A once in a lifetime day at ARM celebrating the Beeb@30

April 1, 2012 by 17 Comments

The Acorn BBC Micro turned 30 and to celebrate it the Centre for Computing History organised a once in a lifetime event on Sunday 25th March 2012 that included the original people behind the BBC Micro.

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We were honoured to be invited and so got up very early on a Sunday morning and drove to Cambridge and the headquarters of ARM.

Getting In

In the window was an Acorn Computer sign – I had a feeling it was going to be a great day – and I wasn’t wrong!

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There was even a really cool way to sign in when you got there!

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A Look Around the Displays

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After walking through the entrance doors there were a number of displays showing retro computing hardware, including various BBC Micro’s and Electrons.

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About Andrew Edney

This post was written by who has written 6096 posts for Connected Digital World. I am the owner and editor of this site. I have been interested in gadgets and tech since I was a little kid. I have also written a number of books on various tech subjects. I also write for The Huffington Post. And I am honoured to be a Microsoft MVP for Windows Home Server since January 2008.
View all posts by Andrew Edney →

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  • John Zajdler

    An excellent blog post Andrew. Well Done. It’s interesting how we get nostalgic in our lifetime. Thanks for sharing.

  • http://twitter.com/MPenriceNUC Mark Penrice

    I like the portable telly with the built in tape deck… you can use it to load AND run your programs!

  • Pingback: Eben’s talk from Beeb@30 – video | Raspberry Pi

  • Pingback: Eben’s talk from Beeb@30 – video » Geko Geek

  • Rosalie

    It has me thinking of my first Amstrad with the disk drives at the side of the screen. One for the OS and the other for saving files, etc. Nostalgia, eh? And now that we have all singing and dancing, what do we want to do? – obtain a Raspberry Pi, and start all over again. A perfect world!

  • http://twitter.com/Oliver_NZ Oliver Erlewein

    My Beeb is still in storage right next to my A310.

  • Dennis

    I love the beeb, got my first networking experience at school, sending “new” commands to unsuspecting students! Reserving storage for private use on the network with my first recursive algo. Getting kicked out of class for programming a game and teaching my buddies how to REALLY program comuters while in computer class ;-) Learning how to cover my tracks and overwhelm the log, from someone elses’ computer of course… hahhaha Those were some seriously GOOD times!

  • Oli

    Thanks for sharing, Andrew. Gutted to have not known this event was happening, but one consolation is that you documented it so well. Oli (former MVP)

    • http://connecteddigitalworld.com/ Andrew Edney

      Thanks Oli J

  • http://twitter.com/GeorgePoles George Poles

    Thank you so much for sharing this. For me the buh-beep of a BBC Micro being switched on is as powerful as Proust’s madeleine. I can still remember rushing out to buy Acorn User and Micro User, Beebug et al and slaving away in front of a hot 6502 second processor as I tried to become Elite. They’re hugely fond memories and this helped bring them flooding back. I wish I could have been there – the team behind the BBC machine gave me more pleasure than any group bar the Beatles.

    • http://connecteddigitalworld.com/ Andrew Edney

      It really was a great day – and I have my Beeb sitting next to me at the moment – I know exactly what you mean about the buh-beep J

  • Pluppie

    ahhhh the good old times , yes i remember , i had ( still have ) one at home , a friend of mine showed me the potential of the bbc , soon after i enrolled at a school that had a bbc network , there was no stopping me then , the teacher pulled out his hairs ;) when i had a computer lesson ( logo ) no logo for me (*i am ????) it was to easy when i recall corectly it was *exec !boot you should find the i am in reverse , to take over the network , got an A+++ and frenzy was my faforite , have a bbc micro b with sideways and dual drive 80 tracks and a recompiled drive system ( my friend ) , * i am dutch so please ignore typos

    • http://connecteddigitalworld.com/ Andrew Edney

      Thanks Pluppie – it has a lot of fond memories for a lot of people!

  • John C

    What a great article, so once again, thanks for sharing. I can remember being the envy of my work colleagues when my Model B eventually turned up (they were still using ZX80 and ZX81′s). My other vivid memory of the time was struggling over some de-bugging to the strains of Echo and the Bunnymen … and they say nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

    • http://connecteddigitalworld.com/ Andrew Edney

      Thanks John J

      I cant believe it’s been 30 years!!!!

  • Roger

    Greetings. Great work still going on! Though it does remind me of my age (62), I have a Computer Science MSc. and taught many TEC and other ‘Computing’ courses but everywhere I worked the science people were soon dominated by business studies who wanted IT, applications only. I took early retirement and now just ‘tinker’ with small computers, still have a working 8060 breadboard and an 8080 running FORTH.

    • http://connecteddigitalworld.com/ Andrew Edney

      Thanks Roger J