What's New?

Click here for the archive index, where new files are found!

04.11.2003

After three years of on and off development, Duncan Woods has released the first Java BBC emulator, JBeeb! It can be run either as a standalone application, or (of course) as an embedded applet. Enjoy!

Jason Watton made a web page for his OmniDisk file/disk/image conversion utility.

Michael Foot contributed Claires ArtRoom (seems to need Master with SWRAM, may need to remove line 1 in MENU) and World Cup Cricket (disc version, Computer Rentals Ltd/D. Baker 1984)

03.11.2003 Tom Seddon updated model-b to version 2/11/2003. Labyrinth should now work, and support for double density discs is added, among other improvements.

15.08.2003 The Master Welcome and Utilities disk works fine - I just never knew that one had to press Ctrl-A then Break to use ADFS instead of DFS (which is the default). Thanks again to Richard for pointing this out!

05.08.2003 Andy Bennett contributed the Watford Quest Paint support disc, which was requested a few days ago. Thanks a lot!

04.08.2003

Dave Moore over at the Stairway has created a new site, Acornmags, for scans of Acorn related magazines. It looks like an excellent start!

Richard D. Perrins contributed an image of the Welcome and Utilities disk for the BBC Master (ADFS format). The ADL image is created using OmniDisk. I couldn't get it to work in BeebEm (Master mode). Anyone?

31.07.2003 Tom Walker released version 0.6 of B-em. This BBC emulator for DOS now emulates B+, improves UEF support, supports 2 disc drives, has much improved 6502 and audio cores and a new GUI - and is also available for Windows!

30.07.2003 Woah! Daily updates! :-)

Almar Joling submitted his collection of 36 game disk images, with menus. (The permissions problem has been fixed now.)

James Fidell provided the missing xbeeb-0.4.1.tar.gz - I've mirrored it here.

29.07.2003

We're still alive!

Steve Fewell added Dabs Press disks with docs: Fingerprint (MC monitor, disassembler and more), Conversion Kit (MC utilities and code library).

Michael Foot sent in 3-D Graphics Development System (2 disc images).

Does anyone have the game Merlin's Castle? Let me know. Annelie Grey would like to replay her first computer game ever.

Also Alex Farlie is looking for the disc supplied with the Watford Quest Paint ROMs, and the "Conquest" ROMs.

I added a link to J.G.Harston's C compiler page, which includes a Small-C implementation for the BBC.

I thought this was quite amusing, though the tone offended me so much that I decided to not bother...

Tom Seddon put up a page with technical info on the Opus Challenger.

But that's just the beginning - Tom has also rewritten his classic Model B from scratch! It has had several updates since its release in May, including the addition of B+ support, and compatibility seems to be excellent. Read all about it on Tom's site.

Jon. Justice passed on this prank: type in ?&FE40=0 and pump up the volume!

John Kortink has updated 65Link to version 1.30. 65Link allows an ARM machine hard disc to be used by a BBC or Master, over a parallel cable.

John also made available his A & B Computing articles.

Aran Johnson updated my link to John Allen's Z88 bits.

Glyn G0WST contributed the Watford Digitiser manual.

Arif Moghal sent a link to Horizon Converter 1.0, for converting INF files to Horizon format.

Michael Foot has updated BeebIt, his emulator for RISC OS, to version 0.53.

Simon Ainsworth noticed our request for the game "Greedy Dwarf". He wrote it in 1984, but can't offer the BBC version. He does, however, have a Java version!

Jon Ripley has created a suite of ADFS hard drive images, for future use in emulators. For the time being, this is only of interest to emulator developers.

Wouter Scholten has updated his bbcim suite of utilities to version 0.103 - Unix sources only for now.

Wouter also released bbclist 0.8 a utility that converts BBC BASIC files to HTML.

17.03.2003

Greg Cook has made version 1.00 of his scans of the BBC B/B+ User Guide. The PDF is available here, but note that an annotated RTF version and more information is to be found at Greg's page.

Jon Ripley and Jonathan Harston launched their "joint venture", The BBC Micro mailing list archive. The old archive seems to have been defunct for a while.

27.02.2003

John Simpson contributed a PDF conversion of the BBC Microcomputer Advanced User Guide. It is practically perfect, with correct pagination and images.

12.02.2003

As usual, this update is much overdue... :-)

Jeremy Grayson provided a copy of a Tynesoft games catalogue, nicely scanned by David Moore.

Michael Archer sent me a nice e-mail about his old games.

