I was about 9 years old when my dad brought a BBC Micro B home (he was a maths teacher). I soon was pretty comfortable in using the machine and even learnt some basic. Then my primary school got a computer (one for the whole school!) and I was summoned by the deputy head to help them set it up, and then try and teach them how to use the thing. The teacher soon gave up though, which was good for me as I spent a good amount of time over the last year and a half of primary school effectively being the school's IT classroom assistant and hanging out in the 'computer room' (computer cupboard really) supervising/teaching other kids. Played a lot of chucky egg that year lol.

I repaired loads of these back in the day, love them

Knew a guy in New Zealand who started a BBC sales business in the face of the popular Commodore and Sinclair machines. Unfortunately his startup failed. For some reason the BBC did not take of in NZ. Looking forward to seeing your upgrades implemented.

Gosh had these at primary school in late 80s a guy used to come in and teach us tho very occasionally

The only thing i learned on the BBC micro was how to play the game chuck 'E' egg. Happy memories.

Excellent video! I’m about to pick up a BBC Micro myself - pretty stoked!

Great restoration video. I briefly remember the BBC Micro at school. I didn't get much time to play on it as there was always someone else on it. On to Part 2...

Fantastic content - please keep it coming.

4:55 I appreciate that you call it the main board instead of that bizarre "mother" stuff (that far to many people today thinks means printed circuit board).

I still miss my old Beeb...

Love this microcomputer..my 1st computer

I remember program listings being broadcast by teletext download., amd causing a prank in the school computer room with *motor on off commands on a repeat loop creating an awful grinding noise that nobody knew where it was coming from and running off.

I have 2 of the Beeb Model Bs and a (fully pimped) Master 128. I well remember the struggle with the power plug :-) My computing history goes back to before the Beeb, starting with a Commodore PET, then a Beeb, (which was eventually donated to a local school when I bought my first PC), and now I'm a Mac user. The 2 BEEBs I now have were bought for £1 at a ham radio junk sale, about 15 years ago. The PSUs for both have been recently recapped and are fully functional, with extras. The Master 128 has a Gotek floppy emulator, a micro SPI adapter, a Retroclinic Data Centre, switchable Multi-OS ROM, and multi co-processor (based on a pi Zero). I also have 2 'proper' 5.25" floppy drives, but I don't really use them much since I got the Gotek. The BBC computers were fantastically expandable, an area where most of the competitors at the time were lacking

haha IC69...nice EDIT: also really nice calming voice and music. thanks *makes subscription noises*

That little per cable as I'm sure you know is the speaker cable and quite easy to forget when you put the machine back together. If the keyboard is left disconnected, the machine won't boot. There are lots of reports of people snapping of the power connectors, so take care everyone, although replacements are cheap, they will require soldering. If you don't fancy soldering and don't plan on using composite, the wire to the center of the composite connector can be shipped and the connector unscrewed. The weird are long enough to get the board out without removal, but you still have a board and case connected by sorry wires. If you snoop it, make sure that it won't sorry against anything. One last thing, the analogue/joystick port can be screwed in which will also keep the board held in. These screws are very easy to strip if they haven't already been by overly excited kids plugging in joysticks or classroom experiments.

Well timed I just received my BBC B purchase from ebay! Back then I owned a ZX Spectrum.

Fantastic machines and ridiculously over specified - Developing these must have been an engineer's dream!

Hi I will have to fund come pic for you, my dad was 1 of the BBC eng team, who worked on the spec and testing of the BBC Micro, I have the 1 of the BBC prototypes in my stores somewhere. its SN is lower than the 1 in ARMs has. I need to check if it is the issue 1, 2 or 3 board, and when my dad took the first 1 (the veroboard in the rack) for a few weeks, so how children got on with using put, at the age of 6 or 7 we did not understand how important the rack of wire was and how it would change the world.

Micro Men was a BBC4, not Channel 4 TV Movie :)

You can use MMFS or MMFS2 ROMs with the SDCARD adapter.

So Sinclair was the other side of the ponds apple?

?&fe62 not a random string of characters but my entry to BBC poke commands and the user port. A string of LEDs that I could control blew my 10yr old mind and is undoubtedly associated with my adult love of computing.

Nice video look forward to others, think you mistook the speaker connector for a power connector just a slip of the tongue im sure

So, you show off the internal hardware and the connections to the peripherals here, but what I really miss is the software perspective. What’s the memory map of the Micro and how does it work at all? That’s missing to make it a real documentary of the BBC Micro.

What about the 3 blue chip sockets next to the roms? What are they for?

When is the next chapter? Thx.

can someone maybe type in a bbc micro version of donkey king or donkey kong from the dragon 32 ?? thanks with a green background to it ?? thanks

My school didn't allow any pupil not in the top maths group to even see a computer let alone touch them. I'm still angry about it to this day. I went on to be a software engineer not bad for someone crap at maths.

That excellent Horizon documentary was on KZfaq but seems to have vanished.

Being able to define procedures and functions with Def Proc and Def Fn was great but ugh, wasn't a fan of that envelope command.

40 odd years of kids mucky fingers.....ewwwww lol QC by judith it would appear nice looking screwdriver.......details please 😉

lets face it Apple fan boys, the Brit's BBC micro was a cooler design than the Apple II given its features and capabilities - and it was built like a Centurion tank