o Essentials o
Econet o Adverts o
Datasheets o Hardware o
Library o Software
o
o F-Keys
o Wants Page o What's New &
News page o Tips page o Home
o
Beebug Toolkit Plus and Computer Concept's Interword User Guides by JAD added to the Software page.
Brainsoft Sideways Ram Installation instructions, Utitlity Guide and disk image scanned by Alistair Cree added to the Hardware page.
A big thankyou to Hugh for donating a large batch of Acorn User magazines to the project. Added an OCR of the Marconi RB2 Trackerball User guide by Dace Wade to the Hardware page.
Added a SJ Research section to the Econet page and uploaded the MDFS User guide donated by Ian Wolstenholme. BASIC ROM User Guide added to the Library section.
Added the pdf file of the Acorn Advanced Teletext System User Guide, pdf and ocr courtesey of Andrew Taylor. Also added on the adverts page the Acorn Guide To The BBC Micro. John Simpson has also corrected the book Creative Assembler and it has been added in a pdf version.
OK, so it has been a little while since the last update! The major promblem that was being experienced was web space. Thanks to Mike Tomlinson this has now been solved and MegaBytes have been made available to store the documentation. I have now uploaded and updated the pages with most of the docs that were outstanding and a few new ones. Far too many to mention but there are several additions on the Econet page and also the Adaptec ACB 4000/4070 docs have been added. A few Archimedes docs have also sneaked their way into the project, as have the Acorn Application Notes that were orginally on their FTP server, which of course is no more. A new page has been added for Function Key strips and the Publications page has now changed to Library. Thank you once again to all who have contributed and helped with this project so far.
An online version of the BBC Hardware Guide is now available. Check the Publications page.
Richard Hall has sent in the Electron Plus 3 Brochure, and the Acorn Electron Data Recorder. Hardware
WE Disk Drive Info, Watford Electronics 32K Ram Board Manual, WE Solderless Sideways ROM Board, Acornsoft ROM Insertion Info, Stack Light Pen+, WE ZIF Socket and Slomo have been added thanks to Matt Cocker and Daniel G. van der Pol has started work on the Acorn Master 512 User Guide.
Added 3 pieces of documentation from Dave Edwards to the software page. Moonbase BETA instructions, Slogger Click and Slogger Tape 2 Disc ROM and some scans for Acornsoft's Forth supplied by Peter Lloyd.
Added the Master Compact User Guide in HTML to the essentials page. Thanks to Martin Hodgson for doing that, and to John Simpson for making corrections to "Creative Assembler" on the publications page.
Also got round to adding the Acorn Web ring links. Chris was starting to go mad with despair waiting for me to get them done.
Fixed various broken links and added the web ring.
"Atomic Theory, the Atom User Guide" is finished and is available on the web and added Atom Magic to the publications page. Also on that page James has donated "The BBC Micro - an expert guide ". Ben Harris has converted all the datasheets into PDF format and the hardware page has seen the addition of the MERTEC Compact Companion Manual by Joost. Jordan Smith has informed me that he has started work on the Acorn 6502 coprocessor reference guide.
A few people have made some big contributions and they are :
Chris Richardson: Morley Eprom Programmer V2, Morley Electronics Ramdisc, Morley Masterboard 'AA', Master Compact Application Notes, Valiant Turtle Manual and disc
Dave Edwards: Jafa's Mode 7 adaptor, Slogger Electron Rombox Plus, Slogger's Electron Expansion 2.0, Slogger's Electron Switched Joystick Interface User Guide, Slogger's Disk Filing System, Slogger Master Ramboard, Exile, The Quill
Atze Dijkstra: Creative Assembler. How to Write Arcade Games, AMX Art, AMX Mouse And ROM Manual
Matt Cocker: OCR of Vine Micros - Replay, Master Smart Cartridge Manual, Microvitec Monitor service manual
Don't forget to change your bookmarks to www.bbcdocs.com and my email to mark@bbcdocs.com
Chris Richardson has been busy with his scanner and has scanned the following:
Mike Tomilinson noticed that Acorn 1770 circuit diagram isn't showing correctly. This looks to be an Internet Explorer problem. You can right click on the link and choose save target as. This saves the picture to your hard disk and it can be viewed from there by any artwork program.
