BBC Returns To Making Computers For Schools 106
Raging Bool writes According to the BBC News website, the BBC is returning to producing comparatively inexpensive computers for schools. Readers of sufficient age will remember the BBC Model B with great affection. But won't this be in competition with other pre-existing devices such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi? The BBC says not: "The BBC does not see Micro Bit as a rival to similar devices such as Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Galileo and Kano, but rather hopes it will act as a 'springboard' to these more complex machines." I hope they're at least consulting with Eben Upton.
Became ARM (Score:3, Informative)
Actually it was Acorn Computers that made the BBC model B. They went on to make a RISC processor, ARM, the most successful processor sold by unit volume. The one in your smartphone and TV box and car and Raid and router and and and and ....
All possible because the BBC decided to pump money into a computer back in the 80's when the computer industry was a hobby.
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Yes, but the BBC Micro was licensed and heavily promoted via the BBC, and Acorn brought their demo system to a meeting with the BBC to win the manufacturing contract. The BBC controlled the specification of the computer, so they were (in the movie sense of the term) the producer. Acorn were a very gifted art department.
Acorn, followed and ARM would not be where they were and are today if they had not managed to win that BBC contract.
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And the BBC Micro was not inexpensive.
It was really cool, had lots of IO, and probably was a great system for schools but it was not inexpensive.
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Yeah, it cost £400, which is £1,400 adjusted for inflation.
The "inexpensive" version (the Acorn Electron) still cost £200. My grandparents chipped in to help my parents buy me one.
In real terms, the Raspberry Pi (which is a fair-ish comparison - not as much I/O, but still doesn't have it's own screen, like the BBC) costs less than £10 adjusted to 1981.
Price is not the issue. People found the money back then. Computing hardware is incredibly cheap now. You can get a full laptop with s
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(the old joke being, "Why don't the British build computers? Because they haven't figured out how to make 'em leak oil yet.")
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the Model A was £235, the B £335 in 1981. I still have mine. Still works, too. (!)
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The price rapidly went up to £400 for the Model B (as the Wikipedia page states, lower down) due to supply issues.
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that's a load. It's far more likely that the price was hiked because more people were buying it than expected. For its time it was the dog's bollocks of home computers, the keyboard was definitely built to last - unlike the membrane board on the ZX81 which would short and stick if you blew on it wrong. OK so it was thrice the price of the ZX81, but hell, it was worth all those washed cars.
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the Model A was £235, the B £335 in 1981
The price rapidly went up to £400 for the Model B (as the Wikipedia page states, lower down) due to supply issues.
It's far more likely that the price was hiked because more people were buying it than expected.
What the Wikipedia article *actually* says is that the price increase was due to "due to increased costs", same as the contemporary referenced article claims. Since UK inflation was still high by modern standards- around 11 to 12%- circa 1981/82 [blogspot.com] (albeit steeply down from the eye-watering 18% it hit in 1980), it's quite possible that the increase was at least partly legitimate.
That aside, it's also worth remembering that most people's experience and memory of the BBC Micro will have been of the more common
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I have to add that I never saw a BBC computer for sale in the US at all. Sinclair's where around but the kings where the C64, the Atari, and a few Apples for the people that had the money or where really into the Computers.
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It should also be noted that the reverse is also true to some extent- while the Apple II was far from unknown over here (my Dad had one of the later ones at work), it was never (AFAICT) as prominent as it was in the US. Possibly because t
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It's far more likely that the price was hiked because more people were buying it than expected.
Two ways of saying the same thing. Match demand to the supply. The waiting list was a couple of months or so at the time as I recall, and Acorn were having cash flow problems increasing production so dampening demand whilst upping the revenue was a sensible decision.
Surprised the contract with the BBC was flexible enough to let them do it though.
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And the BBC Micro was not inexpensive. It was really cool, had lots of IO, and probably was a great system for schools but it was not inexpensive.
There weren't any inexpensive computers in the early 1980s.
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Yes there was.
The Sinclair/Timex TS1000
Vic 20
Commodore 64.
ZX Spectrum
All where pretty inexpensive by 1984 The BBC micro was not.
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Outside the U.K. the BBC-B didn't draw that much attention though, mostly due to the price tag. Agreed, it was a solid computer, rugged enough to be placed in, say, a class room. In the Netherlands, the Philips P2000 was used for that mostly http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org] . Admittingly the BBC-B was more solid and had a better keyboard, but no fancies like internal disk or cassette drive - one of the great features of those Philips computers. Hop along, put in personal cassette and within a minute (or 3)
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No-one i know possessed a BBC-B. We all heard of it's famous RISC processor though, as the Acorn guy could proudly tell about all it's advantages over our inferior Z80's and 6502's.
