On 04/03/2017 13:40, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Max Demian wrote:
On 04/03/2017 11:07, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
wrote:
Reminds me of the BBC Micro/Computer Literacy Project: we were going
to use our home computers to do the accounts, control central heating
and goodness knows what else: a Model B needed a lot of extras even
to do a bit of word processing.)

It didn't need any extras for that.

Except a printer, I suppose.

The printer (and lead) was the easy part. (You could get "near letter
quality" impact dot matrix printers quite cheaply.)

Then you needed the word processor ROM - I think they called it "Word" -
and someone to plug it into the motherboard - if you didn't want to do
it yourself.

Of course - I remember that now. But it might have been possible to load a
different wordprocessor programme in the normal way. However, given the
time that would take, plugging in a ROM made more sense.

The BBC disk drives were actually very quick - and given the maximum
size of program, would load a WP in next to no time. The more pressing
limitation would have been lack of RAM, which the ROM based option would
mitigate a bit (by not needing the program code in RAM space)

Then you had to get a proper monitor, as the TV picture is too fuzzy for
80 columns.

Or a TV which accepted an RGB signal.

The Microvitec CUB (at silly money) was the RGB monitor of choice for
many, but the £80 ish philips mono monitors actually worked very well on
them.

Actually never did any word processing on mine - its main use was
learning BASIC.

I'd thought it was a nice touch that you could expand it to what you
needed. Although much of that a cottage industry.

That was much of the charm of many of the 80's machines, that they could
grow and do new stuff as you learnt and your needs progressed.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 04/03/2017 10:56, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 03/03/2017 16:56, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Roger Mills wrote:
If you work varying hours, there's a good case for remote control (Hive,
Nest, etc.) so that you can turn the heating on as you head for home.

That might be fine if you're single and live on your own...

More than one person can remote control the same stat...

Great. You turn it up because you're due home, and your partner turns it
down because is going to be late.

Maybe they need phones that let them communicate with each other as well ;-)


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Sunday, 5 March 2017 01:32:56 UTC, John Rumm wrote:
On 04/03/2017 12:23, Max Demian wrote:
On 04/03/2017 11:07, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
tabbypurr wrote:
Reminds me of the BBC Micro/Computer Literacy Project: we were going
to use our home computers to do the accounts, control central heating
and goodness knows what else: a Model B needed a lot of extras even
to do a bit of word processing.)

It didn't need any extras for that.

Except a printer, I suppose.

The printer (and lead) was the easy part. (You could get "near letter
quality" impact dot matrix printers quite cheaply.)

Depends on when in the BBCs history we are talking about. When they were
relatively new the "cheap" Epson would have been something like the RX80
(although the one people would have really wanted was the FX80, and in
today's money they would have been well over a grand)

I remember encountering a batch of £25 new dot matrix printers at that time. They worked ok, but the one & only font was scarcely legible.

Daisies & golfballs were so much better for text. I remember changing ribbon for red & daisywheel for italic. And working out how to do diagrams on non-graphic printers. And having to pause every 2 pages to let the overheating dot matrix cool off.


NT

On 05/03/2017 01:37, John Rumm wrote:
On 04/03/2017 13:40, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Max Demian wrote:
On 04/03/2017 11:07, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
wrote:
Reminds me of the BBC Micro/Computer Literacy Project: we were going
to use our home computers to do the accounts, control central heating
and goodness knows what else: a Model B needed a lot of extras even
to do a bit of word processing.)

It didn't need any extras for that.

Except a printer, I suppose.

The printer (and lead) was the easy part. (You could get "near letter
quality" impact dot matrix printers quite cheaply.)

Then you needed the word processor ROM - I think they called it "Word" -
and someone to plug it into the motherboard - if you didn't want to do
it yourself.

Of course - I remember that now. But it might have been possible to
load a
different wordprocessor programme in the normal way. However, given the
time that would take, plugging in a ROM made more sense.

The BBC disk drives were actually very quick - and given the maximum
size of program, would load a WP in next to no time. The more pressing
limitation would have been lack of RAM, which the ROM based option would
mitigate a bit (by not needing the program code in RAM space)

Then you had to get a proper monitor, as the TV picture is too fuzzy for
80 columns.

Or a TV which accepted an RGB signal.

The Microvitec CUB (at silly money) was the RGB monitor of choice for
many, but the £80 ish philips mono monitors actually worked very well on
them.


