Analogue teletext weather maps

All computers had to use acoustic couplers to connect to phone lines in those days. Direct connection to the BT network wasn't allowed so you couldn't just plug in a modem to your phone line... not that most houses had phone sockets!

Remember it? I still have a copy of both it and the Advanced User Manual...

(I have a small - well actually not so small - collection of old computers... Acorn models include an Atom, BBC Model B, BBC Master 128, BBC Master Compact, Archimedes A310 and A3000, Risc PC - and that is just the Acorns. Then there is the ZX80, ZX81, ZX Spectrum 48k, Spectrum+ 128k, QL... Oh and the Dragon 32, the Apple II, the PET, the Atari 400 and 520ST, the original Amiga, the Vic 20, the CBM 64, the Tandy Model 100, the Apple Mac Plus, the Newton, the DAI, the UK101... Just a small collection...)

And to answer the OPs question - ISTR that weather maps were around before the BBC Micro was used for page preparation. ISTR that CEEFAX was around in the late 70s - and weather maps were around then?

There are TV stations (dragging it back on-topic again) that use computers running the OS of a successor of the BBC Micro.

Acorn introduced the Archimedes computers as a follow up to the BBC Micros. These used the RISC operating system but were also backward compatible with the old BBC software.

After Acorn disappeared, the Archimedes system ended up being used by a company called Omnibus systems who provide automation software for TV companies. Their machines were essentially Archimedes machines running their software... when they were rebooted (which they did very quickly, unlike most other computers) The first thing you saw was the familiar phrase 'Acorn DFS' !

Apparently they ran out of dedicated RISC machines in 2001/2ish and so they started running their software on PCs via RISC emulators. These took up virtually all the processing power of the PCs at the time and I do know of one person who came in one morning to find the Omnibus PC in their edit suite smoking!

However the more recent Omnibus software (such as Colossus) is the automation that keeps the BBC channels on air and their older systems are still in use in at least 2 BBC regional news centres and some parts of the national BBC news

Indeedly - in fact some BBC regions were using BBC Micros as VT Clock generators until they went to servers.



Yep - BBC Basic on an ARM runs like stink - and they did a couple of OK 6502 emulators to run more complex stuff.

Ironically the Mode 7 emulation was pants... (The hardware Mode 7 character set generated by the SAA5050 had clever interlaced stuff that rounded characters by inserting quarter-pixels to smooth jagged edges, that the Archimedes Mode 7 didn't simulate)

Mode 7 looked horrid with the interlace turned off (which was either a VDU or *FX call - can't remember which)



They were mostly Acorn Risc PC - not Archimedes (the Archimedes name was dropped by Acorn)

Castle Computing bought the rights to manufacture Risc PCs when Acorn pulled out of the market - and were split up to allow their share of ARM (the original ARM chip - the successor of which is used in millions of mobile phones - including the iPhone - was designed by Acorn)



Not sure that is strictly true - you can still buy new Risc PCs or similar ARM based RISC OS stuff. I think it is more the case that customers wanted Wintel PCs in their set-ups that they could manage.

Some of the Omnibus kit (the sharer for example) was already Windows-based - so it made sense to port the stuff. I think the Risc PC emulation may have been a stop-gap.



Omnibus is used in all the TV Centre News galleries for playout (Columbus or News Control) as well as routing and other stuff. The Jupiter production system (Quantel servers and Colledia asset management) delivers to an Omnibus multi-domain system for transmission.

Some other TVC studios may still have Omnibus for control - though BNCS may have replaced it. ISTR that TC6 was Omnibus in around 1995-6?

Maybe, I know that I worked in a place that was fitted out with Omnibus kit - half RISC machines (the control rooms, and the important applications) , the other half (edits, desks) had PCs. Maybe this was more cost, but the lack of machines was the reason given to me.

It was a pain when non-techy came along and tried to get their e-mail on an Omnibus terminal



I believe they no longer sell the routing part of their software, the traditional Omnibus router touch screen interface is now used and sold by Grass Valley



Studio 9 had it last time I was there

Don't forget the set top boxes too.

At one point Pace owned the intellectual property of Acorn and produced the DSL-4000 set top box that was based on the Risc PC architecture and ran RISC OS. They were deployed by the now defunct Kingston IPTV service. I believe the lack of support for the existing boxes and no successor box being produced is why KIT has now closed rather than rip the whole lot out and start again.

