniels' portable BBC BASIC V interpreter

Gnomula's emulation pages

BBC ROM images

BBC Microcomputer Drives and ADFS: a page with interesting excerpts from the mailing list, as well as an informative article on ADFS.

Catweasel homepage: this floppy controller promises to be able to read most obscure floppy formats out there. Has anyone tried it on BBC floppies?

Reid Designs' BBC Microcomputer page by Ian Reid.

"OS ROMs for your emu". Use it at your own responsibility and risk. (dead link?)

MHP Teletext Then and Now has some interesting history on BBC, teletext and the BBC micro. (dead link?)

Stephan's Retro Computer Site has BBC files with useful files for emulator users.

A BBC emulation page (in favor of Horizon) with some games. (dead link?)

Heaven - Viewdata revival: join the movement to breathe new life into the old teletext-style bulletin board systems. Of course, this link is here because the BBC, with its mode 7, was perfect for connecting to such systems. These days, however, a Java-capable browser is enough.