The shop which supplied my BBC-B also supplied me with a TV which had
been modified to take a video input - by-passing the tuner. That worked
reasonably ok (by the standards of that time).

I got hold of a redundant daisy wheel printer from work, and could
produce quite good quality printed output. ISTR that connecting it to
B's non-standard serial output was a bit of a challenge.
--
Cheers,
Roger
____________
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

In article , Roger Mills
wrote:
On 05/03/2017 01:37, John Rumm wrote:
On 04/03/2017 13:40, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article , Max
Demian wrote:
On 04/03/2017 11:07, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
wrote:
Reminds me of the BBC Micro/Computer Literacy Project: we were
going to use our home computers to do the accounts, control
central heating and goodness knows what else: a Model B needed a
lot of extras even to do a bit of word processing.)

It didn't need any extras for that.

Except a printer, I suppose.

The printer (and lead) was the easy part. (You could get "near letter
quality" impact dot matrix printers quite cheaply.)

Then you needed the word processor ROM - I think they called it
"Word" - and someone to plug it into the motherboard - if you didn't
want to do it yourself.

Of course - I remember that now. But it might have been possible to
load a different wordprocessor programme in the normal way. However,
given the time that would take, plugging in a ROM made more sense.

The BBC disk drives were actually very quick - and given the maximum
size of program, would load a WP in next to no time. The more pressing
limitation would have been lack of RAM, which the ROM based option
would mitigate a bit (by not needing the program code in RAM space)

Then you had to get a proper monitor, as the TV picture is too fuzzy
for 80 columns.

Or a TV which accepted an RGB signal.

The Microvitec CUB (at silly money) was the RGB monitor of choice for
many, but the £80 ish philips mono monitors actually worked very well
on them.


The shop which supplied my BBC-B also supplied me with a TV which had
been modified to take a video input - by-passing the tuner. That worked
reasonably ok (by the standards of that time).

I modified my own tv witha kit that was available at the time

I got hold of a redundant daisy wheel printer from work, and could
produce quite good quality printed output. ISTR that connecting it to
B's non-standard serial output was a bit of a challenge.

My first printer was a "real" Centronics one.

--
from KT24 in Surrey, England

On 05/03/2017 01:32, John Rumm wrote:
On 04/03/2017 12:23, Max Demian wrote:
On 04/03/2017 11:07, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
wrote:
Reminds me of the BBC Micro/Computer Literacy Project: we were going
to use our home computers to do the accounts, control central heating
and goodness knows what else: a Model B needed a lot of extras even
to do a bit of word processing.)

It didn't need any extras for that.

Except a printer, I suppose.

The printer (and lead) was the easy part. (You could get "near letter
quality" impact dot matrix printers quite cheaply.)

Depends on when in the BBCs history we are talking about. When they were
relatively new the "cheap" Epson would have been something like the RX80
(although the one people would have really wanted was the FX80, and in
today's money they would have been well over a grand)

I got a Panasonic that emulated the RX80, with "near letter quality". I
think it might have cost around £200.

--
Max Demian

On 05/03/2017 01:38, John Rumm wrote:
On 04/03/2017 10:56, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 03/03/2017 16:56, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Roger Mills wrote:
If you work varying hours, there's a good case for remote control
(Hive,
Nest, etc.) so that you can turn the heating on as you head for home.

That might be fine if you're single and live on your own...

More than one person can remote control the same stat...

Great. You turn it up because you're due home, and your partner turns it
down because is going to be late.

Maybe they need phones that let them communicate with each other as well
;-)

What, you mean "mobile" phones?

--
Max Demian

On 05/03/2017 10:14, Roger Mills wrote:

The shop which supplied my BBC-B also supplied me with a TV which had
been modified to take a video input - by-passing the tuner. That worked
reasonably ok (by the standards of that time).

I got hold of a redundant daisy wheel printer from work, and could
produce quite good quality printed output. ISTR that connecting it to
B's non-standard serial output was a bit of a challenge.

Ah yes, had forgotten about that... RS423 physical interface. ISTR you
could hook most "normal" serial things up with nothing more than a
custom lead - but more of a pain than would have been nice.