There was very little difference betwen them and the Risc PC 7000, other then the lack of storage devices. You could plug a keyboard into the back, and hold down * as you powered them up to drop to supervisor prompt - then do *BASIC and write your own programes on them or *DESKTOP to enter the GUI. To make up for the cut down ARM processor they put in hardware MPEG decoding of multicast streams so the box never really had to do much work - unless you started browsing the net with it.


A case of: "Could Mr Sands please go the edit suite?"

I remember it as *TV x,y where values of x allowed you to move the position of the screen up and down - useful if the vertical position on your TV was off centre and you were loosing characters at the top or bottom, and y controlled the interlace (0 or 1).

Unless it is a Pace box I mentioned earlier, where the interlace is always on even if you type the commands to turn it off.

The command CHAIN "" would load and run the first program found on the selected storage device (LOAD"" would simply load it into memory but not run it). Shift-break simply executed this 'chain' command on the default external drive, which would be the disk drive if you had a DFS/ADFS chip fitted or the network if you had an Econet chip. This made it very easy for inexperienced users to load disks or to pull up any custom network menu which might exist. Sadly, this is also all that many schoolkids (and teahers!) ever knew how to do.

If you had didn't have network or disk which left you with tape as the default storage medium, then ISTR you got an error message - no idea why Shift-break on a tape drive wasn't allowed.

Incidentally, there is an undocumented set of keys which, when held down on a model B during startup, will cause the machine to startup in model A mode - the text will change to say 'BBC Computer 16K', none of the model B specific screen modes nor model B specific interfaces (disk, parallel etc) would work work either. I presume this mode was there so that programmers writing software on a model B could identify whether it would be model A compatible aswell.

I got my machine to do this several times but never worked out quite what I'd pressed. Anyone know what it was?


Aswell as the main user manual I also still have a boxed copy of the 'welcome pack' included - this consisted of a setup/basic instruction book which was much slimmer and less scary than the huge spiral bound paperweight that was the full manual, and also a 'welcome cassette', which contained a raft of programs designed to demonstrate the capabilities of the computer. Some were static demonstrations, some were simple games (the ubiquitous bat 'n ball game was on there) but some were quite useful. ISTR a full screen animated analogue clock, simple graphics package, and simple database featuring on there amongst other things.

I have vague recollection of playing with the Model A mode, but can't remember how or why I did it!

If I'm thinking of the right cassette, the welcome pack was a weird collection of stuff. There was a program which turned the keyboard into a sort of synthesizer called I think MUSIC (but generally just made a hell of a racket). There was a very odd bit of software called (I think) BIORHYTHM which I never really got my head around. Then there was an empire game called KINGDOM which I loved. You were elected leader of a tribe of people who had to toil in the fields, guard the village and so-on. Every so often you'd get attacked by neigbouring villagers and would either fight them off or suffer a large defeat, thereby losing your ability to feed those that remained your subjects. Marvellous fun - all in Mode 7 block graphics... I think I copied some of the programs onto disk eventually - some worked, some didn't.

Biorhythm also came with the Electron, and created bizarre graphs based on things like when and where you were born. Totally meaningless, but colourful nonetheless.

Does anyone have the programme to make a VT clock as used at the Beeb?

Fun fun fun.

And don't forget the Bush Internet TV boxes. These were cut-down Risc OS machines with integrated modems. It was possible to get them to a * prompt, and I'm pretty certain they had BASIC in them as well. It was dead easy to hack them to use a different ISP once you got to the * prompt ISTR. (Mine was fine with my unlimited Freeserve dialup)

Because they had a parallel port, it was possible to connect a ZIP drive to them and you could turn them into quite a neat little machine. They did a good job of feeding SD TVs with a decent antialiased RGB feed - much better than the equivalent PC TV Out equivalent.

TIME sold them for about £20 towards the end - they were a neat "Internet on the telly" solution for their time.

Live and Kicking's DOG was generated from an Acorn machine, which was demonstrated when it crashed and rebooted on air. I remember having much more respect for the one we had at school in the media studies edit suite for creating captions after seeing that.