Colin Templeman noticed that the 177x datasheet was absent. This has now been fixed and is online.
Keith Howell has sent me a link where the current OCR work of the Atomic Theory and Practice manual can be viewed.
Chris Richardson has scanned in the Master Compact Welcome guide and made the scans available.
Jim McLaren has OCR'ed the Technomatic Disk Book and Stephen Ruddy contributed. I have fixed all the links that were no longer working. Added scans from Chris Richardson, Vine Micros - Replay, The Econet Level 2 Fileserver Manager's Guide, Econet System User Guide and Atomic Theory - the Atom User Guide.
Time to catch up on the backlog that I have had from moving house. Sorry that I am rather late adding some of the contributions. Andrew Blount added a scan of ANF-03, Acorn Data Cassette Recorder - Operating Instructions. Andrew also added a scan of Acorn BBC B+ 128k Additional User Information.
Mark de Weger has made several contributions, including the BBC Welcome booklet, Acornsoft BASIC Editor reference (manual appendices), Acornsoft BASIC Editor function key strip, Acornsoft ISO-Pascal reference (manual appendices), Beebug - Exmon2 command summary.
Andy sent me the REPLAY GAME IMPROVEMENT DATA
SHEET. He also adds...
"I don't know if anyone really still uses Replay today, but by coincidence,
the image produced by Replay is more or less the same as the "Beeb State" image
produced by BeebEm, except that the latter has a 256-byte header block.
Therefore, by adding one to the address hi-byte, and editing the BeebState file
with a hex editor, some of the cheats can be made to work with BeebEm."
Andrew Benham sent me a circuit diagram for the 1770 DFS daughter board and Colin Fraser added the Addendum sheet for the 1772 controller.
John Simpson added details of the colour composite video modification to his BBC to TV guide.
Jules Abram is starting to scan the Music 500 User guide which I'm sure will be appreciated by many people.
Anthony Ogden has started a new site Electron Forever and has contributed the Acorn Electron Plus 1 manual.
Chris Richardson has scanned in the Microvitec Service Manual which will be useful as it is something I often get requests for. Look at the hardware page.
RS Data Speech Synthesis System added to the Datasheets page courtesy of Robin Stuart.
Slogger Summer Savers advert, Marconi RB2 Trackerball UG, Ground Control UviPAC instructions and WE Solderless Sideways ROM Board were contributed by Derek Walker.
Frank Lee has certainly been active recently. He has managed to complete the Advanced User Guide for the Acorn Electron, ACP Advanced Control Panel, OPUS DFS and the Beebug Standalone C manual, all in rtf and pdf formats. Mark de Weger also gave his OCR software a test with the scans from Squirrel Soft's Cares Disk, which is also available in both rtf and pdf.
John Simpson added his own document regarding connecting a BBC to a Television set. Not as easy as you might think if you want to get the best picture. See the Publications page. Brian Foley informed me that he is well on the way to completing the Adv. Disc User Guide, so watch out for that in the near future. Added many of AMP documents contributed by Derek Walker, who has also sent me some more scans on CD - look out for those soon.
Tom Lees mailed me to say he is currently working on the Electron Plus 3 User Guide. A plea from Harry White has been added for Creative Music on the BBC Microcomputer by Chris Jordan on the Wants page.
I added a few more cover scans around the site and added details of all the documentation that I have, it's current progress state along with all of those that others are also contributing.
Well it was about time that I did something with the site. I have been meaning to revamp it for sometime now, and I finally got around to making a start. There will be more to come.
There have been numerous contributions over the last few weeks and months and I have rather a lot to upload. So stay tuned over the next few weeks. I have also decided to make many of the documents available in PDF format also, in addition to the RTF format that has been most commonly used. This is basically because I have a program that will convert them.
Cripes, has it really been that long..... I feel a little guilty for some reason. Well you know how it is. Always something to do, plus I think alot of the main pieces of documentation are done. I also have very little here that is not now scanned.