Just to clarify - the BBC B did not have a RISC processor. It had a 2 MHz 6502, although it did make incredible use of its power.
One of the nicest features of the BBC B was its wealth of hardware interfaces, including what was called The Tube which allowed the connection of additional processors. You could add a second 6502, or a Z80, or even in the latter days, an ARM.
Acorn were very late in moving on from the 8-bit 6502, toying for a while with the 32016/16032, but eventually deciding to design their ow
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Also Jeremy Clarkson for Prime Minister!
My first thought when I saw the headline was that the BBC is throwing this out there to distract from the Jeremy Clarkson fracas.
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The BBC Micro was the best 8-bit micro ever, but the price was very expensive (it was sort of the UK equivalent of Apple I guess, except it was *far* better than the Apple II). I'm not sure about the wisdom of internal floppy drives and cassette tape mechanisms - makes them tougher to replace if anything goes wrong with them. The BBC Micro needed a disk interface chip adding, but once that's done, any sort of external floppy drive could be used.
The BBC Micro had a 2Mhz 6502 - it wasn't until 1987 that the A
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And yet the UK technology industry still manages to piss it all away and be an also-ran.
Seriously. How the fuck do we do it?
More Complex? (Score:3, Interesting)
If things like the Pi are so much more complex, just how simple is this new device?
I am thinking an abacus with a battery light...
Re: More Complex? (Score:3)
Arduino-alike (Score:2)
>just how simple is this new device?
I reckon an Arduino-alike. Possibly something as simple as other low-end ATMega or ATTiny werables like Adafruit Trinket, Flora or even Adafruit Gemma, only with a 5x5 LED array and two switches built-in.
https://www.adafruit.com/produ... [adafruit.com]
In some respects, these things are even less powerful than the original BBC Model B; 8k of flash & 0.5k of RAM on the Trinket compared to 32k of RAM on the Beeb. In other respects, they're a little bit more powerful; 8MHz or 16MHz R
Why hardware? (Score:3)
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What is the incentive for the BBC to spin yet-another-slightly-different board,
I'm guessing it's meant to be a bit more homegrown. Nationalism is pretty much the story. After all, Arduino is Italian ;)
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More British than the already-British Raspberry Pi?
Manufactured by Sony and with a core with closed, foreign drivers.
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the MOS 6502 was built in Pennsylvania.
Just sayin'.
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" What is the incentive for the BBC to spin ..."
To try to stay relevant - to try to justify their tax-income.
Doesn't address the issue (Score:5, Insightful)
.. and I'm not sure what will.
The reason that kids of my age were "into computers" and we had a "great generation" of bedroom programmers who subsequently became tech workers was because simple, programmable computers were one of the few forms of entertainment available to the kids who didn't want to go out and kick a ball around or ride their bike.
This was an era when
* Things were more expensive (the toys cost.. about what they do, in numbers, these days. Only inflation means that £30 is not even 10 pints of beer for dad these days when it was more like 60 pints of beer back then.) A £200 home computer was a MAJOR expense rather than an impulse buy.
* There was an hour of kids TV on weekdays
And of course
* NO INTERNET - no personal portable devices of bottomless instant gratification
I saw a great article that explained that the no.1 quality a programmer needs is persistence - in the face of ridiculous odds of getting even simple things to work.
Back then you persevered with things because the only other thing to do was go and watch Coronation Street with mother, or re-read one of the few books you could afford this month. Even deciding to start playing a game wasn't exactly an impulse choice because to load it took about 5 minutes (from audio cassette tape).
Producing more simple, programmable computers these days is missing the point, although they are greatly appreciated by folks from that great generation of bedroom programmers who like a new toy to tinker with.
What's probably needed is better software. Better like A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer better.
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This is true, but you had to go somewhere to obtain them.
I very fondly remember my trips to the public library with Mum (a lot of the time I would bring back these excellent Usborne programming books [mocagh.org]).
But you had a 3 book limit (and Mum was usually kind enough to let me get something on her card as well). I'd go through that very quickly. When the library is a 40-minute round trip on foot (and you're not allowed to ride on main roads on your bike by your parents), that's a major investment of time. Faced wi
this is what the BBC is all about? (Score:1, Interesting)
Really? It's the job of a public broadcasting organization financed largely by mandatory TV and Internet license fees to give away a million embedded systems, most of which will simply gather dust or blink a few times, on the theory that programming will continue to be a lucrative profession 20 years down the road?
