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#bbcmicro

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Boosted by Kevin Karhan @kkarhan@jorts.horse
@aral@mastodon.ar.al · 4d ago
Did you know there was a system called Red Box for the BBC Micro that enabled you to turn home appliances off and on using your computer? So, basically, an early version of HomeKit, etc. In 1986. https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/36892/BBC-Micro-Red-Box/ #BBCMicro #RedBox #homeAutomation
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Boosted by Charlie Stross @cstross@wandering.shop
@electron_greg@oldbytes.space · Apr 15, 2026
Tested various micros running this FLOATING POINT program. It derives Pi to 20 decimal places. Interesting stats. 1 N=20: L=INT(10*N/3): DIM A(255): Z$="000000":T$="999999" 2 FOR I=1 TO L: A(I)=2: NEXT I: M=0: P=0: FOR J=1 TO N: Q=0: K=2*L+1 3 FOR I=L TO 1 STEP -1: K=K-2: X=10*A(I)+Q*I: Q=INT(X/K): A(I)=X-Q*K: NEXT I 4 Y =INT(Q/10): A(1)=Q-10*Y: Q=Y: IF Q=9 THEN LET M=M+1: GOTO 7 5 IF Q=10 THEN PRINT STR$(P+1);LEFT$(Z$,M);: P=0: M=0: GOTO 7 6 PRINT STR$(P);LEFT$(T$,M);: P=Q: M=0 7 NEXT J:PRINT STR$(P) #RC2014 : 14 (thank you JonV) #BBCMicro : 19 #AmstradCPC : 22 (thank you Devlin) #AcornElectron : 25 #C128 : 27 (fast mode - thank you Jonas H) #VIC20 : 36 #AcornAtom : 37 #CBMPET : 43 #C64 : 43 #Dragon32 : 44 #C16 : 46 #Altair8800 : 52 #MSX : 53 (thank you Pixel Purrito) #C128 : 56 (default "mode") #ZX80 : 57 #ZXSpectrum : 68 (thank you Adam) Edit: now ordered (seconds)
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@markmoxon@universeodon.com · Apr 17, 2026
This is pretty amazing. Draw accurate landscapes from The Sentinel on a pen plotter? And animate them? I'm definitely in! https://newsletter.revdancatt.com/p/085-the-sentinel-adventures-in-animation I do my projects for a lot of reasons, but seeing what people do with them? Yeah, that's a big one. 😀 #bbcmicro #c64 #retrocomputing
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@markmoxon@universeodon.com · Apr 12, 2026

It’s finished! The Sentinel, Geoff Crammond’s epic game, is now fully documented at https://thesentinel.bbcelite.com

  • 41,902 lines of lovingly annotated source code

  • 51 deep dives (116,240 words)

  • Fully buildable code repository

  • 100% handcrafted AI-free content

  • 7 months’ work

If you have enjoyed this project, you might like my other software archaeology projects at https://www.bbcelite.com

  • Elite on the 6502

  • Aviator on the BBC Micro

  • Revs on the BBC Micro

  • Lander on the Acorn Archimedes

Time for a new project now… after a bit of a break. See you soon!

#retrocomputing #C64 #BBCMicro

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In reply to
@aral@mastodon.ar.al · Apr 11, 2026
Wish me the luck, the little guy’s going under the knife… the video signal cuts out intermittently so I’m going to try changing the 16MHz oscillating crystal. 🤞 #BBCMicro
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In reply to
@aral@mastodon.ar.al · Apr 11, 2026
So mine’s apparently an Issue 4 from 1982. Although there’s a sticker in it that reads 1 Nov 83 (maybe when it was sold/serviced?) The board’s out and yes, I was a bit of a barbarian and, since I’m not going to be using the composite out, cut the wires to it instead of desoldering them. If I ever need it, I can just connect the wires again. Now the bit that scares me… #BBCMicro #repair
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In reply to
@aral@mastodon.ar.al · Apr 11, 2026
Note, if you will, the beauty of this design: There are seven places where the power supply attaches to the main board but there’s no way you can get it wrong as the lengths of the wire won’t let you. (You still have to know black is 0v.) #BBCMicro #repair
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In reply to
@aral@mastodon.ar.al · Apr 11, 2026
Yep, it’s been half an hour and no dropouts… I’m calling it, my lovely new BBC Micro B is fixed :) Yay! Soooo excited to play with it tomorrow 🥳 Here’s a before video: https://vimeo.com/1181523949#t=26 And an after: https://vimeo.com/1182284426 And the issue, for anyone else who stumbles on this thread, was the 16MHz oscillator circuit (marked X1 on the main board). Also, I could only find a lot of 50 of them, so if anyone needs one, just hit me up and I’ll send it to you :) Huge thanks to the folks on the stardot.org.uk for sharing the fix: https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?p=246304#p246304 #BBCMicro #BBCMicroModelB #video #dropout #issue #fix #x1 #oscillator
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@markmoxon@universeodon.com · Feb 27, 2026
This is pretty cool. It's a visualisation of the internals of The Sentinel on the #BBCMicro. This is it generating the game landscape for the first level from 1024 pseudo-random numbers. Next week I'll be releasing a deep dive into exactly how this works. *** A big thanks to Simon Owen, whose excellent repository I forked and enhanced in order to build this visualisation. It's well worth a visit. https://github.com/simonowen/sentland/ #bbcmicro #retrocomputing #retrogaming #c64 #8bit
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@markmoxon@universeodon.com · Feb 25, 2026
I'm (slowly!) releasing 50+ deep dives into The Sentinel, Geoff Crammond's epic #BBCMicro game. Batch #2 is now ready: 7 new articles about maths, geometry, trigonometry… and Revs. https://thesentinel.bbcelite.com/deep_dives Batch #3 (landscape) coming soon. Enjoy! #retrocomputing #retrogaming #c64 #8bit
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@markmoxon@universeodon.com · Feb 19, 2026
I'm releasing over 50 deep dives into The Sentinel, Geoff Crammond's epic #BBCMicro game. Batch #1 is now ready: 6 new articles about memory maps, program flow and interrupts, all at: https://thesentinel.bbcelite.com/deep_dives Batch #2 (maths, lots of!) coming soon. Enjoy! #retrocomputing #retrogaming #c64 #8bit
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@markmoxon@universeodon.com · Jan 31, 2026
I've started writing a series of deep dives into Geoff Crammond's epic #BBCMicro game The Sentinel. Here's the to-do list. I will post a link here whenever I add a new one to https://thesentinel.bbcelite.com/ It's going to take a while! But it should be worth it... #retrocomputing #retrogaming #c64 #8bit
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