(Much like trying to get an HP7475 pen plotter talking to a serial port
- the most bizarre interpretation of RS232 handshaking you could imagine)

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 05/03/2017 13:10, Max Demian wrote:
On 05/03/2017 01:32, John Rumm wrote:
On 04/03/2017 12:23, Max Demian wrote:
On 04/03/2017 11:07, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
wrote:
Reminds me of the BBC Micro/Computer Literacy Project: we were going
to use our home computers to do the accounts, control central heating
and goodness knows what else: a Model B needed a lot of extras even
to do a bit of word processing.)

It didn't need any extras for that.

Except a printer, I suppose.

The printer (and lead) was the easy part. (You could get "near letter
quality" impact dot matrix printers quite cheaply.)

Depends on when in the BBCs history we are talking about. When they were
relatively new the "cheap" Epson would have been something like the RX80
(although the one people would have really wanted was the FX80, and in
today's money they would have been well over a grand)

I got a Panasonic that emulated the RX80, with "near letter quality". I
think it might have cost around £200.

Probably the equivalent of £700 in today's money... ISTR recall I got a
Brother M1009 9 pin dot matrix to start with - not a bad FX compatible,
but smaller cheaper and the tractor feed was optional. I think even that
was about £130 at the time. Nearly as much as I paid for my first VIC-20


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 04/03/2017 10:56, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 03/03/2017 16:56, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Roger Mills wrote:
If you work varying hours, there's a good case for remote control
(Hive, Nest, etc.) so that you can turn the heating on as you head
for home.

That might be fine if you're single and live on your own...

More than one person can remote control the same stat...

Great. You turn it up because you're due home, and your partner turns it
down because is going to be late.

Maybe they need phones that let them communicate with each other as well ;-)


Does anyone actually use a mobile phone for that sort of thing these days?
;-)

--
*Velcro - what a rip off!*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 05/03/2017 15:02, John Rumm wrote:
On 05/03/2017 13:10, Max Demian wrote:
On 05/03/2017 01:32, John Rumm wrote:
On 04/03/2017 12:23, Max Demian wrote:
On 04/03/2017 11:07, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
wrote:
Reminds me of the BBC Micro/Computer Literacy Project: we were going
to use our home computers to do the accounts, control central
heating
and goodness knows what else: a Model B needed a lot of extras even
to do a bit of word processing.)

It didn't need any extras for that.

Except a printer, I suppose.

The printer (and lead) was the easy part. (You could get "near letter
quality" impact dot matrix printers quite cheaply.)

Depends on when in the BBCs history we are talking about. When they were
relatively new the "cheap" Epson would have been something like the RX80
(although the one people would have really wanted was the FX80, and in
today's money they would have been well over a grand)

I got a Panasonic that emulated the RX80, with "near letter quality". I
think it might have cost around £200.

Probably the equivalent of £700 in today's money... ISTR recall I got a
Brother M1009 9 pin dot matrix to start with - not a bad FX compatible,
but smaller cheaper and the tractor feed was optional. I think even that
was about £130 at the time. Nearly as much as I paid for my first VIC-20

In those days you *bought* a printer, rather than getting one (almost)
free and paying through the nose for the consumables.

--
Max Demian

On 05/03/2017 13:11, Max Demian wrote:
On 05/03/2017 01:38, John Rumm wrote:
On 04/03/2017 10:56, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
On 03/03/2017 16:56, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Roger Mills wrote:
If you work varying hours, there's a good case for remote control
(Hive,
Nest, etc.) so that you can turn the heating on as you head for home.

That might be fine if you're single and live on your own...

More than one person can remote control the same stat...

Great. You turn it up because you're due home, and your partner turns it
down because is going to be late.

Maybe they need phones that let them communicate with each other as well
;-)

What, you mean "mobile" phones?

Yup, not only that, ones that can do voice calls or texts...

(although I suppose for the modern generation they could write their ETA
on the partners "wall" or whatever ;-)


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 05/03/2017 14:57, John Rumm wrote:
On 05/03/2017 10:14, Roger Mills wrote:

The shop which supplied my BBC-B also supplied me with a TV which had
been modified to take a video input - by-passing the tuner. That worked
reasonably ok (by the standards of that time).

I got hold of a redundant daisy wheel printer from work, and could
produce quite good quality printed output. ISTR that connecting it to
B's non-standard serial output was a bit of a challenge.

Ah yes, had forgotten about that... RS423 physical interface. ISTR you
could hook most "normal" serial things up with nothing more than a
custom lead - but more of a pain than would have been nice.