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Sarcasm aside, yes it is [bbc.co.uk].
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The BBC Micro was a phenomenal success in the 1980s. And I don't mean just in terms of sales, I mean in terms of priming the pumps for computer literacy. The BBC Micro, in combination with the TV programmes, and it's classroom ruggedness was vital. The ZX Spectrum was seldom used for anything but playing poor quality games in kids bedrooms.
Why the BBC now? Because it'll combine with educational TV programmes.
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Relative to what?
So what?
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Relative to what?
To computer illiteracy.
So what?
Is this grumpy pointless question time?
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Well, that's not a good relative measure. After all, plenty of countries managed to avoid computer illiteracy without the BBC, television license fees, or subsidies. The question is: what did the BBC subsidy demonstrably accomplish relative to simply letting the market take care of computer literacy?
No, I simply do not understand your justification. Should the BBC send out free cooking spoons for its cooking shows? Free musical instruments for mu
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I'm sorry I'm not the slightest bit interested in the BBC having to justify their actions. I lived through it, and it was a wonderful thing. That's good enough for me. Actually more than good enough for me, that BBC Micro started me off into my career.
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Ah, privilege justifying itself and its tax subsidies
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Stick your UKIP nonsense up your jacksie.
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Again, look who's talking: white upper middle class, university educated twit.
And the reason for your left wing positions is because you're too lazy and self-important to help other people yourself; so much easier to just take a superior political position and vote that other people's money take care of problems, real or imagined.
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You're quite the fantasist.
What are the Specs? (Score:3)
"The BBC does not see Micro Bit as a rival to ... Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Galileo and Kano, but rather hopes it will act as a "springboard" to these more complex machines ....it will be compatible with three coding languages - Touch Develop, Python and C++.
It has a C++ compiler but is not complex? Seriously, intoducing kids to coding using C++? Things like the RPi don't need a springboard to reach them anyway. All these things can be used as simple as you like or as complex as you like. What OS is this thing using anyway?
the BBC is being careful not to repeat the mistakes of the BBC Microcomputer launch, which angered rivals such as Sinclair
Why was "angering" Sinclair a "mistake"? He was just another micro manufacturer so was hardly to be expected to welcome a new rival. Couldn't they have told him to f#@k off?
the BBC is working with several partners, including chip-designer Arm, Microsoft and Samsung, to get the end product right.
Microsoft? Now they are angering me.
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Go home Sir Clive, you're drunk.
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The BBC, a profoundly well-known tax-funded State organization
Not tax funded. It is funded by the TV licence fee, a different thing.
then shafted every other business in that home computing field by adding their name to the product and taking a cut of the profits ... thus decimating the choice of computers available to them by reducing competition by heavily favouring one particular computer.
What BS - sounds like you are airing a pet issue . Were you in the UK at that time? I was, and the BBC micro cetainly did not "shaft" every or any other business. Amstrad and Sinclair computers were much more popular. I only knew one person who bought a BBC micro, he was middle-aged and bought it second-hand. The BBC micros had the image of being geared to education and wee thus rather boring.
A quick visit to Wikipedia confirms th
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It wasn't just that they were geared towards education, they were geared specifically to schools.
Firstly they were built like a brick shithouse. 8mm thick ABS casing and a monitor that came in 3mm steel plate. Proper key switches (none of that rubber nastiness) with individual, replacable keys. Those things were nearly indestructable.
Lots of I/O options so they could be hooked up to other hardware. My school had a BBC with not only a LOGO ROM, but a real LOGO turtle which trundled around the floor and drew
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the TV Licence is in fact a tax. From http://www.publications.parlia... [parliament.uk] :
Page 11:
The licence fee as a tax
22. Since our last report there has been a significant change in the position of the licence fee. In January 2006 the Office of National Statistics re-classified the licence fee as a tax. Previously, this payment had been classified in the National Accounts as a service charge. Explaining the change the Office of National Statistics (ONS) says “in line with the definition of a tax, the licence fee
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"The upshot is that enforcement is now in the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system, rather than the civil system."
No it's not. License fee evasion is still dealt with entirely in the civil justice system. I doubt the BBC would even want it reclassified because it'd require a higher standard of evidence for a criminal trial than for a civil trial and that'd massively increase the cost to them of enforcement. Right now they can win trials by knocking up shoddy, and frankly unacceptably poor standards o
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no, the licence fee funds the BBC only. The others are funded by advertising revenue. Licence fee evasion has been a criminal matter since April 2007. iPlayer and the BBC website are both funded by the commercial arm of the BBC (BBC Worldwide).
