Hello, all!

I'm sure you have all been on the edge of your seats waiting to hear any kind of update on the capacitor-torching power supply in my BBC micro. Well, maybe not but it is very quiet in here again so you're getting an update anyway :)

I have now replaced all the RIFAs in the PSU with 400V polypropylene types which hopefully will be less prone to self-immolation, or at least might not do so until I'm long dead. The power supply seems completely happy, the BBC micro itself has survived the experience and doesn't even smell that bad now.

Also in the meantime I've dug out one of my first gen Raspberry Pis and set up agetty on it - basically making it a totally over-engineered serial to IP adaptor. That's allowing me to now post this from an Acorn A3020 - I love this machine!

So here's the interactive bit... Obviously BBS is one good answer but does anyone have any oddball recommendations for text-based entertainment on today's Internet?

Cheers,

BobW
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I'm sure you have all been on the edge of your seats waiting to hear any

I fell off while waiting some time back. :P

I have now replaced all the RIFAs in the PSU with 400V polypropylene types

Noice work..

Also in the meantime I've dug out one of my first gen Raspberry Pis and set up agetty on it - basically making it a totally over-engineered serial to IP adaptor. That's allowing me to now post this from an Acorn A3020 - I

Good effort, that mean you're telnetting to the PI, and then you have to
telnet out again? I used to just hang serial lines into my "server" box.

So here's the interactive bit... Obviously BBS is one good answer but does anyone have any oddball recommendations for text-based entertainment on today's Internet?

You can still play the odd MUD but they're generally not terribly busy these days. Have a look at shattered.org:23 If you spot spectre, eyvee or missdemeanour yell, you'll prolly get yourself some assistance if you want
it.

Spec


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Re: Magic smoke update
By: Spectre to Bob Worm on Sun Oct 08 2023 05:27:00

Hi, Spec

I fell off while waiting some time back. :P

Apologies, the caps were on a pleasure cruise from China to the UK.

Good effort, that mean you're telnetting to the PI, and then you have to telnet out again? I used to just hang serial lines into my "server" box.

Well, I'm using a serial terminal emulator to get into the Pi, then telneting / SSHing / "links"ing from there.

I'm having a spot of bother with terminal settings - they are tantalisingly close but I had to forfeit today's Bubble Boggle door game because all the letters appeared as blank squares. Ruined my whole weekend :(

You can still play the odd MUD but they're generally not terribly busy these days. Have a look at shattered.org:23 If you spot spectre, eyvee or missdemeanour yell, you'll prolly get yourself some assistance if you want it.

I'm not sure I've ever actually played with a MUD. I shall give it a go, thanks!

BobW
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Well, I'm using a serial terminal emulator to get into the Pi, then telneting / SSHing / "links"ing from there.

Yup, mental blank. I have no idea what is around for the ol' beebers but if
you can find a slip/ppp client for it then all you need is some native tools usually telnet is around being about the most basic. There's a few tools
around for the II range, that'll do slip/ppp over serial.

I'm having a spot of bother with terminal settings - they are tantalisingly close but I had to forfeit today's Bubble Boggle door game because all the letters appeared as blank squares. Ruined my whole weekend :(

Its all going to depend on ANSI emulation I would have to guess. They can be quite variable, some may cope with colour and character but not handle movement. Others may not handle colour or characters but manage movenment. It'll take some trial and error.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
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I'm sure you have all been on the edge of your seats waiting to hear any kind of update on the capacitor-torching power supply in my BBC micro. Well, maybe not but it is very quiet in here again so you're getting an update anyway :)

I have now replaced all the RIFAs in the PSU with 400V polypropylene
types which hopefully will be less prone to self-immolation, or at least might not do so until I'm long dead. The power supply seems completely happy, the BBC micro itself has survived the experience and doesn't even smell that bad now.

Also in the meantime I've dug out one of my first gen Raspberry Pis and set up agetty on it - basically making it a totally over-engineered
serial to IP adaptor. That's allowing me to now post this from an Acorn A3020 - I love this machine!

So here's the interactive bit... Obviously BBS is one good answer but
does anyone have any oddball recommendations for text-based
entertainment on today's Internet?

Thanks for the update, *I* was waiting on baited breathe.

Seriously, tho, I hope to do similar upgrades to my systems - when they breathe their dying breaths... appreciate your fun posts, and am glad that your BBC is still loved - wait a minute, that has different meanings in.... nevermind.



|07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
|08.........

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbS>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (21:2/150)

Re: Re: Magic smoke update
By: paulie420 to Bob Worm on Sat Oct 07 2023 23:16:10

Hi, Paulie

Thanks for the update, *I* was waiting on baited breathe.

Thanks, P-dawg. I'm glad you have my back :)

Seriously, tho, I hope to do similar upgrades to my systems - when they breathe their dying breaths... appreciate your fun posts, and am glad that your BBC is still loved - wait a minute, that has different meanings in.... nevermind.

