r/bbcmicro • u/The-Real-Irrenfelk • 3d ago
BBC Micro "Next"
I'm sat here looking at my Spectrum Next, waiting for the issue 3 board that apparently will let me load a BBC Micro core. I've just read about the new Plaion Atari 800XL that's available for preorder, and I'm kind of wishing that some brave soul would launch a BBC Micro "Next". Bonus points if it lets me hook up a Music 500, but I'm not holding out hope for that. Anyone else wish there was a reissue?
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u/gavinlew 3d ago
Buy an original BBC and emulate the music 500 via a pi1mhz it’s more fun :)
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u/The-Real-Irrenfelk 2d ago
Yeah, it's definitely an option, but unfortunately having moved to the US from Blighty 20 years ago the cost of getting one to me is prohibitive, and the chance of a 45 year old computer making it to me in working order is regrettably somewhat slim. I did have a Master in storage back in the UK, but a divorce saw it get sold off along with all my other vintage computers and consoles by my ex. Sigh.
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u/scruss 2d ago
You'd be surprised. There are quite a few Beebs in North America. Ask nicely on stardot and wait patiently ...
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u/The-Real-Irrenfelk 2d ago
Ooooh. Really? Well then...
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u/gmitch64 1d ago
My original issue 3 is at my mum's house in Scotland. I bought a pair of issue 4s a couple of years ago - one shipped to my mum's house, and one shipped to me in MI. All arrived ok. I even bought a cheese wedge 6502 second processor, and it arrived in perfect condition in MI.
I'm also an ex Pat, been in the US since 2001.
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u/scruss 1d ago
There was a school district in Toronto that used them. Not that there are many of those North America-spec machines available, but they're not unknown.
I got mine from a collector friend in Toronto. It as made in Scotland by Keltek. It's now ridiculously adorned with an RGBtoHDMI, Raspberry Pi second processor, MMC drive and a GoTek.
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u/dextrovix 3d ago
I've always felt the Archimedes was the enhanced BBC Micro with more graphical modes and audio.
The problem is from a popularity standpoint, the Beeb wasn't mainstream like Atari, or cheap like a Spectrum, and perhaps as it was often more encountered in schools, there's not as much love for it outside of places like here to warrant a desire to reissue it?
Because the hardware was extendable and expandable, the recreation would still need to support that via the buses and ROM/RAM slots and cartridges for hardware like Music 500, and it feels unattainable today to produce that, and make it better yet compatible. It's too big an ask.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Ad-4883 3d ago
It was massively more powerful using Acorn's own 32-bit ARM2 RISC processor running at 8 MHz, later 25 MHz ARM3. One of the most powerful personal computers in the world at that time. One of my supervisors at university used one to do mathematical simulations of semiconductor behavior that could only be done on a main frame previously.
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u/ItsAllOnUHF 2d ago
The Archimedes was ridiculous for its time. An amazing and underrated machine.
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u/PressureBeautiful515 2d ago
My school got a whole classroom full of them in about 1987 and it was utterly gobsmacking. I went from ZX Spectrum BASIC that drew circles so slowly that you could actually see them gradually appear (and it took a run up before starting...) to the first gen Archimedes which could animate dozens of circles. It fair boggled the mind 39 years ago.
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u/ItsAllOnUHF 2d ago
Before I got my Spectrum I had a notebook with some program's I'd written in BASIC (which I'd learned from a magazine series). I wrote a sort of space game where, then you press the FIRE key, would shoot a blaze of concentric circles into the screen at the enemy.
Now... in my imagination the dozen or so circles flew into the distance in like half a second.
When I finally got my Spectrum, typed it in (fixing all my simple mistakes), I pressed the key and...
... ciiiiiiiirrrrrrrccccccllle...
(pause)
... ciiiirrrrrcccllllleeee....
(pause)
... it was hilariously, pathetically, slow... Even though the drawing sped up a bit as the circles got smaller...
In another magazine article I read about this strange alternative to BASIC called Machine Language. It apparently ran 10x-100x faster than BASIC... Interesting...
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u/The-Real-Irrenfelk 2d ago
I 100% agree! My school got one in the computer classroom in my final months at school. I never really got to use it which I regret. I'd love to get hold of one, but the cost of them is rising on eBay, even the non-functioning ones, and they're increasingly rare.
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u/ItsAllOnUHF 2d ago
My friend had one, and we spent a lot of time playing Zarch... On the Atari ST it was ported as Virus, but it was nowhere near as smooth. I think my friend also ran some sort of 4.3BSD UNIX on it, too, which was neat.
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u/The-Real-Irrenfelk 2d ago
I know you're right, and I know economically it probably doesn't make sense, but I can dream! I guess I need some billionaire to decide they want to recreate The Doomsday Project they had at school 😆.
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u/dextrovix 2d ago
Indeed, that's another complicated example that the Beeb was exceptionally versatile to handle SCSI and Laserdisc, and can't be recreated realistically either. Ironically how quick a digital Doomsday can become inaccessible much sooner than the original!
