Thank you for watching, please also see the video description for links to further viewing and reading on the story of this fascinating machine. What are your memories of the BBC Micro, did you have one at home or at school and can you remember what you did with yours? I'd love to hear your stories. Neil - RMC

This is broadcast quality. This channel keeps getting better and better.

Recently rescued some beebs from the loft of my old school. The actual ones I used in primary all those years ago.

What I find completely grotesque is I had more opportunities to learn how computers really work in the late 80s than schoolkids do now. School PCs are now completely locked down, and in many schools, if you attempt to write a program on one you'll get suspended. School lessons that teach wordprocessing and spreadsheets are not computer lessons, they are office skill lessons and more akin to teaching kids how to touch type in past decades than what the computer literacy project achieved.

" ... which Tangerine could only Dream about" - I see what you did there

My parents bought A BBC model B in about 1982/3 (I was 10/11) and as I got interested in it also bought pretty much every accessory for it (2nd processor, all the ROMs, Teletext adaptor, floppy disc drives (dual) .... 35 years later I now have a comfortable life working as an IT engineer for an international company and I thank my parents for that start I was given.

Ah, here is my childhood, and the start of my lifelong obsession with computing. 33 years later, still going strong in IT. I owe it all to the BBC Micro. I should get myself one.

I was part of the Domesday BBC/laser disk project back in the 80's, and love the Beeb like it was a family pet. I also just want to say RIP Gareth.

A few years ago someone on KZfaq was talking about their favorite computer movies and ,mentioned Micro Men. I went ahead and watched it, being here in the states, we hear about the Bill Gates/Steve Jobs story all the time, it was cool to see a similar thing going on over there.

Clicked like first. Then started watching.

BBC quality stuff for the BBC computer, honestly this is TV worthy would expect to see this on BBC2.

Nicely put together! Looking forward to part 2!

My folks couldn’t afford a full fledged BBC Micro at the time so I got an Electron. Finally got my hands on a BBC when my Middle School threw them all in to a skip in the early 90’s and a friend who lived near by let me know about it. I already had an Amiga by then but finally having my own BBC was still special.

This is exceptional, even by your already high bar of quality content.

These videos with the more solemn documentary style are so awesome. I love how you manage to instill such a sense of quiet reverence for the subject matter.

A freak accident put me out of PE for several months. Off-PE class was in the same room that housed the school's Beebs. That was the first time I sat in front of a computer and typed things. I probably wouldn't have had the same friends or my career if it wasn't for that moment.

Cant wait to see the rest of these episodes.. Hope I get to see Granny's Garden........that's so not a euphemism.

Pt1 of Many I hope. This could be Neil's best series, I really enjoyed this - Merry Christmas Neil!

A lot and time and effort put into that. Well done.

I simply love how you tell bbc micro story even i haven't used one. I am very looking forward to next episodes 😃 Well done and thank you.

My primary school had a total of 4 BBC Micros, when I started secondary school they had about 20 of them. I owe my entire career to the lessons I learned on this wonderful machine.

Wow, the new full-time approach is really bringing the already great production value right up! This is amazing!

Quality video and summary of the BBC micro and the era, cant wait to watch episode 2. Loved the chilled out but very informative approach you have to presenting.

Thank you. An absolutely wonderful video. You nailed everything about growing up in that era of education. Such fond memories of the BBC Micro, this really resonated, looking forward to the next episode.

Fab video, looking forward to the rest of the series

Great, really enjoyed this & looking forwards to the next installment. The new documentary-style history section works really well and its nice to get the full background story on the computer before (as I expect) ripping into the guts of the machine :)

Brilliant absolutely perfect start to what will likely be a great series of videos

So great, my first ever Micro, cannot emphasis enough how much I love this machine, great video.

I'm looking forward to this series. The whole BBC Micro thing passed me by completely. My middle school didn't have any computers and my secondary school had jumped down the Commodore road, so although I knew of the machine I have yet to even touch one.

Absolutely stunning and great video! Very well made!

Awesome as always. Thank you. Cant wait the next episode.

Excellent work, looking forward to part two 👍

Awesome video, can't wait for part 2!!!

I had one - loved it (including sideways RAM, Dual floppy’s and Z80 2nd processor)!!! This is great start to a series that I’m really looking forward to.👍👍👍

My primary school had one. My year 4 teacher used to code his own basic games and test them out on us so this micro was literally my introduction to gaming. Havent played one since so id love to get my hands on one

Once again you made some impressive progress, be it in an editorial sense or the presentation with you on screen during the educational, historical bits - looks almost like a professional documentary from a small TV station, well done mate! Merry Christmas and all the best for 2020 now that you are doing YT full time, cheers from Germany, Peter

loved this pt1 on the BBC micro, have good memories of learning basic on one of these in my schools BBC room in the mid 80's.

