It comes like this it plugs into your own television so out of the back here. We've got a cable
That's just connecting into a standard aerial input in fact
It was quite a job trying to find a TV that would plug into this computer
So George a few minutes ago
just did a race up to the other end of the physics [building] to try and find a
Monitor sufficiently Old which would plug into this computer
the home computer that I
Got out my parents lost actually. I think my dad bought it in about I use probably defender in 1982
I think my dad used it most to start with and then quite rapidly I got it
I was worried about 11 years old at the time and
I basically taught myself to program using this this thing here which this is the BBC micro?
This is a BBC model b microcomputer. It was one of the earliest
computers one of the earliest home computers and
It was actually made for the BBC
So this was a time when computers were completely brand [new] so nobody nobody had seen computers computers weren't these all
ubiquitous things that you have in homes and offices now, so people didn't really understand them and
so the BBC wanted to develop a project to get to introduce people to computers and and
Programming because this was going to be the next big thing and the BBC thought this was going to be the next big thing
So [they] a commission that can accompany a British company called acorn
to make this computer not only badged it with the BBC badge and
the BBC did a series of TV programs using this computer to try and teach people how to
Program a lot of people [you] find [they're] working professionally in computer
computers now computer programming certainly in my age their first experience of
Computer programming and computers will be something something like this or as that x spectrum or a commodore 64 or something like that
It's getting on a bit now this computer and so it tends to overheat after a while
So I've just taken the screws off so we can actually take the top off
This is the central processing unit here, so this is a 6502 central processing unit and [that]
Process is running at two Megahertz
So you can pair that with a clock speed [of] modern computer which is around about two to four Gigahertz
so we're running this is running about a thousand times slower than
the
typical computer nowadays
It's got
32 K of memory that's 32 thousand bytes of memory. This is the memory down here
this is the [area] down here is the memory and
all these chips amount to 32 kilobytes
[so] it's 32 times 1,024 bytes of memory
So you can pair that with a modern computer which has now got something of the reason of a gigabytes of memory?
So you can see how much of a difference there is between the Modern PC
And these keys types of computers, but [one] of the really neat things [about] this is that
It turns on instantaneously, [so] you don't have to wait for it to boot up
So if I do this and turn it off
And turn [it] on and that's it it's ready to go
You just turn it on it's ready to go [and] [the] reason is because if I just move this keyboard here
So it's because that the software the operating system of the computer is stored on Rom
Which is a read-only memory as a chip so [you] don't it's got no hard disk inside
It's got no disk drive attached to it at all in fact
All the software that it needs to run is stored on this chip
so when you
When you switch it on it's ready to go and that means I always put the cover back on again
And that means we can start programming it straight away
We can make it do stuff really straight away
And as you can see once when you turn it on you're presented with this it says here the BBC computer
32k that tells us. How much memory we've got to play with?
Basic so we've launched into the basic programming language, so we're not presented with any mice pointers Windows or anything like that
just [a] cursor and we can start just immediately writing a
Computer program so I can stop enter line 10 and let's try writing the simplest ever program ever written
first and remember how to do this
I'm going to use the dreaded go-to
Okay, so that's a that's the first program that
[pretty] much anybody have a right so when [you] [learn] to start programming
There you go
So you just print hello world millions of times over until you tell it to stop press escape
And [I] can list that program back by tackling list
And you say it basically start you start off with line ten says print
Hello world, and the second line. Just tells it to go back to line ten again. I started
Just mucking about with the graphics. So this is you know you can write programs to do
You know muck around with playing with text and things but I wanted to start playing with graphics
So I can write a little program to let's let's start another one
Remember the command to do it. This is going back a Few [years] now. I'm going to tell it to repeat this program
I'm going to choose a color
Random color each time this computer's got one of seven colors or eight if you include black
So that's how many colors you want to play with
Then I'm going to just tell it to plot triangles everywhere and last thing I need to do is change it to a graphics mode
so if I type run now, I
Should just print triangle. So [every] place so various different colors
so it's not much to look at but the
Beauty of it is you can really just you can get into programming so easily doing this and you can you can start doing more?
Fancy things like plotting circles and the at ado figures and things like that, and then you can make it do sounds by typing
Just one command at the command line like this
So so you muck around with planes stop that?
Say muck around with sounds and graphics, and that's what I got into as a kid and I spent ages and ages
but probably far too long learning [how] to program out of this this user guide at
one point it had a ring binder on it and
I just spent my time reading this this was my bedtime reading when I was a kid is a bit sad really I suppose [but]
That's what?
That's what I wanted to do, and that's the so like holding that book again
If it was big part of your childhood [um], it's quite unusual. Oh, it's quite unusual
I actually kept it some of the pages that still are turned upside down for some reason, but yeah
I couldn't bear to throw it away, really
I mean, I've got a lot of computers have had since and I've just when they've come to the end of the life
I've just thrown them away
And they're just expendable
But this one because it's the first one I ever had I just [gotta] sticks to my fingers and I try to throw it away
I can't get rid of it, and I'm sure a lot of people
but we feel the [same] thing the same way actually so they'll have a piece of technology [a] first bit of
Technology like this which they just can't bear to throw away
So this is this is a computer game [called] Elite Elite was the first
Really proper game to use three-dimensional graphics. Okay like so it's firing at us now sadly
[I] can still name that spaceship. Which is a copper mark 3 as we got some pirate something