Date   : Sun, 15 Jan 2006 22:27:56 +0000
From   : Paul Beardow <paul.beardow@...>
Subject: Start up display problems

I recently retrieved my BBC B from the loft after 20 years to sell on 
eBay. Unfortunately the machine developed a problem during transit and 
I accepted it back from the buyer. What's happening is that on start up 
the characters on the screen are garbled, although the computer appears 
to be working fine. If you reset the mode by typing "mode 1" or any 
other mode, then the screen is legible again, although there are rows 
of colons in the bottom half of the screen.

I assume that somewhere something is mapping bytes to characters to 
display (I've never worked on Beebs, but have a background in 
electronics and computing from years back) and on start up it isn't 
resetting itself correctly, or some other initial problem that is 
partially cured by a mode change.

Any ideas anyone? I've decided to keep the machine for my kids now 
after playing with it for a while, it's so direct compared to a PC.

Paul