What a fantastic video, thank you so much!

This was ridiculously well presented, brings back many memories for me in school anyone remember Podd .

Great video! Awesome to hear the history of the BBC micro.

Very clear and interesting video well explained and informative can’t wait for the rest of the series keep up the good vids :)

You just LIT A FIRE IN MY HEART!! ... Awww... .6502, how I love you.... :-) Thanks Neil!! :-)

Can’t wait for part 2!!!

Was the first computer I ever used! I still own a model B and.a Master 512. At Primary school, we used to make a big turtle draw patterns on the floor by typing in directions on the BBC Micro, blew our minds at the time. Great video as always

I love the format of this video! - Very viewable :-) (oh, and i love the Beeb too!)

I have one I've recently refurbished (those old RIFA caps blew, of course)... it's absolutely the best machine of the 80's.... The expandability, the open nature of the hardware and it's adaptability, the various I/O that offered so many options, and a BASIC interpreter that included an in-line assembler... A real triumph of British computing.

I was trying to decide what channel to subscribe to and give my money too, after watching your videos, some more than twice i have to say you draw me in everytime, im a retro pc man at heart and your channel does that justice. You take me back to my childhood and some of the machines i owned before life took some bad turns. You really are a gentleman that shows in your videos, thanyou Neil for this channel

Another top quality episode. Cheers Neil

What a great video about this classic machine! As others have said, this was the gateway into programming for the 7-year old me back in the early 80s and effectively kick-started my career in IT. I'm off to watch part 2... :-)

Great naration and series format in general. Thank you.

Absolutely superb introduction Neil, thank you very much! I don’t recall using a Beeb in my first school, but there were several in my middle school. All using the same CUB monitor, disc drive, and Citizen 120D dot matrix printer. I strongly recall using the “Folio” software to print out stories in English, and wide grayscale titles for wall displays etc. in Art. The game I played most frequently was Granny’s Garden, however I can also remember a game with a dragon that would shoot lasers from its eyes (?) as you moved around the screen. Ah, we also used LOGO in maths. Looking forward to part 2. Merry Christmas!

What a fantastic episode!

We've got 3 of them and I totally agree. There is something very special indeed about this machine! Probably one of the reasons I love watching "Micro Men" so much. I have such very find memories of using a Beeb when they came out at school,. Then a friend had one at home, so I spent time using his playing Elite and Starship Command, then later on there was one at my work experience placement that controlled a dynamo test rig! Awesome machine and kick started so many careers. :)

Great video, brings back a lot of memories for me. I don't remember my primary school having any BBCs, but my secondary school's computer room had over 20 of them, all networked. With a couple of Archimedes in the corner as well. I did my GCSE Computer Studies on a BBC B in 1990, and got an A! I'll never forget seeing Zarch running on the Archimedes for the first time in there, blew me away :-o

Yes, it was my first computer, and I made the trip from France to London back in the days (no, the tunnel didn't exits yet). In my opinion, it was far more advanced than Comodore and Apple. Thank you for this review.

I really love the documentry style you chose for this one, really professional and well presented! That boot beep is actually an unintentional (I reckon) quirk of the sound chip and reset circuitry which results in the two tone beep, the higher pitched being what was intended once the CPU was running!

Another great video, Neil. My school had a room of Beebs, all connected to Econet. Then we decided to write 2nd level password programs on our few KB of hard disk space... Until the computer studies teacher asked us to remove them as he couldn't circumvent it! Those were the days!!

Built like tanks and such a recognisable sound from those keys. I have one in similar condition to this with an SD card adaptor on it. Love it to bits!

Excellent video Neil. Extremely informative and well produced. Sadly I was born way too early (1950), so never got to experience computers in school. I look forward to parts 2, 3 etc.

Great video! Thanks!

