Date : Wed, 18 Jul 2007 08:32:51 +0100
From : robert@... (Rob)
Subject: modern BBC remake
On 18/07/07, Anders Carlsson <anders.carlsson@...> wrote:
> Now, assuming that someone came up with a "Beeb 2K7" motherboard design
> for free, but the parts to build it costs ?65, excluding keyboard. Would
> it be desireable, or just considered too expensive to be worthwhile?
>
I think you've hit the nail on the head there; In the UK at least,
Model B's can be found in quantity for almost nothing, mainly due to
the vast numbers bought by schools, and consqeuently replicated in
homes!
My random thoughts..:
Whilst there may be a market for a tv-game device, bundled with a pile
of software, if you could get licencing sorted out cheaply enough,
there seems little point in making an exact replica - the Altair and
Apple 1 examples you quoted make sense for those after the 'real'
experience because they end up much cheaper than you are ever likely
to find an original one. But I have a cupboard full of BBC micros,
as do probably most people on this list (in the UK anyway..) and,
apart from those I bought from new, they mostly cost me nothing
Now it might be useful to construct one as a device to promote 'how
computers WORK' as I feel this is sadly lacking in today's teachings
about computers, which seem all to often to be 'how to use microsoft
software'.. The BBC micro was good in this respect because of it's
varied expansion capabilities, and the range of hardware that sprung
up around it, especially that of an educational nature! How you could
target that, though, is another matter, and obviously bunging
everything in an FPGA would be counterproductive for this situation.
I could see it working as a partwork, you know... one of those ?5 or
more bi-weekly magazines that give you another bit of a kit that
eventually bulds up into something useful. (There was one a few years
back my daughter subscribed to that built up into an autonomous
robot.) They end up costing the buyer quite a lot of money, but it's
well spread out...
Rob