Ian Wolstenholme contributed a copy of Martello Tower, a title by Anita Straker, published by Derbyshire Educational Software Centre. This fulfills a long-standing request.

Jonathan Belson has moved his stuff to the incredibly cool domain of witchspace.com. His stuff includes the BeOS port of BeebEm.

Just before x-mas, Tom Walker's B-em was updated to version 0.5, with the following great enhacements:

Totally rewritten 6502 core - faster

Totally rewritten video - better split palette/mode emulation + R5 scrolling and some rupture

UEF support is back

New GUI

Blurring filter

Switchable sound waveforms

Samples no longer crash B-em

Sideways RAM emulation actually works

Joystick emulation

28.11.2002 A couple of updates before the yuletid:

Greg Cook has done some excellent work on scanning the BBC B+ user guide, complete with graphics and Greg's additional corrections. Most of the manual is improved and corrected from the model B version, and most is of course relevant to the old Beeb, so this is an essential if you've lost your user guide.

David Hawkins added the Micron Plus EPROM Programmer manual.

Tom Walker updated his DOS Electron emulator, the Elkulator, to version 0.2. This fixes some 6502 emulation problems, adds a bit of speed, and adds a tantalizing blurring filter... yummy!

Mark Bush has made a page available describing how to address the Y2K issue on a BBC Master without soldering.

You can rest assured that the Domesday system that was auctioned on eBay ended up with somebody who really appreciates it... And no, it's not me... :-)

23.9.2002 Waaay too long since last update... gotta blame it on the exceptional summer we had in Norway... besides, there hasn't been that much happening in the last half a year! ;-) All right, then - if it makes you feel any better, my conscience has been tormenting me! In any case, those of you still out there should hereby be pretty much up to date:

Michael Foot updated his excellent BeebIt emulator for RISC OS to version 0.45. In his own words:

- Fixed an error in the video routine so that FireTrack and the water level in Exile now work (woo-hoo!).
- Added keyboard links for models B and B+ to the options screen.
- Implemented FRED and JIM memory locations. All calls will be transferred directly to RISC OS for processing.
- Added BeebIt64K module to the application directory. This emulates 64K of paged RAM.
- Fixed timer interrupt problem in the VIAs. Rig Attack and Psycastria 2 flashing colours now work.
- Support for multiple ROM paths added.
- Choices and CMOS are now saved to !Boot.Choices.

From my testing, I believe that BeebIt should now be able to run 99.9%,
if not all, of the BBC games available. I'd be interested to hear of any
that still fail to work.

Tom Walker recently announced the availability of Elkulator 0.1. It's a DOS based emulator (B-Em's little brother, so to speak) featuring:

Emulates basic 32k Electron

Emulation of all modes + some basic palette splitting

Tape emulation

Sound through PC bleeper and SoundBlaster

The PS2 port of BeebEm has moved to here - not much activity, though.

Speaking of emulators, Mike Cowlishaw has implemented an emulator of the "Acorn 6502 Microcomputer", also called "Acorn System One" - no prizes for guessing this to be Acorn's first microcomputer.

Did you miss the auction of the year? I hope it found a good home. Also, any news on the attempts at preserving the data on the Domesdays discs would be welcome!

OmniDisk 2.5 (direct binary link) is a rather new utility by Jason Watton, for reading and decoding BBC formatted floppies, as well as many other formats. Try it out, and let Jason know how you like it!

Simon Foster did some great work on the Repton Appreciation Society.

Richard Hanson's baby seem to be close to making an officially remade appearance, as well, at the spiffily renamed Superior Interactive. It appears that a major player in all of this is Masabi, the software developer responsible for the mobile versions.

Greg Cook updated his disc image serial transfer suite (DumpDisc, TDTD) and renamed it to DT2K. It has many fixes, including a much faster checksum algorithm, and is notable for providing an uuencoder for the Beeb.

Brian Jones updated his emulator front-end, BBC Connect, to version 2.1.

Check out Jannah Berihn's Elite/Frontier themed site, Longhaul Outpost 2. Many pages are unfinished, but there are some downloads, and a pretty good reproduction of the original Elite manual.

Note that Crispin Boylan's great BBC Games Archive has a new URL.

Also, Dave Edwards opened up an Electron biased web site. It currently revels in reprints of reviews from the Electron Users Group (EUG), which should provide for some more nostalgic reading, as well as a bunch of games on disc images.

Colin Fraser's page on the Hybrid Music System moved.

Older news can be found here...

Robert Schmidt - rsc@nvg.org.