Econet - costing, installation, file servers and the PiEconetBridge

A review of Econet - comparing the cost vs disc systems, showing the installation in a BBC Model B and BBC Master, building a network and a demo of the Level 1 and Level 3 file servers. Also shows the PiEconetBridge v1 and v2 boards and software running.
The PiEconetBridge software: github.com/cr12925/PiEconetBr...
Beebmaster's
All about Econet: www.beebmaster.co.uk/Econet/I...
BeebShop: www.beebmaster.co.uk/BeebShop...
Andrew Gordon - schools, Econet and SJ Research: • ABug 13 - Andrew Gordo...
RetroBytes Econet series
Part 1 - history: • BBC Econet Part 1 - Th...
Part 2 - build your own: • BBC Econet Part 2 - Bu...

[@maxhodgson4462]

Brings back memories of the fun we had at college. Horrendously insecure for a classroom full of would be whizkids. The ability to read and write the memory on remote stations led to all sorts of high jinks. From memory, Filling the sound buffer with random rubbish to create noise. Copying the program memory of a remote station changing the victims program and the writing it back. and the best, reading the keyboard buffer of the sysadmin whilst he typed his password in...

[@lsbyte]

It all speaks of a more innocent time! As you leaf through the functions in the Econet Advanced User Guide it gets increasingly more worrying as you turn the pages. These are all things I was going to cover but deferred til part 2, since I think there are lots of amusing things I could demo in a video there!

[@benjya]

Takes me back - although we had an Amcom E-Net at school...

[@schrodingerscat1863]

At our school we had an Econet modular disk file server (MDFS) made by SJ Research, this had SCSI hard drives a tape backup and the concept of users and passwords. I can remember finding the system username/password in plain text in the tape backup program written in basic, that allowed us to take control of any machine on the network, then we had great fun remotely firing up games on machines in other classrooms during lessons, sending rude messages to random computers or looking at teachers admin files. Happy days, and the start of a long career in computing.

[@acornandy]

Yeah Econet was a game changer for Me as a kid shout out to SJ's MDFS which I had also along with Rob Cowell's Dudley Blue Screen Menus ahhh yes, not sure about the tape backup program in $.SYSPROGS? you could set time for tape backup in it that's all I can remember big thanks to ARG and the gang @ SJ for what they did (they set the standard for econet in schools ..

[@schrodingerscat1863]

@@acornandy Teachers realised we had the admin password so they changed it and we just looked at the code in the backup program and found it again, the login credentials were just stored as plain text in the BBC Basic backup program. This happened multiple times, they couldn't figure out how we kept getting back in. Security was such an afterthought back then, security by obscurity seemed to be their approach. That aside it was a pretty good file server for its day and we had hour of fun with it.

[@kevinthorpe8420]

Yep. I had a game of pong that used to bounce the ball, and sound across all the screens between the two players in the library. Fun for annoying people. The tricksiest part was dealing with all the screen modes.

[@BM-jy6cb]

Back in the early 80's as a teenager, I would have been so excited by this. Now, I'm just grateful how much things have moved on!

[@RetroMarkyRM]

Excellent video. ECONET on the elk..I'd like to see that!

[@GeorgeFoot]

Great video again, so nice seeing this kind of walkthrough and explanation of all the concepts. Although I grew up with these computers, I never used econet, it's great to see what it was able to do.

[@lsbyte]

Me too - the head of Computer Science at my school didn't trust Econet as he was concerned the students were going to hack it. Instead, all our machines had disc drives individually and there were boxes of discs with the software on a table at the side. Now, as my job is networking, it's interesting to look back at what I missed out on!

[@Dettol68]

Finally, someone has done a video on the PI ECO Net - need to watch you in slow mo - to pick up the commands - THANK YOU

[@AlastairMontgomery]

Weird that I remember the covers from Acorn User after all these years.

[@johnkoenig8739]

It's so impressive just how advanced the BBC Micro was compared to other 8bit home computers at the time.

[@lsbyte]

Indeed - it got all the upgrades that other manufacturers never delivered on. There weren't many 8-bit computers with floppy disc, hard disc, networking and second processor support! And it all worked fairly seamlessly with the operating system.

[@trevorboys9140]

Absolutely fantastic video. I'd held off getting Econet for all of those reasons, but now I'm definitely going to give it a go!

[@RolandLeurs]

Great video with some very recognizable events, like installing Econet on the Beeb, the NMI issue and setting up a L1 fileserver. I am still waiting for my “Pi Econet” hardware and I am looking forward to your comments about the EENT (Electron Econet).

[@rogue_soul]

Superbly informative. Thank you! As a new-ish Master & Model B owner, I've been mulling over uses for them. This vid will come in handy in future! :D

[@qualin1974]

Coming in from a Canadian's viewpoint, I find it absolutely mindblowing that BBC computers were already doing this in the early 80's, when networking was still an afterthought in the world of educational computers in North America. Our main to go computers in the early/mid 80's were Apple // machines, which could have had add-on boards to enable networking, but I've never seen a networked Apple // machine in my entire life. I think that the UK was light years ahead of the US and Canada in this aspect of technology at the time.

