Date   : Wed, 18 Jul 2007 05:08:18 -0500
From   : julesrichardsonuk@... (Jules Richardson)
Subject: modern BBC remake

Rob wrote:
>> In fact, a PCI card with just a flexible bus and power output on it would
>> presumably do, as things like Econet, 1MHz bus, Tube etc. can be 
>> derived from
>> it with very little in the way of external hardware.
>>
> 
> Surely by then you are down to just the 6502/6522s and a bit of RAM -
> there hardly seems much point!  

I don't know, I just find it awkward having something the size of the beeb on 
the desk, but the reason I don't replace it with an emulator is that I still 
want the option to play around with physical hardware (Econet, second 
processors, Buggy etc.). I don't think an emulator's as nice to use as the 
real machine, but for the 'core' functionality it does come reasonably close - 
enough that I could probably put up with not having a real beeb up on the desk 
all the time (or "that keyboard thing" as the missus christened it).

If I had an emulator handling the CPU / ROM / RAM / keyboard / video and 
talking to an expansion board then in theory it's not much in the way of 
circuitry to hang a 1MHz bus / Tube / Econet / ADC / whatever module off the 
back and instantly talk to some real hardware.

Hardware-wise it's a bit like the 1MHz Bus podule for the Arc, I suppose (or: 
"Did you mean: 1ghz bus podule" as prompted by Google - something someone's 
not telling us? ;)

(floppy access is the difficult one as the PC's FDC is too much of a crock to 
rely on, so I suspect most people with such a board would still end up with a 
beeb-compatible FDC module hanging off their PC and a floppy drive on their desk)

Of course I'm just thinking out loud here :) Everyone's going to have 
different needs...

> To completely reverse your suggestion... I remember seeing someone
> shoehorn a PC motherboard into a Model B case, complete with the
> original keyboard...
> 
> http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/bbcitxb/
> 
> Now. THAT would save you desk space. ...

Heh. I seem to remember wanting to do that (circa 1994) with a miniature 386 
board that I had; I had an angled ISA bus adaptor so I could lay a video board 
flat across the top of the motherboard and it'd all still fit in the BBC case. 
I remember messing around with building a keyboard decoder [1], but the lack 
of available keys on the beeb eventually put me off (the Master was a bit 
better, but too physically bulky to have the same 'cool' factor).

[1] I can't remember if I sent keyboard input via the keyboard port on the PC 
now. The system ran Linux, so it may well have have the beeb's keyboard 
attached to a serial port.