The BBC Microcomputer User Guide
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The BBC Microcomputer User Guide
1–10 of 32 posts
Re: The BBC Microcomputer User Guide
#2Only eclipsed by:
"The Advanced User Guide for the BBC Microcomputer"
http://stardot.org.uk/mirrors/www.bbcdocs.com/filebase/essen...
Re: The BBC Microcomputer User Guide
#3BBC Basic is a work of art. It exposes its underlying API for you to use in assembly so you can, for instance, use its floating point routines and data areas. And it's a very well thought out API.
Re: The BBC Microcomputer User Guide
#4Only eclipsed by: "The Advanced User Guide for the BBC Microcomputer" http://stardot.org.uk/mirrors/www.bbcdocs.com/filebase/essen...
Only itself eclipsed by:
"The Advanced User Guide for the BBC Microcomputer" (remastered)
Re: The BBC Microcomputer User Guide
#5Memory protection in the old days:
There are three memory mapped input/output areas and these are named FRED, JIM and SHEILA. SHEILA contains all the machine's internal memory mapped devices, such as the analogue to digital converter, and should be treated with considerable respect.
Re: The BBC Microcomputer User Guide
#6BBC Basic is a work of art. It exposes its underlying API for you to use in assembly so you can, for instance, use its floating point routines and data areas. And it's a very well thought out API.
Does it? My recollection is that the entry points were undocumented, and changed in every revision, of which there were at least 6! - BASIC 1, BASIC 2, HIBASIC, BASIC 4, BASIC 4.32, HIBASIC 4.32...
The inbuilt assembler was super useful, and an excellent feature, but not obviously designed for calling BASIC itself. The expected use case seemed to be that you'd use BASIC by writing BASIC code, and any machine code routines (probably created using the inbuilt assembler) would be self-contained.
(Modern readers unfamiliar with this system should compare the BBC BASIC assembler much more to LuaJIT's dynasm, which it rather resembles, than to the average C compiler's inline assembler, which it was not really much like.)
Re: The BBC Microcomputer User Guide
#7Only eclipsed by: "The Advanced User Guide for the BBC Microcomputer" http://stardot.org.uk/mirrors/www.bbcdocs.com/filebase/essen...
Only itself eclipsed by: "The Advanced User Guide for the BBC Microcomputer" (remastered) https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=17242
Oh man, it even has the front cover! Thank you!
Re: The BBC Microcomputer User Guide
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only itself eclipsed by: "The Advanced User Guide for the BBC Microcomputer" (remastered) https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=17242
Oh man, it even has the front cover! Thank you!
It's a big improvement! There were a few errors I noticed in the original, all now fixed, and the diagrams are a lot cleaner-looking in this version too.
Re: The BBC Microcomputer User Guide
#9It's why I now run a software company. Reading this (and the Advanced User Guide) at 10 years old gave me a career.
Re: The BBC Microcomputer User Guide
#10Thanks for sharing, the title should be dated with (2001).