Great interview! Thanks for uploading this.

erm erm erm erm

Hmm... I wonder if it would be possible if a similar approach could be used for the Apple II?

Dave Gilbert you are a legend!

This was great, thanks Tony and Colin!

Thanks for this! It was well put together; don't give yourself a hard time Daniel :-)

what about Virtual Acorn is this similar to this beebem ? or different people wrote Virtual Acorn ?? thanks.............

Fascinating stuff, thanks. Amazing that Bell and Braben managed to fit it all in!

It's very inspiring what you and other coders of the day managed to achieve. They are all awesome copies of arcade hits with such limited resources, they will probably be played forever.

Only a bit of ubinetics was sold to CSR

Ubinetics were bought by Aeroflex.

❤ Elite is a game that never ends. In a way that's a bit like social media. And what about using Mastodon distributed social media as a basis for planet systems data for a networked version of elite.❤

23:12 Wisdom applied to any 6502 or 6510. Great talk!🙂

People always talk about Elite, which was epic black and white in space, but for me Combat Lynx was the ultimate real time full colour (red, green, cyan and black) fully 3D flying game. The viewscreen was small, the frame rate was terrible (and gameplay wasn't that great) but the graphics were spectacular with rolling hills and valleys and plains full of trees and cottages, and tanks.

A mere 2.5 years on, I suspect the state of the art has changed but I'll say it anyway... I suspect a £10 JFET differential op-amp from Analog devices would massively outperform any 1980s head amplifier. A £300 preamp would almost certainly have something quite simple and inexpensive at its heart. I think not touching the actual media has to be looked at. "Flying" a head wouldn't need an air cushion, CD/DVD players/recorders use optical tracking at huge linear speeds. You could raster a custom head (perhaps from a hard drive) and generate a 2D "image" at extremely high resolution. Worn audio heads on cassette players sometimes give stronger signals. This may be the same for some floppy heads. Narrower poles/gaps on the head make a stronger, more localised signal.

How familiar this sounds. I've got about 25 remakes I've made where I've done the fun/hard bit and not done any more to it, even though it just needs the final "boring" bits doing. If it was your job and you got paid to work on it, then it's just a slog to finish the boring bits, but when you are doing it for fun, then there's definately a boundary between the exciting bits and boring bits. It always helps when there's some interest and people spur you on and you crack on to finish it and tweak it to perfection.

Tony was engaged to my mother while they were both studying at Keele University. My mother was responsible for much of the artwork in "The Exotic Adventures of Sylvia Layne", it's a shame Tony seems to have forgotten that in this interview, the game was even named after my mother, Sylvia. Yes, it was a poor game, but after playing it recently I can tell you it's not the graphics the game falls down on, but the awful game mechanics that were purely down to Tony himself. I owe Tony a lot for introducing me to the world of computers and starting a lifelong passion for gaming. Still, to hear him blame the failure of Exotic Adventures on my mother's contribution, something she was very proud of, is a chronic insult to her memory.

My son gave me a sound bar to go along with my big TV/Monitor. Since it is set up for movie watching, after 10 minutes of no sound, the bar will turn off. A pain to say the least. I grabbed my licensed BBC basic, wrote a quick program to put out a tiny burst of white noise every few minutes, sound version of a mouse wiggler, compiled it to an EXE file and done. Less that 10 minutes start to finish. I love having BBC basic in my tool kit.

zoom in or better text please

Great work! Many thanks for doing this. I note if you browse for B-Em, you tend to get the web page offering the 2.2 version dated June 3 2012. So what we have here is a newer, later version - just to state the obvious for new people reading this for the first time. I downloaded the item b-em-09cf5a9-w64.zip (about a page down from the download link given above) and now using and exploring that.

I`ve just found out how to work the *REFRESH. It`s a game changer for smooth screen flow when I`m writing a 2D wire games. I cheered out loud when I got it working. :)

Any chance of a remade Mode 7 adapter ?

Does anyone know if it's possible (and if so, what the process might be) to get data off MDFS SCSI HDDs now?

