Date   : Sat, 01 May 2004 05:38:09 +0100
From   : Mike Tomlinson <mike@...>
Subject: Re: B+ Upgrades

In article <!~!UENERkVCMDkAAQACAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABgAAAAAAAAAyztalOSD0xG5F
wAAIcXIH8KAAAAQAAAAwAHz+YxAhUGAJk5ZVM2/NQEAAAAA@...>,
Chris Thornley <C.J.Thornley@...> writes

>The BBC+ shown on eBay below which went for a lot of money had 64k sidew
ays
>ram.
>http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8100946255&catego
ry=161
>66

Whew - £297.  Mind you, much of that will have been because it was in
the original box.

>How do you upgrade a BBC+ to 64k of side ways ram? Do you use an externa
l
>board.

You fit an Acorn upgrade.  It's a small vertical card which sits on the
right hand side of the motherboard.  It has to be soldered in place (the
one in Gareth's link appears to have been socketed), and several flying
wires soldered to points on the underside of the main board, which of
course means it has to be removed.

> If so which are compatible or do you put some Static ram
>Into its ROM Sockets? Would this ram only be used for SWR ROMS or could
you
>shadow it like you could do with the Watford or ATPL board which use to
be
>available in Watford electronics?

The B+ 128k upgrade simply added extra sideways RAM.  The original B+64k
already had shadow RAM.

In many ways, the B+ was the forerunner of the Master, since it has many
of the same features used in the Master.  It was introduced by Acorn as
a stopgap because Master development was taking so long, and because the
competition were all introducing 128k machines (Spectrum 128, CPC 128,
etc.)

>Did the B+ have the same Basic II ROM as the BBC B? 

AFAIR, yes.

>Was the 1770 DFS different than the Master version

Yes.

> and did acorn produce an
>ADFS for the machine? 

It used standard B ADFS 1.30 IIRC.

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