David Hayward recalls those hazy days spent in computer studies lessons
If you were lucky enough to have a forward thinking school back in the early 80s, then the chances are that every computer studies lesson was spent sat in front of a BBC Micro. Usually there were three school children to every computer, crowded around the tiny square monitor and staring at the screen - with one or more of those getting increasingly frustrated by the slow typing of the one in control of the keyboard.
The school computer was an amazing thing. It helped many of us get to grips with a concepts beyond the games-playing 8-bit machines of the day (chiefly the Spectrum and C64) and it allowed us to smirk at the teacher who ended up getting a little hot under the collar when the computer did something he or she couldn't get to grips with.
If you close your eyes you can almost place yourself back there: in the computer studies lesson, with the acrid smell of an overworked room full of BBCs, the chug chug of the big 5'A" floppies whirring to load up last week's BASIC. Also though, the two-tone beep of a booting BBC - maybe even the occasional blip of someone trying to get through a level of Chuckie Egg before being kicked off for playing a game instead of doing their school work. Let's not forget the ear chattering noise of a tractor feed printer spitting out homework, or even lines, though.
History
The BBC Micro came about as a result of the BBC Computer Literacy Project, wherein the Acorn team was commissioned to create a computer that could be used by to help the next generation of users embrace the micro computer revolution. The 'Beeb', as it was known, thus became the must-have educational machine for British schools in the early to mid-eighties, thanks in part to the heavily subsidised educational pricing, which pretty much paid for half the machine.
It still wasn't cheap unit, though, costing somewhere in the region of £400 - before the school had factored in a printer, setup charges, other peripherals and consumables. It was probably one of the most expensive things your school bought.
Mind you, the Beeb was rock solid. Not just in terms of software, but also physically. With its solid steel construction, full travel mechanical keyboard - complete with the red function keys along the top - and a similarly rock solid, metal encased, monitor there's every reason to expect a BBC Micro could have survived a direct hit from a nuclear bomb.
Accordingly, it's lifespan stretched well into the nineties. Then the BBC Master took over, before it eventually made way for the emergent PC concept, which was fast becoming the norm - and offered a cheaper school computer option.
The Good
BBC Micro Basic was amazing. You could mix BASIC commands with assembler using square brackets to enclose the assembler portions of the code within a BASIC listing. What's more, as we've commented, it was bomb proof. We even witnessed someone standing on one once. We wouldn't recommend trying that these days.
The Bad
They did get a little hot at times, and a room full of them could develop a distinctive odour.
Conclusion
The BBC Micro was an amazing computer. It fed our young minds with thoughts of becoming proper programmers, and steered on a course into computing that would last a lifetime. Thanks, Acorn.
Did You Know...
• Apparently, the Acorn team only had a week to build a BBC model from design to presentation, which it did (naturally) and won the contract to build and supply the 'Beeb'
• There were over 1.5 million Beebs sold
• The today's equivalent cost of a BBC Micro Model В would be about £1,300
• The speech synthesizer upgrade featured the voice of Kenneth Kendall, then a BBC newsreader
• On some models, printed under certain chips (which you have to remove), or under the motherboard were the words "Bob's Board"