Date   : Sat, 12 Jun 2004 16:12:53 +0200
From   : John Kortink <kortink@...>
Subject: Re: Bravo

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 12:37:26 +0100 (BST), "F. Haroon"
<haroonnet2002@...> wrote:

>I'd just like to say bravo, to Sprow, and John Kortink, and others for
>their commitement towards projects like the solid state storage for the
>BBC, and the Sprow-board  - do you know the possibilities you have
>opened up for bringing the BBC Micro into the 21st Century?

That's the whole idea. ;-) There's so much these days that
can be done cheaper, faster and simpler, with modern hardware
and chips. It'd be a waste to not exploit that in some ways.
Especially, as far as I'm concerned, (and do these projects
ever start without personal need ?) for storage of games.
Nothing better than having all your software inside your
machine with nothing else to worry about. And 32K or so a
game ... Pah. By current standards in storage space ...

>Someone could easily design a GUI o/s for the machine to somewhat
emulate
>RISC OS, and even an up-to-date graphic browser accessing the Internet
>with TCP/IP stack, etc.

Well, that, for one, wouldn't be my cup of tea. But it's
not impossible.

>I might try sometime to design and produce new BBC Master clones
>incorporating some or all of the above (if someone hasn't already done
>so)   - last time I checked the original parts can still be sourced.  I
>don't think it's technically impossible, and they will be designed to
>work with all the modern hardware as well.  By the looks of it there's
>still a steady market for the BBC Micro even now?  What do you think?

It's a nostalgia market as far as I'm concerned. I.e. I
don't think there's much room for doing new things with
old (8-bit) hardware. But lots for doing the things they
did in a better, more flexible and manageable way.


John Kortink