Glad to hear you have a BBC Micro now. They’re fine machines, and as you rightly point out, require 240V power plus some sort of monitor. Ignore the PAL outputs and go straight for the RGB which is on a DIN connector. I vaguely recollect making up a special cable when I got mine going and hooking it up to a Sony studio monitor. Watch out for the X2 cap in the power supply which is a known point of failure. It’s easy enough to replace if that hasn’t already been done, but annoying to have it fail...
240 ... What were they thinking!? What do we do for a disk drive? On Fri, Jun 1, 2018, 7:24 AM David Comley via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Glad to hear you have a BBC Micro now. They’re fine machines, and as you rightly point out, require 240V power plus some sort of monitor. Ignore the PAL outputs and go straight for the RGB which is on a DIN connector. I vaguely recollect making up a special cable when I got mine going and hooking it up to a Sony studio monitor.
Watch out for the X2 cap in the power supply which is a known point of failure. It’s easy enough to replace if that hasn’t already been done, but annoying to have it fail...
Dave
On Jun 1, 2018, at 1:36 AM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Well that was interesting!
Several of us were there: me, Doug, Chris F., Dean, Chris L., Brian C., Bill Lange (not Bill L. the auction seller), and Jason Scott. All of us but Bill made it into a photo (https://tinyurl.com/ydbuy6pd) kindly taken by Chris L.'s girlfriend.
The auctioned started at 3pm. I was the last to leave at midnight -- but the auction was still going strong! They had another hour or two remaining.
Some people got amazing bargains (valuable nuggets discovered after buying boxes of inexpensive items) and other people paid full retail or higher for various things. We spotted a few people who were professional sellers, but most of the people (maybe 100?) were individual collectors, and most of those were gamers, not computer collectors like us. However we did see a few people who said they attended VCF East, and I couldn't help myself from recruiting a few new folks.
VCFed itself had a good night:
- Dean purchased a box of stuff which happened to contain a CGA/EGA/VGA adapter -- exactly what I posted about us needing a few days ago -- so I commandeered that item for us. :)
- VCFed has several S-100 computers, but there was one item I'd never seen: an industrial (rackmount) chassis with a keyboard built into the front edge of the case. It is from a company called MBR. No boards inside, but it looked unique. At my request, Dean entered an absentee bid for it (it would be one of the last items auctioned due to placement in the room). He'll donate it to us if he wins. We will find out tomorrow.
- VCFed has an Amstrad 640 and various Sinclair computers, but we didn't own a BBC Micro. There was a first-gen (1981) unit available in the auction. At my request, Bill (and his wife Lucy) successfully bid on it and donated it to us. It also has some nice software. We'll have to get a power adapter for it to use an American outlet.
It was fun hanging out with several group members all afternoon/evening. There were a few times where some of the group members bid against each other ... a little healthy competition!
Overall a very successful time for Bill Log. and all buyers.
On 06/01/2018 10:13 AM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Glad to hear you have a BBC Micro now. They’re fine machines, and as you rightly point out, require 240V power plus some sort of monitor. Ignore the PAL outputs and go straight for the RGB which is on a DIN connector. I vaguely recollect making up a special cable when I got mine going and hooking it up to a Sony studio monitor. Watch out for the X2 cap in the power supply which is a known point of failure. It’s easy enough to replace if that hasn’t already been done, but annoying to have it fail...
Wow, a BBC Micro, nice!
What do we do for a disk drive?
Hope those aren't Australasian disk drives they spin backwards! ;-) Please don't take that seriously. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
I use a step down transformer line the guys who exhibited their European computer did at vcf east. There are so card solutions for drive emulation, I assume Bill
On Jun 1, 2018, at 11:19 AM, Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
I use a step down transformer line the guys who exhibited their European computer did at vcf east.
There are so card solutions for drive emulation, I assume
Bill
Between now and the time VCF gets a power solution I have a step up/down transformer the museum could borrow or could be used at the workshop to get the machine running/tested. I don't currently have any euro power supple machines that need to be run (and apple IIs I have dual voltage PSUs I put in those of they don't already have it) Tony
240 ... What were they thinking!?
Heh heh - well I grew up burning my hands on 240V. You get used to it after a while.
What do we do for a disk drive?
To start with you’ll need a floppy disk controller IC - either an 8271 or a 1770 - and a copy of the Disc Filing System ROM. Different versions supported different controllers IIRC. There may be extra installation work involved if it’s a model A. Ian Primus probably has the necessary EPROM or I can burn one for you if I can find where I stashed my EPROM stuff during house moving. Dave
On Fri, Jun 1, 2018, 7:24 AM David Comley via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Glad to hear you have a BBC Micro now. They’re fine machines, and as you rightly point out, require 240V power plus some sort of monitor. Ignore the PAL outputs and go straight for the RGB which is on a DIN connector. I vaguely recollect making up a special cable when I got mine going and hooking it up to a Sony studio monitor.
Watch out for the X2 cap in the power supply which is a known point of failure. It’s easy enough to replace if that hasn’t already been done, but annoying to have it fail...
Dave
On Jun 1, 2018, at 1:36 AM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Well that was interesting!
Several of us were there: me, Doug, Chris F., Dean, Chris L., Brian C., Bill Lange (not Bill L. the auction seller), and Jason Scott. All of us but Bill made it into a photo (https://tinyurl.com/ydbuy6pd) kindly taken by Chris L.'s girlfriend.
The auctioned started at 3pm. I was the last to leave at midnight -- but the auction was still going strong! They had another hour or two remaining.
Some people got amazing bargains (valuable nuggets discovered after buying boxes of inexpensive items) and other people paid full retail or higher for various things. We spotted a few people who were professional sellers, but most of the people (maybe 100?) were individual collectors, and most of those were gamers, not computer collectors like us. However we did see a few people who said they attended VCF East, and I couldn't help myself from recruiting a few new folks.
VCFed itself had a good night:
- Dean purchased a box of stuff which happened to contain a CGA/EGA/VGA adapter -- exactly what I posted about us needing a few days ago -- so I commandeered that item for us. :)
- VCFed has several S-100 computers, but there was one item I'd never seen: an industrial (rackmount) chassis with a keyboard built into the front edge of the case. It is from a company called MBR. No boards inside, but it looked unique. At my request, Dean entered an absentee bid for it (it would be one of the last items auctioned due to placement in the room). He'll donate it to us if he wins. We will find out tomorrow.
- VCFed has an Amstrad 640 and various Sinclair computers, but we didn't own a BBC Micro. There was a first-gen (1981) unit available in the auction. At my request, Bill (and his wife Lucy) successfully bid on it and donated it to us. It also has some nice software. We'll have to get a power adapter for it to use an American outlet.
It was fun hanging out with several group members all afternoon/evening. There were a few times where some of the group members bid against each other ... a little healthy competition!
Overall a very successful time for Bill Log. and all buyers.
participants (5)
-
Bill Degnan -
David Comley -
Evan Koblentz -
Neil Cherry -
Tony Bogan