Ah, yes - the world of retro computing. Where not catching fire is an optional extra. Concerningly there's a bit of a hum coming out of my A3020 today - I guess just cross my fingers, eh? :( I feel a bit like the character in Dilbert who never learned from her experiences...

The BBC is yet to be loved, by me anyway. I always hated the things but I'm hoping to change that now that I'm returning with an adult head. It has half a chance of winning my favour now I've found the 80 column mode :) On the up side it's no longer "love-make"ed, if that's what you were implying.

BobW
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Re: Magic smoke update
By: Spectre to Bob Worm on Sun Oct 08 2023 09:58:00

Hi, Spec.

Yup, mental blank. I have no idea what is around for the ol' beebers but if you can find a slip/ppp client for it then all you need is some native tools usually telnet is around being about the most basic. There's a few tools around for the II range, that'll do slip/ppp over serial.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's at least SLIP available for these old Acorns. Quite honestly I'm not very good at making things work on this platform, though - I think it needs a special kind of brain so I will have to sit down with my mate Martin. He loves the Acorns, almost as much as he loves telling me that whatever crazy bodge he just explained makes sense (or made sense at the time) - in fact it was kind of obvious really (?!). I wouldn't put up with it if he wasn't so incredibly helpful and such an all round nice guy.

Its all going to depend on ANSI emulation I would have to guess. They can be quite variable, some may cope with colour and character but not handle movement. Others may not handle colour or characters but manage movenment. It'll take some trial and error.

Indeed, the concept of "full" ANSI support appears to be, err, in the eye of the beholder! I'm sure it's not helped by having the Pi in the middle. I'm still not entirely sure how I got rotating cursors to stop screwing my screen up - some magic combo of BBS, Pi and ARCterm settings that I'll probably never be able to find again if I do dare to change them.

I'm going to change them, though. I need Bubble Boggle to work via Acorn. It's just a shame I forfeit the day every time I get it wrong.

BobW
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Re: Magic smoke update
Acorns. Quite honestly I'm not very good at making things work on this platform, though - I think it needs a special kind of brain so I will have

You need to install your 6502 brain :)

loves telling me that whatever crazy bodge he just explained makes sense

Do the Acorns have "the tube" for a co-pro or alternative processor? There
are some really weird things people have hitched up to it... 65C816's, Z80 although that was pretty standard, someone had a 386 hitched up I think too.

Spec


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Re: Magic smoke update
By: Spectre to Bob Worm on Thu Oct 12 2023 14:39:00

Hi, Spec!

You need to install your 6502 brain :)

The Acorn (A3020) uses an ARM 250 - apparently the first system on a chip. I think that's why I love it so much. Computing heritage aside, it's a 32 bit RISC running at 12 MHz so it's not bonkers level restrictive and even I can program some basic graphics stuff on it. The BASIC lets you jump in and out of assembler, too, so you can get a bearable speed out of it - I love ARM assembler. Free barrel shifts, each opcode has conditional versions and can either set or not set the flags, multi register load / store with ascending or descending stack and full or empty pointer... Phwoar :)

I'll have to get a 6502 head on when I "properly" start work on the BBC, though. That'll require a level of coding efficiency that I can only aspire to at this point!

Do the Acorns have "the tube" for a co-pro or alternative processor? There are some really weird things people have hitched up to it... 65C816's, Z80 although that was pretty standard, someone had a 386 hitched up I think too.

That is a really good question. I kind of assumed there would be, however I never spotted one on my repair adventures so I looked it up and couldn't find any reference to tube on the A3020. Thinking about it, as popular as the tube is now for hobbyists to attach way overpowered 40-years-after-the-fact processors to their Beebs, it was originally there to get around a (misguided?) part of the BBC specification which said their school computer must be able to run CP/M. Well, there you go, Mr. BBC - it can run CP/M now. Simply attach 75% of a whole other computer via this convenient tube port...

It did get used a little at the time, as well - not sure if you've heard about the BBC Domesday Project, where they took photos all over the UK and school kids wrote pieces about their local area, rammed it onto a couple of laserdiscs and then accessed it via a Beeb with a special SCSI add on so it could control the laserdisc player and overlay analogue video frames to show the pictures. Now I say all that I think the SCSI module itself attached via a different port, not the tube, but it did need a co-processor to run.

The later Acorn RISC PCs did alien processors with an expansion card, I *think* that was a dedicated co-processor slot but I'm not 100% certain. I know Martin has one :) From memory it was a 486-SX 25 but clocked at 20MHz to make the frequency division maths easier. He always enjoyed taunting me by running Windows... in a window!

Possibly you had to be there...

BobW
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The Acorn (A3020) uses an ARM 250 - apparently the first system on a chip.

I tend to think of them as Beebs that have been working out... so I stand corrected. While we had Beebs here... the last one I saw, I sold to an Irish visitor and he took it back to Ireland from Australia.... so it kinda went home. That was about 30 years ago... they're not very common here. I'm
unsure I've seen an actual Acorn here at all.

I think that's why I love it so much. Computing heritage aside, it's a 32 bit RISC running at 12 MHz so it's not bonkers level restrictive and even

That far exceeds what I expected...