I'm currently in the process of recovering data from a number of 3.5" floppy disks when I came across this video. I found it very interesting, in particular the visual of the tracks. Here is a summary of the main points covered: - The speaker mentions gaps between tracks on a 40-track floppy disk, as well as red and orange sectors that may indicate read errors. - To tidy up the data and identify errors, they suggest removing odd tracks and investigating specific tracks with errors. - If errors occur, it is recommended to use additional software like Disk Utilities to attempt decoding the disk again. - The goal is to recover the data from the disk and preserve it in formats like IMD or HFE files. - Mold and dirt on disks can cause issues, so cleaning the disks before reading them is essential. - The speaker shares their experience recovering data from a moldy disk and discusses the damaged sectors and potential data loss. - They mention the possibility of fixing dodgy pulses or errors by using heuristic algorithms or additional decoding methods. - The importance of preserving SCP (Stream Copy Protection) files is emphasized, as they retain the original data and protection mechanisms. - Different disk drives and heads are mentioned, but the speaker recommends using reliable drives like the TIAC Triad and Sony 920 for three and a half-inch disks. - The speaker highlights the need for careful and patient data recovery, rather than rushing through the process. - The possibility of creating an SAP (Software Preservation) archive is suggested for preserving software files. - The advantages of the HFE (HxC Floppy Emulator) and SCP formats for data preservation are discussed, along with the possibility of extending SCP to capture additional data.

hello - thanks - can some1 write or rewrite Lander on risc os to incorporate sound?? because from 1987 88 or 1989 in a video with Fred Harris Lander DID have sound !! also - Dragon 32 word processor with a bug in it? maybe? from September 1985 - have a look please some1 - also about Grand Prix - on the Dragon 32 does any1 know where i can download it from (a BASIC) program listing from 1982 or 1983?? maybe it was from a book or magazine?? thanks...............

Interesting and entertaining stuff. I actually bought BBC games back in the day (about twenty of them as I recall), among which Acornsoft Chess and Frak (both on tape I think), but not Zalaga and Firetrack. Piracy was just a school yard away at the time ...

Elementum is a great game - thank you.

I have a question for you: how do you create a scrolling effect in BeebEm if you want to create teletext pages?

Just want to say a massive thank-you to Andrew and the ABug folks for this. SJ Research took a good product (Econet) and made it great. My most formative years were spent hacking around on Econet networks (and MDFS in particular) but I was missing a huge amount of background information which this talk provided. Some great tips for retro Econet operators right at the end as well. I was riveted from start to finish!

Just bought a BBC Micro from Tasmania and it's an ex-school machine. Has a sticker right on the front saying Barson Computers - Melbourne - Sydney - Auckland. The BT email system, was that based on Prestel by chance?

About a book version 1:12:08 - The book version is no more or less legal than the web version. Of course selling it without permission would be more likely to attract legal enforcement. But why not look into getting permission? The original rights holders would typically get a cut and the only question is what percentage. The other avenue is not to reproduce the source in the book, merely publish the analysis parts with selective quotes within the copyright fair use provision.

I remember being really impressed by the Castle Quest packaging back in the day. The best ads and visuals were Silversoft and Quicksilver back in the early 80’s

This was my childhood! SJ Research and Econet.

Fantastic presentation, really interesting to hear the history and observations of the time!

OO I spy some SJ Research Ltd socket boxes - simply the best shout out to ARG, SRL, and KSJ ..

Huh, no-one invited me! (Not that I wrote any games while at Acornsoft, I admit 😁)

:). Get the results you deserve = Promo-SM .

Any tips on how to get started on recovering Acorn Electron tape data? Maybe a resource you could link on the topic.

Fascinating.Thanks :)

Mike's a TT fan then.. that makes him even more cool :) Also I'm glad Chris hated that Castle Quest box.. I bought that off the box and regretted soon after.

I dragged my mum all the way to the top of Leeds to go in that shop, didn't have any money though so just walked around and left

Very cool looking games! Thanks for sharing!

I prefered the old grid background, primary colour Micro Power sleeves.

Interesting - thank you! 🙂

Great video, and an incredible trip down nostalgia lane! The TAG code and docs were very pleasant to work with - thanks to that the development process on Mirror Image went really very smoothly as I recall. The editor environment really was ahead of its time - it was many years before that sort of functionality started becoming commonplace elsewhere.

Electron legend! Really hard to imagine BBC Electron without Peter's contribution.

Great Video. I was somewhat instrumental on getting B-Em back being developed actively, great to see what has happened to it since then!

Legend!

4 hours and 10 minutes from the master of game play and conversions :-)

Legendary game dev for Acorn games