Goodbye to a very old friend (or two).

Childhood's end?

So after 30 years or so I've finally decided to get rid of my old BBC microcomputers once and for all (probably). I sold them once before to my cousin whilst I was away at Uni before purchasing them back once I graduated, but this time I think they need to go for good.

As much as I would like to think that one day I'll get organised and have time to repair them and get them up and running again, but I've come to the realisation that unlike some people I know who have scratch-built a ZX Spectrum from bits of wire and raw brainpower, I haven't the time, space or knowledge to repair this 30 odd year old technology anymore - even technology as "basic" as the BBC. And that's before you consider the 25+ year old 5 1/4" floppy discs that will have forgotten their contents years ago.

So, why the glum face? Well it feels like the end of an era, I don't know why particularly; they've been sat in boxes in the loft for the last four years and in the garage for the 8 years prior to that, so it's not like they've been well used over the intervening decades. I did manage to get the Master up and running last year (see picture left) but it wouldn't read from any of the floppy discs.

I guess it's because the BBC micro had such an effect on me all those years ago that I think it's safe to say that my entire education and career path since then can be traced back to all those hours spent labouriously typing out the programs in computer magazines line by line and then having to go back through them trying to work out why they didn't work and correcting the typos. I remember the BBC was an expensive bit of kit back in the early 80's, about £400 as I recall, which was not far off a months' salary, anything else I needed to buy myself, I saved up the money from Christmas, birthdays and my paper-round (a whopping £3.61 per week) to buy myself a top of the range Cumana 800k double floppy drive - only to have it stolen a few months later in a burglary. The insurance paid out and it was all replaced but I'd invested so much time and effort saving up for it that I was heartbroken. 

Back in the 80's the BBC was the cutting edge of technology and we were using it at school and at home and it was relatively easy to become much more expert that parents and teachers (and the floor-staff at WH Smiths) in how to use (and abuse) it. I learned how to program on the Beeb (BBC Basic of course) and this later then led onto Pascal, C, Visual Basic and Perl which is where my career started and how I ended up where I am now.

Of course much of the entertainment came from playing and sharing games and to this date, one of the finest games ever created was on the BBC - Elite. I would spend hours at a time playing Elite - god knows how many days and weeks I must have racked up over the years. I think that one game more than anything else is why I hung on to the machines and hardware: in the vain hope that one day I might be able get them up and running again and relive those happy hours playing Elite until it was time to get ready for bed.

I now realise that a) I'm not going to get the machines up and running again and b) if I ever want to play Elite or indeed nay other game on the BBC I just need to download an emulator and save all the hassle.

So what am I going to do with them? Well, I thought about selling them on eBay, but then there's all the hassle of listing them, managing the auction and then dealing with the buyers, and frankly I can't be arsed with that. No, tomorrow, they are all going to The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park (the home of computing) where they can be used to support their classroom programme to educate and enthuse a new generation. With any luck, they'll experience some of the joy and satisfaction I derived from the hours I spent playing and tinkering around with my old BBCs.

I shall be sad to see them go, and I may kick myself at somepoint in the future, but right now I think it is the right thing to do.

Does this mean I have to grow-up now?