Interesting drama commission by BBC Four

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/30/martin-freeman-alexander-armstrong-sir-clive-sinclair-bbc4-drama

BBC Four have commissioned a drama based on the battle between Clive Sinclair and his former colleague Chris Curry - the battle between the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and the Acorn BBC Micro.

(Acorn getting the endorsement of the BBC and becoming the de-facto computer in schools in the 80s - though there were Sinclairs and RMs as well - really rankled with Sir Clive...)

Wonder who will play Hermann Hauser.

Ooh this does sound interesting.

I got an Acorn Electron. My dad was sure it was the better machine. My pal got a Spectrum with the rubber keys.

I never enjoyed playing his spectrum as he had a bizarre habit of sucking his thumb til his mid-teens and the keys used to feel slimy.

Make of that what you will.

I also had an Acorn Electron which I absolutely adored. There was pretty much nothing I couldn't do in BBC Basic either. Happy memories!

I always got the impression that the Acorn / BBC computers were more educational than Sinclairs, but I may have been taken in by the marketing or the association with Acorns and schools.

Incidentally, just as a fascinating fact, did you know that the original BBC A Microcomputer was going to be called the Acorn Proton before the BBC involvement?

That'll definitely be interesting to see!

It's interesting how the BBC's computer TV shows at the time were so BBC Micro biased. The first ones such as 'The Computer Programme' and 'Making the Most of the Micro' focused almost entirely on the Micro. It wasn't until 'Micro Live' came along that they started to feature computers other than the BBC Micro on TV, and even then they never gave computers like the Spectrum much of a good review. Here's an example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsY6aIbHO6A

Taking the topic off TV for the moment, I sort of came of age when the BBC Micro and Master were being phased out and the Acorn A3000 computers were around. I think to this day the Acorn A3000 and subsequent minor upgrades were the best overall computer ever made. The computer booted from ROM so booted in 2 seconds flat, yet had a nice GUI (for the time). It also had the best collection of games i ever remember like Lemmings, Chuck Rock, James Pond and Mad Professor. It also had the largest amount of education software too. I still see Acorn A3020's in schools now. They're god knows how many years old now, but some of the educational games on them cannot be bettered, so i imagine that's why they're still around. I'm sure some BBC Micros would be around too if they had an easy enough to use GUI. When i owned one, I had a microscope that plugged into the expansion port on the back, and it showed you what you were looking at on the computer, which for the time was groundbreaking.

Well News 24 ran massively on Acorn hardware for many years - and bits of the News Channel may still do.

The Omnibus control system (and Colossus transmission system) used by News, and by Pres in some areas, were based on Risc PCs running Risc OS and then an Omnibus layer on top. They booted so much quicker than Windows it was un-true...

I have an Acorn Atom (predecessor to the BBC Micro / Proton) in my (unhealthily large) collection of 80s micros...

We had RML 380Zs and 480Zs and then Nimbus "not quite PCs" at my school... I had a BBC Model B after my ZX81, and then graduated to an Archimedes A310 which stood me well through college.

An early game licensed from a TV show...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTOH634JAuc

I had a Sinclair Spectrum ZX (with noisy cassette deck)... one of the very last models however. It blew up, I was gutted.

This thread has inspired me to rediscover this glorious, nostalgic ditty which is wonderfully fab.

I will, however, be singing it all day now.

10 print "sounds interesting, I still have my Spectrum 48k"
20 goto 10