Quote:
Is this the computer which has BBC Basic on it? One of my coworkers swears the only sw language anyone ever needs is BBC Basic.


The BBC computer did have the BBC BASIC on it, which was widely recognised as being so much better than the Microsoft BASIC versions on the other early 1980s machines. The BBC model B was interface rich compared to the other computers and was excellent for using the computer for mechantronics projects i.e. simple robotics and scientific experimental recording and for control systems implementations.

You can download a BBC model B emulator here at

http://modelb.bbcmicro.com/download.html

and get the games here at

http://www.bbcmicrogames.com/acornsoft.html

At school we had at first the Apple IIs (at school I designed an 8 bit ADC interfaced on to a 6522 PIO for the Apple IIs backplane for digitising voice input for voice activated control - which required some 6502 hand coded machine code; mind control at that time was a bit beyond what we could do - Firefox (the movie) had just been released a year or two earlier), but then moved on BBC model Bs. The local Russian Spies were aquiring their Sinclair Spectrums made just up the road for their aerospace defence or perhaps they wanted their children to play computer games as well whistle

The BBC BASIC was very good to use to go on to develop early structured programming skills. BBC BASIC also had a complete built in 6502 assembler as well. It was a good introduction before going on to program in PASCAL (taught on Apollo Domains at University) and later C and OCCAM and a little FORTRAN for signal processing projects i.e. Dynamic Infra Red image processing. Borlands Turbo BASIC was pretty good for MSDOS programming.

I mostly lost interest in the bloated and tedious C++ Object Oriented Windows (OCCAMs process oriented programming still hasn't caught on yet laugh and I suspect most modern Information Technologists and even programmers involved in that game wouldn't even begin to tell you how even the basics of a computer works).

I should have went into the games development side of things and I would have have probably now been a Multi millionaire like Davy Jones of Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto fame. Oh well.. blush