On a good note though, there are others that have works to contribute. Steve Flintham is currently working on the Watford Electronics Beeb Speech Synthesizer instructions. Mark Ferns contributed the Acorn FileStore & Stacking FileStore Service Manual at the start of December which with Christmas and my changing jobs and going on holiday sort of got put to one side. Sorry. I seem to be back in the saddle now though... Yee Haa.
A major contribution has come in this week thanks to Gordon L Craig who has scanned and OCR'ed The Advanced User Guide. This is the first edition Adv UG that covers the BBC only. A tremendous contribution and a well produced piece of work. As if that wasn't enough he quickly ran of the doc for Beebugs EXMON after Chris Richardson kindly scanned it in. He has also scanned in the Watford DFS manual, if anyone would like to take that on then contact me.
Crispin, our ever faithful gamer has sent me some OCR'ed docs for some games that I had scanned in. I think there are a couple more to come. Don't forget to regularly check the BBC Games archive for some of his regular features like Battle of the Games.
Keith Howell is also battling through a hardware guide for the BBC micro. This is quite a usefull book that has helped me out on a fair few occasions so look I'm looking forward to seeing that.
I've just got a skeleton NT driver working this week for the Acorn Ecolink card, and have started programming the dll that will provide the interface to it from applications. I managed to send a "Z" to my BBC from a Windows program this afternoon which brought a huge grin to my face, so watch out for developments there.
Apart from that I've been trying to fix two BBC's that I have. So if you see a plea from me on the BBC list, please drop me a line if you can help...
Has it been that long... Cripes. Well I have been doing alot of BBC related bits and pieces. With alot of help from Stuart McConnachie and Alan Williams I finally got the code programmed to connect a PC to an Econet via an "Ecolink" card produced by Acorn. The software only provides the necessary code to get the card running, and a basic IO interface for software. The next stage is to get this ported to WinNT and Linux. For interested parties the code can be downloaded here.
On the subject of Econet, Mark Ferns has made some excellent contributions which are a must for anyone who is thinking about setting up a network.
Also on the documentation front there have been various contributions over
the last few months from newcomers.
Darren Izzard has contributed various game instructions, Derek Kennedy scanned
in the Morley Teletext Adapter Support ROM User Guide and supplied it in .pdf,
and the first doc for the Atom, describing a BBC BASIC upgrade has also been
added by someone wishing to reamain anonymous.
I must also say a special thankyou to Bob Purdon who has donated me a large chunk of web space. I have not yet made use of it but will do so as soon as I code the couple of ideas that I have :-)
Oh, and I also made a map for Citadel
All for now....
There have been some changes over the last month although I have not got
round to writing them up... sorry. Much of my time since Easter has been
spent repairing the car, getting a few of the winter dents repaired and
generally giving it an overall. Anyway that is a story for a different web site.
Most noticeably are contributions from Mark Ferns - so far he has reproduced
some docs and adverts with extremely high quality. Take a look at the links on
the main page for the exact details.
I did finish (some weeks ago) the BBC B Service manual which should be of use to the Do-It-Yourself repair people. Somehow this didn't get uploaded at the time, I think I popped of skiing and promptly fell asleep when I got home - and the upload totally slipped my mind - anyway that's fixed now.
On the BBC front I have been further developing Econet software on the PC... who knows, one day I might even get something finished and release it ! I must at this point thank Stuart McConnachie for helping me out with assembler over the last few months. He really is a top bloke and if you haven't registered pcBBC yet, then do so. It's only a tenner and well worth it.
A bit of a downer are the amount of currently outstanding projects from people who seem to have started contributing and then lost time / interest. I'm not mentioning any names, but please if you are currently contributing don't let it fall to the wayside.
Well I have been really busy this last seven days as some of you may have noticed. I got fed up of having some datasheets here that weren't available from on the web from their originators and were desperately needed, eg. the 8271 FDC. So I rolled up my sleeves and turned on the scanner. Robert put a new directory online \datasheets to hold them as I steadily uploaded the files. The datasheets have not been OCR'ed mainly because some people needed the info urgently, and I thought sod it. The file size is not really that large.
I have also put on line all the info that I have collated about the Acorn EcoLink card. This is an ISA card for PC's to connect to an Econet network. Included in the file is the User guide, the drivers, a circuit description and some piccies. I also got hold of an Econet bridge this week from Jane Bonnin, I soon ripped the ROM out of that and have been having a look through the code. Interesting....