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So why are the BBC listing online in their license fee expenditure?
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/c... [tvlicensing.co.uk]
Stop making shit up.
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because all the content on iplayer is fee funded, as is all the content on youview and on the red button. The infrastructure is maintained by BBC Worldwide.
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That doesn't even make any sense, all BBC funded content is funded under the TV break down (~£2.2bn) because there's next to no iPlayer only content, it's just content already shown on TV. The online break down of ~£170m is for the BBC websites. Also, not all iPlayer content is fee funded, a number of iPlayer programs are supplied by BBC Worldwide and produced for foreign commercial sale, sometimes alongside other foreign organisations like America's Discovery Channel.
I'm also still
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what the fuck are you on about? ITV and the Sky channels are ALL commercial channels funded SOLELY BY ADVERTISING. THEY RECEIVE NOT ONE SOLITARY PENNY FROM THE BBC LICENCE FEE.
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Erm, why are you even having this discussion if you believe that ITV has it's own private terrestrial broadcast infrastructure? You're completely out of your depth here. ITV, Channel 5, and Channel 4 are broadcast on the public service multiplexes, along with a bunch of radio stations, the funding for which is provided from the license fee under the transmission costs.
If the license fee has nothing to do with public infrastructure costs, why do you think hundreds of millions of pounds of license fee money h
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I won't argue with you not because you are wrong (which you are and I have succinctly explained why you are wrong), I won't argue with you because you're an idiot.
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Well at least you have the courage to admit you were wrong in a roundabout way involving trying to pretend someone else was wrong. I guess it was the old BDUK point that was the killer right? I mean it's kind of hard to argue that the license fee isn't used for infrastructure when, er, it clearly and indisputably is.
I know what you really mean is "I wont argue with you because you've proven me wrong, but I'm too much of a child to admit it so fuck you!".
It's okay, you don't have to pretend with me - I'm sma
A News Agency is making Computers? (Score:2)
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they're not a public service broadcaster, they're the Propaganda Arm of the State.
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All 'public service broadcasters' are 'Propaganda Arms of the State'. Duh.
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Yeah, we'd never have held onto the Falklands if it weren't for old Attenborough telling those Argies all about their parrots.
Re:A News Agency is making Computers? (Score:5, Informative)
The BBC is not a news agency, it is a public broadcaster which has a charter it must abide by. It is not owned by the British Government. According to its charter, it has 6 public purposes:
This initiative falls squarely under #2 (and arguably under #6), similar to how the BBC helped popularise home computers in the 1980s, which as a nice side-benefit created the ARM processor and raked in all sorts of money for the UK government.
You might want to understand what's being discussed before getting all internet-outrage-y and demonstrating your ignorance on the topic ;)
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You might want to understand what's being discussed before getting all internet-outrage-y and demonstrating your ignorance on the topic ;)
Frankly, I think you misunderstand the entire purpose of the internet :)
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the BBC is a Central Government agency.
http://www.publications.parlia... [parliament.uk] page 11:
24. Reclassification of the licence fee as a tax also has the consequence that the BBC is reclassified from the public non-financial corporations sub-sector to
the central government sector. The status of the BBC is thus also affected by this decision and it becomes a central government body. This change also
affects the Welsh broadcaster S4C.
Boooooo... (Score:2)
...beep!
Is the noise it had better make on boot.
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This is why I've only ever bought two computer systems in my entire life. First one was a BBC Model B back in the 80's, the second one was a laptop in 2011. All my other systems are parts cobbled together with spit and hair. All of them get used until they catch fire.
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Yet another pointless waste of money by the BBC.
Well - informing and educating is in it's charter and if done successfully it is a bit difficult to argue that it is more of a waste of money than many of their programs.
Re:Your tax £. (Score:4, Interesting)
And when they did this with the BBC Computer it gave a big boost to Acorn Computers, which probably helped them getting into developing the ARM CPU. And ARM has repaid that initial BBC investment many times over.
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Oh yes, obviously the BBC totally anticipated that didn't they.
I'm sure they anticipated that investing in technology and education would pay off in some way for the UK economy, absolutely.
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Then I should read the bible and come to the conclusion that all Christians are slave-owning monsters killing people to sate the desires of a perverted God who loves to force people into horrific situations for his own vanity? See how that works?
You are pathetic.
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