Fantastic work, fascinating history with great Nostalgia. Awaiting, chuckle egg and castle quest 😃

My parents never had much money. We took a holiday away twice in my childhood, both times in the UK. We had a black-and-white 10" TV until I was 13, and it only had two channels, ITV and BBC1. I had to go to my best friend's house to watch _The High Chaparral,_ because it was on BBC 2. _Thunderbirds_ was my favourite childhood TV show, one of the first UK TV series in colour... but I had to take their word for it. But after I passed all my A Levels (Maths, Add. Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology), a few months before my 19th birthday in November 1981, I was STUNNED by my 19th birthday present from my parents: A BBC Micro, Model B 32k. My father, who worked in British Aerospace, had asked a friend in the computer department what the best home computer was for a technically-minded boy. The sacrifices my parents must have made to afford this... it still brings tears to my eyes. I learnt to write programs and games in BBC BASIC, but this showed its limitations when you had large iterative subroutines, so I learnt 6502 assembly language so I could talk directly to the silicon. Later, at college, I did a unit on coding. We had these machines called EMMA (I never found out what that stood for). At they were was a hex keyboard and some I/O, and a 6502 processor. I remember the first week we had to do a program to simulate the UK traffic light sequence (Red, Red & Amber, Green, Amber, Red). The lecturer came round after about quarter of an hour and asked me what I was doing, and I said I was doing the flowchart. He said, "You need to get a move on, some of the other students have started to write the code." I said, "I've already written the program, and it works," and I showed him. Baffled, the lecturer said, "But you're supposed to use the flowchart to help you write the program," and I said, "I didn't need one." As it was, instead of coming into the lesson and writing a program each week, I made a deal that I would come by every three weeks and write three programs. I ended up with a distinction. This was all thanks to the marvellous BBC Micro that my parents so generously bought me.

A super video.. thank you for your super videos on retro machines...

Great memories of this machine at my junior school and using the program 'Logo'. Thanks.

Looking forward to seeing what you do with this series. I miss my old Model B!

Excellent video! Really enjoyed this. Lots of old food for current thought.

I remember my first student exchange in the late 80's, being welcomed in the family of a very British school teacher whom had custody of the school's BBC micro for the duration of the Easter holidays... My taste for the language was already high, but it really kicked my interest for computing into high gear, it was miles ahead of whatever we had in France at the time.

This will be a great series. I enjoy the history.

When I first got to secondary school, there was a room of Acorn Atoms, very forward looking school I think in hindsight. They got the upgrade to BBC Basic (rather than the more limited Atom Basic). Because of this we were late getting BBC Micros, but got them about half way through my school life. Did not matter, Computer Science teacher took the 380Z home, added Econet to it, and wrote some software to share the 2nd floppy disk over the Econet port. We had a floppy disk for each class. Amazing stuff for early 80s, even more amazing was the Computer Science teacher. He sold the solution to a couple of other schools for the school coffers. The 380Z ended up being replaced by a BBC Micro with Acron Winchester Drive (10GB Harddrive I think that was the size -why were the call this?). when I left in 1988 the school had just got their first Archimedes. All the success I have today I owe to that school, and that very clever Computer Science teacher.

Enjoyed this video, the BBC Micro was my first computer. Loved BBC Basic and assembler programming on it. Interfacing was so easy via the User Port. Your video made me regret throwing it away in a foolish clear out! Couldn’t bring myself to throw the books and discs though few and interfaces I made, they’re still in the garage. Great to see the micro again and look forward to the other episodes.

This is one of your best Neil

Top shelf video. Very interesting story. Here in Australia we are always in lock step with the USA and so we did not have the BBC micro. My kids had an Apple II in their classroom. I’m from the Stone Age - slide rules morphing into calculators in the early 1970’s.

Brilliant stuff! I first used a Beeb in 1982 at school, and first got my own in 1992 (I'd had to make do with ZX81, Spectrum, Aquarius and MSX before then). Since 1992 I have always owned at least one Beeb, and at one point I adopted an entire primary school's worth that was otherwise headed for a skip. Numbers are gradually becoming sensible, as I slowly sell them off on ebay. I shall keep a B and a Master for sure. Eagerly awaiting the next episode!

Excellent presentation in this video 😀 👌

bloody brilliant episode.

Fantastic video, I still have my childhood bbc b micro , cub monitor and cumana disc drive... we had beebs and masters at my high school all networked with econet...... happy days.... mine is a bit of a time machine for me...takes me back to a simpler time..cheers

This humble little computer is how I started my lifelong career in computing and software. When I bought it, I had no idea what I could do but I knew it was the future. Once I got started I never looked back and what an amazing career it’s been!