[@lsbyte]

The BBC Micro was an excellent machine and one of the few that actually delivered on everything that was promised. It did have the advantage of being 3-4 years later than the Apple II and gained from a lot of input from University people with experience of mainframes and early networking. I don't think I appreciated how good it was, back in the day. My focus was more on things like graphics and sound and computers like the C64 did that better, with the BBC being considered fairly expensive was often only bought as a home computer by teachers. Looking back now, though, it has a really well-designed operating system and lots of clever stuff in the architecture. Apple viewed Acorn as competitors, although it didn't work out that way, with the BBC being a flop in North America. They were still concerned when they wanted to licence the ARM chip for the Newton, though, and we have them to thank for asking Acorn to spin out ARM as a separate company.

[@delmonti]

...wow.... great vid, and a fantastic use of the Pi & modules to emulate an Econet. Beers all round I think!

[@markphillips8019]

Funny! Among your parts and electronic tools you have a Brownian Motion Inducer! Adams would be very pleased!

[@mogwaay]

Great video really appreciate the effort you've gone to here. I always wanted to know more about Econet but was too afraid to ask 😁 I now know what that intriguing covered up port that I was desperate to pop-out was for on my old Model B back in the day. Look forward to the next one!

[@jamesdecross1035]

Gosh, this is complicated. An even simpler break down would help me! Even so, I'd love to try this stuff.

[@lsbyte]

BeebMaster has a lot of stuff about this on his website - www.beebmaster.co.uk/Econet/IWantanEconet.html - including a lot of screen-by-screen walkthroughs of things. If you get stuck, asking on StarDot is a good place to start, or I can answer simple questions here, but they're much more the experts!

[@marksterling8286]

Great video

[@KarlHamilton]

Veey interesting. Always wondered about Econet. Will have an Acorn one day, hopefully. Subscribed.

[@richardgodivala4680]

Have just acquired the same kit (same source) to install on my working issue 7 machine (and the module for my Master) ... when I get my issue 4 working, I'll have 3 machines, and I can set up a network...!

[@richardgodivala4680]

Oh, I think with that 2022 Pi Bridge/Fileserver, I might just have myself a network a bit sooner...!

[@brianmartin6296]

Great vid ..so to clarify a point on the New Econet Bridge Hat. I have a Master and a ModelB. Neither have any Econet interface/hardware at present. What would I need to purchase to get the same setup as yourself. And , does the Hat effectively become your Host file server with Hard drive? So what I mean is, do you now effectively have a network of 3 BBC's ?

[@lsbyte]

For the Master you'd need the ADF10 module - you can buy vintage ones from various places, including often on eBay. Or you can get a remake from Ken Lowe (which is now the PiEconetBridge hat but with only some parts fitted, so it physically fits in the Master - see here: stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?p=364685#p364685 For the Model B, you'll need an upgrade kit, which you can get from BeebMaster: www.beebmaster.co.uk/BeebShop/Default.html#NetModule or Ken does a simplified kit to minimise soldering but I'm not sure what the state is: stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=25087 You might also need some cables, hubs and terminators, depending on what else you have but BeebMaster sells all those (and will help you out). Once you've got the PiEconetBridge running on the Pi then it behaves as a file server, with its own station number, but it's not a full BBC: you have three hosts on the network but one is the dedicated file server, meaning your two real BBCs can be the clients.

[@theafro]

Econet has always been a pain in the rear, until now! I might actually get around to networking my machines properly, It's got to work better for multiplayer games than my previous efforts with user-port bit-bashing through a diy buffer/hub (although that was fun to hack together!)

[@G5STU]

I tried and failed to add an econet port to my bbc b - I have the clock cables and terminators

[@vanhetgoor]

I think Econet was lower priced then Ethernet, wouldn't it be nice if many other non-BBC computers from that era could be connected to the Econet as well?

[@jameswalker199]

I had a possibly silly idea, but could you use a couple of these Pi hats to make what is essentially an econet VPN? Have one Pi at your house and another at a friend's house, link them up over the internet and pretend its one whole econet.

[@lsbyte]

Yes, you can do this - the feature is called 'Trunking' and is built into the PiEconetBridge software. See here: github.com/cr12925/PiEconetBridge/blob/v2.0/docs/README.HPBRIDGE#L669 I use this to run two segments and link the 3B+ and 4B+ bridges together, linked via Ethernet (which also has a Pi running RISC OS on it). One of the segments has the Master and B on it and the other the Electron - the Electron needs a slower clock and this lets me run the two Econets at different speeds. The only downside is that the bridge won't come up if the remote end of the trunk is up. This is annoying if you don't need the trunk up but just want to use the local bridge as a fileserver. I keep meaning to report this to Chris (although I'm sure he knows about it!).

[@ttrjw]

I suppose AUN theoretically means it is possible to have different sites linked via a VPN?

[@lsbyte]

Yes and the PiEconetBridge software can establish tunnels (using AES encryption) between each other to link them across an IP network.

[@ttrjw]

@@lsbyte So... an Econet spanning London to Sydney would be possible...

[@ninjazhu]

how does your video run at a faster pace without your voice speeding up?

[@DAVIDGREGORYKERR]

the file server should have been written in assembler so that no one can hack the file server.

[@lsbyte]

A big problem, but I think the protocol was pretty screwed to begin with!