I'll have to get a 6502 head on when I "properly" start work on the BBC, though. That'll require a level of coding efficiency that I can only aspire to at this point!

I used to aspire to assembly, but never really got my head around it. Just
had to make do with BASIC. Just remember functionality is 95%, and the other IBM idiom... it might be slow, but it sure is hard to use :)

Spec


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Re: Magic smoke update
By: Spectre to Bob Worm on Sat Oct 14 2023 06:27:00

Hi, Spec.

That was about 30 years ago... they're not very common here. I'm
unsure I've seen an actual Acorn here at all.

Yeah, to be fair I think Beebs are a *lot* more common. There are tonnes of people on YouTube with Beebs and only a few with Acorn videos, quite honestly I'd never used an Acorn of that vintage until this one, 20 years after I saved it from a skip. I'm not sure I even remember seeing one in context at the time they would have been current.

I used a lot of BBCs in school, though, and thoroughly hated them. "My dad says PCs are much better", etc. Also I can still, in my mid 40s, hear ultrasound like those damn mosquito boxes meant to repel teenagers from shopping areas. The very loud flyback on the ubiquitous CUB monitors used on Beebs was not even close to the top of my hearing when I was a young whippersnapper and so being stuck in a room with 20 of those was chuffing miserable for me.

I used to aspire to assembly, but never really got my head around it. Just had to make do with BASIC. Just remember functionality is 95%, and the other IBM idiom... it might be slow, but it sure is hard to use :)

To be fair BASIC doesn't make much sense to me :) The very first time I went back to BASIC (PRINT "Bob Worm rules" - OK, that works, next job raw disk access...) I got flummoxed by a stupid simple bug in my code.

It turns out with BBC BASIC (and probably many others) that:

"IF a% AND 2 = 0"

...doesn't actually check whether the "2" bit of integer a% is a 1 or a 0. It just goes left to right and effectively does:

"IF a% AND (2 = 0)"

... since "false" is represented by 0 that becomes:

"IF a% AND 0", so effectively "IF 0", which is "IF false". A long winded way of saying "REM".

I've given up trying to second guess precedence now and just bracket the pants off everything.

BobW
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It turns out with BBC BASIC (and probably many others) that:

"IF a% AND 2 = 0"

Woah, I've never seen a statement that looks remotely like that in any
version of basic. In fairness though most of what I've seen are either MS variants including Applesoft, or some early TRS80 versions.

Spec


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Re: Magic smoke update
By: Spectre to Bob Worm on Sun Oct 15 2023 02:56:00

Hi, Spec.

"IF a% AND 2 = 0"

Woah, I've never seen a statement that looks remotely like that in any version of basic. In fairness though most of what I've seen are either MS variants including Applesoft, or some early TRS80 versions.

Well youp piqued my interest... so I tried a couple of other BASICs:

**** COMMMODORE 64 BASIC V2 ****
READY.
A% = 1

READY.
IF A% AND 2 = 0 THEN PRINT "YES"

READY.
IF (A% AND 2) = 0 THEN PRINT "YES"
YES

So C64 has the same behaviour as the Acorn. I'm pretty sure that's based on MS BASIC - Didn't Bill Gates hide an Easter egg in the PET?

Microsoft QBasic
================
a% = 1
IF a% AND 2 = 0 THEN PRINT "Yes" ELSE PRINT "No"
No
IF (a% AND 2) = 0 THEN PRINT "Yes" ELSE PRINT "No"
Yes

So QBasic works the same as BBC & Commodore BASICs as well...

Atari 8 bit BASIC
=================
No bitwise operators :(

Applesoft BASIC
===============
No bitwise operators (apparently earlier versions had bitwise AND / OR / etc but they were replaced by logical AND / OR / etc).

Python 3
========

a = 1
if(a & 2 == 0):

... print("Yes")
...
Yes

Hmm... so Python works how I expected - but to be fair 1) it's not a BASIC, and 2) the docs say bitwise operators are always done before comparison.

I'm kind of surprised to see bitwise operators missing from so many 8 bit BASICs - I thought that's how we got things done in those days? Then again, they all allow you to poke machine code into memory and run it... so maybe that's the approach.

How exciting :)

BobW
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Hey Bob,

So C64 has the same behaviour as the Acorn. I'm pretty sure that's based on MS BASIC - Didn't Bill Gates hide an Easter egg in the PET?

I don't know that its from "Bill", but there is meant ot be an easteregg in PETbasic.

Atari 8 bit BASIC ================= No bitwise operators :(
Applesoft BASIC =============== No bitwise operators (apparently
earlier versions had bitwise AND / OR / etc but they were replaced
by logical AND / OR / etc).

I wonder if thats a symptom of 6502 based processors. I know the commode is related but not sure how different it is. I've not seen an Applesoft version with the operators you're looking for. Integer Basic might have, it was written by the Woz, so a more engineering mindset than a programming mindset. Never did much with integer, it was long dead by the time I was looking at Apples.

Spec


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