Superb video. Thoroughly enjoyed the historical overview and the vintage footage. I do remember using the BBC Micro at school but unfortunately I was in one of those schools that had far too few machines and so my time with it was much less than I would have liked. That said, a friend and I were allowed to use one of them during lunch times and we started to write a BASIC version of one of the Steve Livingstone Fighting Fantasy books. Alas it was never finished :(

I never had one of these in my school. I was in the first year of secondary school when they came out. I fell in love with it the first time I saw it on TV. It just looked such better quality than any other home computer in the market. I was desperate to get one for Christmas, but we didn’t have much money and my mum told me they couldn’t get me one. Maybe next year if they could save up. Imagine my shock when I unwrapped my one Christmas present to find it was a BBC Micro Model B!! To this day, best present I ever had. Anyone remember the Welcome tape? That was brilliant! It had a teletext game at the end called Twin Kingdom Valley. After I played that all I wanted to do was learn to program. That machine didn’t just teach my BBC Basic, it taught me how to code and set me up for a future career as a software developer and consultant. Brilliant, brilliant computer!

Many thanks for this quality content Neil. All the best to you and the family this Christmas 😎👍

Love this machine, it's one I will never be without and I can still find educational software that's fun for the kids and does its job!

The program you mentioned at the end was Geordie Racer from my end of the woods. I was also the one at the front of the line when I heard the power on tones as I just wanted to play around in areas of Newcastle that I knew. I also remember Grannies Garden and POP or Pob being well used too. Loved this episode and can't wait for the next :)

Great work Neil, I really enjoyed watching it!

You are the OFFICIAL MASTER of the Sweater and jacket combo. Never before has anyone appeared so dashing. Well done mate. Oh yeah, and of course...great content as always :) Keep it up!

Spettacular channel!!! Count me in👍

Excellent start, Neil. Looking forward to the rest of this series. Best computer of all time. So versatile and well thought-out, all those marvellous ports! I got to use Beebs at college, along with various contemporaneous machines, but there was no way I could dream of owning one. We had just about managed to afford a ZX81, and eventually scraped together enough for an Electron. About 15 years later I finally obtained a recased BBC B, with a pair of 5¼" drives, from a workmate clearing out. Lost none of its magic - planning some stargazing with astronomy software (can't remember what it was called, came with a book by the brilliant Heather Couper), experimenting with my own circuits connected to the analogue port, mastering Elite. Time for a loft rescue mission...

Highly professional video! Brilliant.

I benefited from the French equivalent of this plan, which you already covered (Thomson MO5's, Goupil PC server, nanoreseau and 'plan informatique pour tous'). I discovered computers thanks to it, became instantly obsessed and it eventually became my lifelong profession. It's hard to imagine than in the early 80's, politicians and the media were visionaries about micros and did something for the good of the people.

wonderful video, thank you so much!

I always remember my secondary school's computer room fondly. It was on the 4th floor and had a huge iron door for security. Like something from a bank. We must have had a few dozen BBC Micros in that room, all hooked up to a main computer controlled by the teacher. I never had much interest in computers back then (total tech nut now and the past 25 years, thanks to the Playstation I think) but I did get a slight twinge of interest when I saw someone had replicated Bomb the Bass's Into the Dragon album cover on a sheet of A4 on a Dot Matrix printer. I was like "woah, you can make your own posters". Wish it had got me more interested back then, although I was almost ready to leave school not long after. Pure nostalgia just looking at the machine though. Built like a tank to boot.

I must have gone to an affluent school as we had a couple of rooms full of Model B's, they were all connected to ECONET and we also had a Watford Electronics 30MB Winchester hard drive - I also really enjoyed the drama 'Micro Men'.

"Micro Men" a wonderfully told story :) Have watched a few times .. very enjoyable :)

very good episode!

Awesome subbed ...Merry Christmas have a awesome one....

This was top notch. Filled a void in my head about the BBC micro.

Great video. This just took your content quality levels up by another gear

You talking about the bbc micro reminds of the apple 2's and ibm machines i played on as a kid at school in the states great memories thank you

The history of Acorn Computers is a very interesting one. The BBC-B (aka Beeb) was THE Swiss pocket knife of computers back in the 80's and the one I still cherish every day. Neil I hope you will continue to make more of these monumental video's about Acorn computers. The Systems 1 to 5, the Acorn Atom, BBC B /B+/Master all those great Archimedes models and RiscPCs until the unreleased Phoebe (RiscPC2). The ARM processor is widely regarded as "the legacy" of Acorn but less known is that RiscOS development is still alive today. I believe the RiscOS open software project would be a great story for one of your videos too! Greets from the Netherlands

Excellent video, like the green screen presenting style as well, I should show you some of the virtual studio stuff I did with Blender :-P

Loved this machine. We had the a computer room at outmr school with various Beebs setup on the econet. Really cool