Right, only another 70+ MB in my \docs\unreleased directory to go..... I 've got this week off, but the sun is out and there's plenty of snow so I'm afraid it's a week of skiing and fresh air for me. God forbid.
Yes, incase you've been wondering I am still here. I have managed to survive the avalanches that have been tumbling down in this part of the world. I've been a little busy recently, still with BBC stuff, but not on the Doc project side of things. I've been sorting out *alot* of software so you can expect some updates at the BBC lives site soon..... also been doing some testing with the new Windows2000 but I'm not allowed to talk about that and anyway it'd be off topic :-)
So... after a few problems with ftp at The BBC Lives I finally uploaded various scans that Derek Walker kindly sent of some brochures including some of the "amps". Mark Fern also got in touch and has offered to do some scans of various manuals, and to start off he has sent me a scan of the ill-fated "ABC Computer" that was never produced.
There have also been one or two minor additions and updates to the page since the last latest news but I can't for the life of me remember what they were. I also built one of my BBCs into a PC tower case and repainted it. I'll try to upload a few pictures of it at the weekend. Right, kettles boiled, see you all on the slopes....... Yodell eeeehhh ooohh
I hope you have all managed to survive through the festive season. I as some of you will know of been using some of my free time to get a few things done, including the attempted repair of one of my Beebs. Haven't succeeded as yet, but I'l get there. There has been an extra page added to the site... a wants page. Here are some of my wants, plus requests for documentation that I don't have or can't find. So take a look and if you can help then mail me.
At last. Snow, snow, snow and more snow. There's loads of it here. Well the BBC is alive and living in all parts of the world. I scanned in the BBC B & B+ service manual, and Andrew (Andrey) in the USSR has done the OCR work and come up with a couple of very nice diagrams. Big praise goes to him indeed as I can see he really did put some effort into this.
A chap called Chris mailed me at the weekend with the OPUS DFS manual in HTML format. I'll try and put that up this week. He also asked me if I can help with the following instructions:
Can anyone help out. If so, mail Chris.
Otherwise not too much too add, except it's time to strap on my skis :-)
A fair bit of work has been done in the last few weeks or so, most notably by Derek Walker who has attacked with extreme zeal his Z80 second processor user guide, Z80 Basic and a app note from Acorn explaining how to prepare you machine for the addition of the second processor. He has also scanned in some of the original adverts from Acorn for various pieces of hardware, and I'll upload these fairly soon. Many thanks Derek.
I have done the OCR work on the various fitting instructions for some of Vine Micros's hardware and I also updated the Hard Disk drive guide with some new bitmaps. The board that I have etched though is not quite working at them moment, but that is more likely due to a soldering error on my part rather than an error in the design, so don't let that put you off. I have though sadly found that the design as stands will not work with an SCSI drive as I had first hoped so you will definately need an Adaptec ACB4000 board or similar to connect up a ST502 drive to get a working set up.
I also got round to making a map of Castle Quest which is something I'd been meaning to do for years. If you look at the second " lineal " map that I made, it explains the parts in the game that you can't reach. I would like to do something similar for Dr Who and the Mines of Terror. Does anyone have a deprotected version so I can play it on my emulator ? Maybe someone would like to do some maps for some of their favourite games. I just ran the game in BeebEm and made screen shots using a pre-defined hotkey in PaintShop Pro, and then cunningly put them all together. They look really good, and you don't need a scanner or OCR software :-)
Got an absolute stunning contribution this week. Julian Stenning completed the 6502 co-processor manual. This looks so perfect that words escape me. Should be available for download during the week.
I have also been sent the Beebug C package. Both the standard manual and the manual for the standalone generator, so many thanks to Stephen Richardson for that. I have scanned it all in and now need a volunteer to take on this project. The scans themselves don't take up too much space - about 4MB. There are very few diagrams - iirc there were 2, so that makes things alot less complicated, but nonetheless it is still a medium sized job.
