Date   : Tue, 03 Apr 2001 17:40:26 +1200 (NZST)
From   : Greg Ewing <greg@...>
Subject: Trying to get an old BBC to go

Recently I acquired a junked BBC Master Compact for $3, and I'm
trying to get it to work.

Before applying power, I looked it over and found that the
keyboard PCB was cracked, breaking some of the tracks. I
did my best to repair them by soldering some fine wire
across the gaps.

Then I connected a monitor, powered it up and got:

  ACORN MOS

  ACORN ADFS

and then nothing. Pressing the Shift Lock and Caps Lock
keys causes the appropriate lights to come on and off on
the keyboard, and the Break key seems to perform a reset,
but there is no prompt of any sort and no response from
any of the other keys.

Could there be a fault remaining in the keyboard that
would cause this behaviour?

Could it be waiting for something else, such as a disk
to boot from?

Is it conceivable that this machine does not have any
Basic in ROM? I would have thought that all BBCs came
with Basic, but maybe I'm wrong.

My experience with BBCs is limited, so any advice you
can offer will be appreciated.

Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+
University of Canterbury,         | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a       |
Christchurch, New Zealand         | wholly-owned subsidiary of USA Inc.  |
greg@...          +--------------------------------------+