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u/The-Real-Irrenfelk 2d ago
I know, right? The project was celebrating the 900th anniversary of the original, and here we are only 40 years later and it's inaccessible. Ironic indeed!
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u/OldGuto 1d ago
The market isn't there, over the life (BBC A/B to Master/Compact) they may have sold something like 2 million but the vast majority went to schools, colleges and universities.
I was at school during the 80s and of my friend group only one person had a BBC B and his dad was a school teacher so probably got 'mates rates', C64 and Speccy were the most popular, even the Electron was more popular. At one friend it was up there with the C16, Aquarius and Dragon.
Both the C64 and Speccy outsold the Beeb and most importantly they were mainly bought by the public for use at home rather than schools
There is nostalgia for it but typically it's "first computer I used" or "I used it at school but had a C64/Speccy at home" sort of thing. Probably not enough for people to part with cold hard cash for it.
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u/The-Real-Irrenfelk 5h ago
Yeah, I'm absolutely sure you're right. Only one of my friends had a Beeb as well, everyone else was Speccy or C64 with an odd smattering of TI-99/4A and Atari 800XL owners.
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u/Daeve42 3d ago
I have an issue 1 and 2 Next and both can run a BBC micro core (B and Master)?
But yes, It'd be pretty cool to have a "Next" version of the Beeb (not just a tiny board that is an emulator). I have a few model B's I've repaired and modded which are fun to play with, and a new PCB I transferred components over from a broken one to (but doesn't yet work) but I think a well made "next" style that you can put in a real case, or have a reissued case would be good and I could consolidate on that.
I'm not sure It'd have the mass popularity the Next did though, most people I know had a spectrum at home, the BBC was only a school thing. Likely it would be a lot more expensive.
I'd buy one though.
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u/The-Real-Irrenfelk 2d ago
I would absolutely buy one. There's something just "wrong" with the idea of running a BBC Micro in a Spectrum case 😆.
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u/National-Bathroom-63 2d ago
I think we’d want a Ultimate Commodore 64 style recreation with quality-of-life extras rather than an imagined Next generation BBC. That generation already exists - the Archimedes.
For it to happen requires a critical mass in the FPGA board community and I’m not sure that exists unfortunately. The Ultimate C64 started life as an FPGA board and the keyboard came later.
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u/The-Real-Irrenfelk 2d ago
Yeah, this is exactly what I'd hope for, a recreation not a "next/new generation". I agree, I don't think that critical mass is there right now in the FPGA community which is a shame. There was a whole generation of us raised on this thing, and I'd love to really show it off to my kids.
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u/National-Bathroom-63 2d ago
Second-hand beebs are still working very well though and not too expensive to get hold of.
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u/National-Bathroom-63 2d ago
It is actually not yet confirmed that Hoglet has updated BeebFPGA for Kickstarter 3. I suspect he hasn’t yet and won’t be able to unless someone can send him one once they arrive on our shores.
The dev thread hasn’t had an update from Hoglet in 18 months.
https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14181&start=240
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u/ThePenultimateNinja 1d ago
It's weird how neglected the Beeb is compared with other vintage machines. It's never been included in Retropie either.
My guess is that it's because it was quite expensive, and most people who came into contact with it did so at school rather than home, and thus remember it in an educational setting rather than playing games on it.
I had one as a kid, but none of my friends did. I ended up getting a Spectrum for that reason.
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u/The-Real-Irrenfelk 1d ago
Yeah, I had a Model B and then a Master. I had one friend who also had a Beeb, but everyone else was Spectrum, and a smattering of C64, so you're right, most folks I knew would associate them with school.
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u/WembleyFord 1d ago
I'd love that, but I doubt it'd happen. One of the best things about the Beeb is the number of ports and the amount of expandability it has, and I suspect these days, unless we're talking about a recreation with a full-sized keyboard - that's going to be the most expensive thing the recreate. The CPU and other logic - FPGA - but all the physical ports the Beeb had? It'd be collosally expensive I suspect.
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u/The-Real-Irrenfelk 1d ago
I agree, I think the cost of a fully replicated system, down to the ports, would likely be prohibitive, but I can dream!
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u/kimondo 3d ago
I’d call it the Acorn Proton in homage to the BBC Micro’s original name and to avoid complicated copyright issues with the BBC. It would use the form factor of the Electron which I think was perfect and use an FPGA to emulate the Beeb / Master / Archimedes.
For a bonus I would sort out the FPGA core so it could play the enhanced versions of Elite, and ideally make it capable of ARM 3 / A5000 emulation which I think was peak Acorn.
Mock up was using Chat GPT so forgive me on that but black keys and beige would look nice in that case. Lots of space for the original ports on the back as well as SD card and USBs. Include a raspberry pi board as well for other uses (like the Next) and also as that’s the spiritual successor to the Beeb anyway.