Date   : Fri, 22 May 1992 09:44:55 BST
From   : I Stephenson <ian@...>
Subject: Re: My interests etc...

As I set all this up, I guess I should tell you who I am, and why I'm  
doing this.

I recently recovered my BBC from my parents house, and set it up  
again. Basicaly it was great to get back to the old machine, and it's  
still capable of doing many usefull things (at the very least, for  
text entry). As I've said - I've got a pretty big workstation here at  
work, so there's little point in buying a new home machine. It could  
never be as fast/nice etc so I'll stick with the quirky "quaint"  
macine I've got at the minute.

I've got an issue 3 model B, 48K s/w Ram + single switchable drive.  
I've also got an AMX mouse and a Music 500. At the moment I've  
borrowed a 6502 2nd processor, though I'm hoping to get a 32016  
pretty soon. Once I've sussed that out, a hard dic upgrade is a  
definite must (as the interface is only 35 quid as Mik pointed out -  
prehaps you'd like to re-publisise it here Richard, just incase  
anyone missed it).

I'd agree with Mik that a good C compiler would be VERY usefull,  
though having a second processor, my problems with TinyC are  
different - I particularly miss decent typing (structs, arrays etc).  
I've got a patch to tinyC with customise it to the second processor,  
in particular allowing the command line options to be read accross  
the tube, which I'll make available if anyone is interested.

Reguarding posting software - if anyone is interested we can use my  
machine as an ftp site (at least for a trial period) -  
shiraz.ohm.york.ac.uk. I've placed a standard copy of tcc in there  
for starters.

Does anyone have any contacts within Acorn or other software  
companies that USED to distribute BBC software ? Would it be possible  
to get tham to aggree to relax copyright on certain items which they  
no longer support, allowing it to be copied as shareware or the such  
like ? Basicaly no one is selling software any more, so would they  
agree to, if not _let_ us copy it, aggree not to sue if we do...

I'd realy like to get a copy of 6502 Elite, now that I've got a  
processor to play it on, but it wasn't exactly a big seller at the  
time, and getting a copy now is near on impossible.

Anyway enough waffling

Ian Stephenson

P.S. List admin stuff should now be sent to  
bbc-list-request@...

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