Andre in Moscow sent me the OCR'ed part of the BBC B+ service manual. I've still to get round to this - sorry Andre. I also received a package from John Tupper containing the STL 2-4Meg board manual, so I will probably format the text only file that I have so it is like the original. Also included in the package were the Specification and application notes from Mitsubishi for their MF501B / MF503B / MF504B drives. This is just a couple of pages which I've already scanned in and will probably finish off in the next week or so.
I have also been playing with hard drive host adapters this week. I have reworked the artwork for the circuit board a little and am going use it to make a board this week. If it works I'll let you know and upload the new bitmaps.
Winter is also rapidly approaching, especially here in Austria - it's been getting very cold these last few weeks. So if anyone needs any help with something to do on the winter evenings I'm only an email away. I hope you're not all just playing games :-0
Just a minor update. I have just completed the OCR'ing and formatting of the Winchester Disc Service Manual - and very nice it looks too :-) Got to go - the yorkshire puddings are just being served - not eaten any for ages.
Thanks to all of you that have offered your help in the last 2 weeks. I have updated the main page so credit is there. I really do appreciate it. There are still some more scanned images to tackle so if anyone is feeling up to it....
I have added a couple myself. Both printing utility ROMs. Not all the links have been set yet as I am also in the process of sending the files to Robert for TBL, so the links will appear later this week when he's put them on the site.
Charlie Cole is has mailed me saying that he is going to attempt a circuit layout of the Acorn 1770 host daughter board. Hopefully he'll pull it of enabling others to etch their own board and make the upgrade. This is such a worthwhile project as the 8271 is virtually impossible to find these days, and also it's compatability with the newer drives is alot better - see the guide to Drives and DFS's. So good luck to you Charlie.
As you know I've been busy programming recently and I've been neglecting the project a little, especially when some people (David Wooding inparticular) have so kindly contibuted in the form of manuals etc. So to alleviate my guilty feeleings I have spent the last 3 days non-stop scanning, and have managed to clear quite a large backlog. I've sent the games related stuff to Crispin and he's attacking that. What I need is some people to help out with OCR'ing. I've done the scans so not having a scanner is no longer an excuse. Alot of what I have done are various DFS manuals, along with some ROM manuals. Please get in touch if you can spare a little time to do one.
Also hello and thanks to Paul Willmott in Bermuda who's done some very nice scans and OCR's of some of the Acornsoft game packaging. I've uploaded it to Robert so links will appear this week.
So get in touch and let me know if you can help out. Many hands make light work - mind you - too many cooks spoil the broth. You can find a full list of what has been scanned at the bottom of the main page.
Well another month has gone by, and what has been done. Well there have been a few developments. I have finished of the VU File doc and it has been uploaded. I became an offer of help for the BBC User Guide graphics which I couldn't turn down, so thanks to Brennan in Denmark the complete version of the User Guide with graphics could be making an appearance fairly shortly. Andrew de Quincy has promised to send me the scanned images of The Advanced User Guide this week, but they have not been OCR'ed. Volunteers ?
I have now 3 weeks holiday so I'll hope to be tidying up a lot of odds and ends. I have just built a "mini hub" which connects my PC to my BBC via ECONET, this is still in a very experimental stage, but there will be some developments I promise :-)
I also made a lot of text files for many of the ROMs at the BBC lives site. When Robert gets round to putting them on the ftp then it's time to update ! If anyone has any information for the rom images without text files, please tell myself or Robert. Look forward to hearing from some of you, especially if you're wanting to contribute something. SUBTLE HINT THERE :-)))
Apologies, apologies and apologies. I know it has been almost a month since I have written anything. To quickly explain I have been doing some programming work on the side and have had my head stuck in C++ every spare moment that I've had. This had to take priority to the beeb projects as it is very good pay, and I could do with the money to support all this other computer stuff that I do. I'd really like to buy an A3 scanner, it could save me quite a bit of time, but the prices are still pretty high :-(
So, what's new. Well nothing from anyone else at the moment, which is quite dissapointing. Chris Richardson has just sent me some docs through which I'll have a look at tomorrow, and Crispin Boylan has said he will take on the Beebug Toolkit & Toolkit+ manuals. I have released a preliminary document called Disk drive and DFS guide . Please let me know your comments. Also if you have any information that is missing then mail me. The doc contains info about connecting vaious disc drives to a BBC / Master including 1.2MB and 1.44MB drives, aswell as detailing some of the DFS's that are available.
Just about lived through this weeks heat. We've been suffering with about 30° here in central Europe and I spent the start of the week driving around, went over "The Alberg Pass" 4 times in two days, this reaches a height of 1800metres above sea level and there was still snow up there, so I have been at all extremes this week. I arrived home late on Tuesday to find a mail from Robert saying that it has been brought to his attention that two of the documentation project files were corrupt on the site - do I have a backup copy. Well after breaking into a slightly sweatier than my already sweaty state I discovered I had. These have been sent to "our man in Norway" and the files in question, View and The Advanced Reference Guide for the Master should be back on-line this week. Not really sure why they were corrupt at his end.
I also got a message from Julian Stenning saying that he is in the middle of changing jobs at the moment but he'll try to get the finisihed 6502 co-processor guide to me very shortly. I finished off the VU-CALC manual this week and that has been put on line.
I am currently working on a load of small text files with ROM descriptions to add to the ROM archive to help people know what is what, as at the moment if you need a specific utility and don't know it's name, you haven't really got much of a chance of finding one that is appropriate. I have also had a couple of mails asking me about the results of the drive survey and "other odds and ends" that I seem to have found out. What I am going to try and attempt is a FAQ about the use of disc drives with the BBC. It will start of being more of a survey results with a few bits of info which I hope to add to through time. I'll try and get it done this week, but I can't promise anything as I have some C++ work to do at home which is "an earner" so it must get priority.
First apologies for missing last weeks update. I was ill at the end of the week and over the weekend and really didn't feel up to doing very much. Hope you'll excuse me.
So what's happening. Well I managed to finish sorting the ROM images that David Wooding sent me. These have been uploaded to TBL as regular visitors to the What's New page will have seen. A small problem is developing though with all these ROM images, in that it is very had to know exactly what some of them are for. So those of you with photocopied docs or original manuals, get them scanned in so that we can add put them alongside the ROM images in the archive. I am currently working on some text files that describe very breifly some of the ROMs and will upload them to TBL later this week.
I am still waiting for the final 6502 CoPro User Guide from J.F. Stenning, and Andrew de Quincey hasn't let me know yet if he is willing to do the OCR work on the Advanced User Guide or not. I'll chase those up this week and hopefully we'll have something new to download for next week.
I have sorted alot of the drive info that many of you have taken the trouble to send me. I'm now just contemplating whether to write an FAQ or just a report summarizing the results. Whatever happens, you'll be able to read the results soon.
Apart from that there hasn't been anything else sent to me, so come on everyone, don't let this project stagnate. I'll look forward to some positive email this week...
Alot of new additions this week - well that's what it's all about isn't it :-)
The main contributer was Chris Richardson of 8BS, who has contributed of these lovely titles.... View and View Store... and for the Master ... 65C102 CoProcessor manual, The Advanced Master Reference manual, Master Service manual and as some of you may of seen on the maillist, the 64K Sideways RAM fitting instructions for the B+, which I cleaned up a little and got it looking like the original 2 pages ;-)
Crispin mailed me the Xtend ROM manual. This appears to be enhancements mainly directly at programmers. ie compacting BASIC programs, and the like. The ROM can be found at the BBC lives in rom\Various\prog.
Speaking of ROM's, I've spent the best part of this week sorting through about 5MB's worth. I received these along with a large box full of docs / manuals / photocopies and the like from David Wooding. So thanks to David's donation there will be no shortage of material for a while, and you can expect a ROM update at the TBL some time this week.
J.F. Stenning has completed the 6502 CoPro User Guide and is currently sprucing it up, and giving it a final going over. I expect to be getting my grubby mits on it later this week, and it will be added in the update next week.
Steve Black informed me that 30% of the BCPL is now scanned in, and the Contents, Chapters 1 & 2 have been formatted. That's really good going there Steve. Pat yourself on the back.
OK then 3rd Rock from the Sun is about to start so I'm off to see The Big Giant Head. Toodlepip.
Back again. Another week gone by and what's happened ?
Well I finished two docs that I have had on my desk for a while now. The View Index manual and fitting instructions for the Watford ROM/RAM board. These have been uploaded to TBL, and as soon as they are on line I'll link them in. As some of you know I started a survey regarding who has what make of disk drive attached to their BBC/Master. I have had some very interesting results, but not nearly enough - about 10 so far. So come on the rest of you, just have a look at the label on the drive chasis and tell me the Make / Modell / and if it is 40/80. I have found out that there are 1.2MB drives that you can set via jumpers to work with the BBC. The more info I get the more I can help some of you.
As I said last week, some of my mails were at work, so I missed metioning Kade Hannson who has converted the User Guide to HTML and put it on-line. I noticed the inverse characters came out as white on white instead of white on black though !
Steve Black has been added to the list. He was going to scan the COMAL manual, but as one or two people were asking about the BCPL manual he quickly switched and has started work on that instead. He also asked me about the ADE / ADE plus ROM manual, which Mike Tomlinson has, and when he gets the time he's going to scan it in.
Another addition is Crispin Boylan who is working on the Xtend ROM manual. Not sure exactly what it does - I'll have to read the doc when he's finished it I suppose :-)
I have also VU-Calc and VU-File in progress, they should be finished by the end of the week.
Stuart managed to come up with the differences in the Master 1770 DFS versions, which included the following....
Master 128 1770 DFS Versions 2.20,24,25,26,27,28,29
V2.20 First Release
V2.27/8 Software patch for spurious Motor-on after 1770 reset
Has anyone the 2.20 / 2.29 versions ? or indeed the 2.27/2.28 software patch
?
There was also a bug in the 2.42 DFS (MOS+), was there a version released after
this ? Indeed was there even a 2.40 / 2.41 ?
That's it then for this week. I'm off to experiment with an 8271 and various bits and pieces. Don't forget to send me the drive info.....
So, in the first week the Doc Project has received more that 150 hits. Wow. That's considerably more than I expected. I also had an influx of email at the start of the week with some good comments and promises of help too. Keep them coming.
I have decided to write a weekly summary of what's new, what people are offering to do, what isn't being done etc etc., and here is the first installment. You must excuse me if I get a little confused, most of the mails are on my computer at work so I might get a few names wrong or something. I'll get myself better organised for next week though.
Andrew de Quincy wrote to me informing me that he has scanned in the complete Advanced User Guide, but hasn't the time (or is it the patience Andrew ?) to OCR it all. So we are looking for a volunteer, preferably one who also has a copy of the Advanced User Guide. I did mail Andrew to ask him the size of all the scanned images . approx 600 pages he said, but as yet I haven't heard from him.
Steph Richardson also got in touch. He has been collecting documentation for years (and not just beeb stuff). Apparently there is alot of it not only on paper but also in WWise / View and Interword formats. Steph has also converter programs between the formats, and is currently converting the BBC User Guide that I did, into BBC format - obviously he is splitting it up into BBC manageable chunks before anyone mails me about extra memory for the Beeb :-) Now what would be good is if someone could write a converter from Wordwise - or any of the other BBC formats - to Rich Text Format. RTF is just plain old ASCII - one of the main reasons for choosing it in the first place, so it shouldn't be too hard. Offers ?
One of the first mails I got informed me that my version of the User Guide was not "on-line", i.e. it is to download, and is not for on-line viewing. The sender also informed me that he had converted the entire document into HTML and had put it up on his WEB site. Now the problem is, the mail is at work and so is the URL. Sorry to the person involved. I'll dig out the mail when I get back to work on Tuesday.
I have also had numerous other others, Mike Mallet for one, just saying they are willing to help and if I need any docs I can't find, mail them and they'll try and help. Thanks guys.
Stuart McConnachie and I were looking at the differences in DFS versions this
week.
If anyone has some information about DFS bugs / DFS bug fix releases / DFS
versions then please let me know. Be interesting if anyone had any source code
from any of these ROMs, or are Andy Bray (WE), Rob Northern (ACP), K.T.Acres
(Solidisk) lurking around anywhere ?
I'm sure there was something else too, but until I check my mail at work......
That's it for now... until next week. And keep those offers of help coming in.