(Much like trying to get an HP7475 pen plotter talking to a serial port
- the most bizarre interpretation of RS232 handshaking you could imagine)


Yes, the connector was circular rather than a 9 or 25 pin D plug. Might
have been 180 degree DIN - can't remember. I don't think there was any
handshaking as such - not in hardware at any rate - 'cos I think there
were only 3 wires. I think I just had to run at a low enough baud rate
for the printer always to be able to keep up. BICBW - it was a long time
ago!
--
Cheers,
Roger
____________
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

On 05/03/2017 18:39, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In articleSe2dnTj4ltWT8SbFnZ2dnUU78R2dnZ2d@brightvie w.co.uk,
John wrote:
On 04/03/2017 10:56, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In articleoOednb2iT7grIiTFnZ2dnUU78VednZ2d@brightvie w.co.uk,
John wrote:
On 03/03/2017 16:56, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In ,
Roger wrote:
If you work varying hours, there's a good case for remote control
(Hive, Nest, etc.) so that you can turn the heating on as you head
for home.

That might be fine if you're single and live on your own...

More than one person can remote control the same stat...

Great. You turn it up because you're due home, and your partner turns it
down because is going to be late.

Maybe they need phones that let them communicate with each other as well ;-)


Does anyone actually use a mobile phone for that sort of thing these days?
;-)


I think they must do. I often see people - mainly women - walking down
the street apparently talking to themselves!
--
Cheers,
Roger
____________
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

In article ,
Roger Mills wrote:
On 05/03/2017 14:57, John Rumm wrote:
On 05/03/2017 10:14, Roger Mills wrote:

The shop which supplied my BBC-B also supplied me with a TV which had
been modified to take a video input - by-passing the tuner. That
worked reasonably ok (by the standards of that time).

I got hold of a redundant daisy wheel printer from work, and could
produce quite good quality printed output. ISTR that connecting it to
B's non-standard serial output was a bit of a challenge.

Ah yes, had forgotten about that... RS423 physical interface. ISTR you
could hook most "normal" serial things up with nothing more than a
custom lead - but more of a pain than would have been nice.

(Much like trying to get an HP7475 pen plotter talking to a serial
port - the most bizarre interpretation of RS232 handshaking you could
imagine)


Yes, the connector was circular rather than a 9 or 25 pin D plug. Might
have been 180 degree DIN - can't remember. I don't think there was any
handshaking as such - not in hardware at any rate - 'cos I think there
were only 3 wires. I think I just had to run at a low enough baud rate
for the printer always to be able to keep up. BICBW - it was a long time
ago!

The BBC had a 5 pin DIN-plug - pin 1 was ground, 2 was CTS (Clear To
Send), 3 was TD (Transmit Data), 4 was RD (Receive Data) and 5 RTS (Ready
To Send).

Alan

--


Using an ARMX6

On Sun, 5 Mar 2017 19:19:22 +0000, Max Demian wrote:

I got a Panasonic that emulated the RX80, with "near letter
quality".
I think it might have cost around £200.

I had a wide carriage 24 pin Epson. Wasn't bad, can't remember the
cost. Also had a Brother daisy wheel typewriter that had a serial
input but never got it to work reliably from a computer.

ISTR recall I got a Brother M1009 9 pin dot matrix to start with -
not
a bad FX compatible, but smaller cheaper and the tractor feed was
optional. I think even that was about £130 at the time.

In those days you *bought* a printer, rather than getting one (almost)
free and paying through the nose for the consumables.

Looks like you still do buy the printer, Epson LQ350 £208 from
Currys. Impact printing is still required for multipart stationary. A
ribbon is about a fiver.

--
Cheers
Dave.

"Max Demian" wrote in message
...
On 05/03/2017 15:02, John Rumm wrote:
On 05/03/2017 13:10, Max Demian wrote:
On 05/03/2017 01:32, John Rumm wrote:
On 04/03/2017 12:23, Max Demian wrote:
On 04/03/2017 11:07, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
wrote:
Reminds me of the BBC Micro/Computer Literacy Project: we were
going
to use our home computers to do the accounts, control central
heating
and goodness knows what else: a Model B needed a lot of extras even
to do a bit of word processing.)

It didn't need any extras for that.

Except a printer, I suppose.

The printer (and lead) was the easy part. (You could get "near letter
quality" impact dot matrix printers quite cheaply.)

Depends on when in the BBCs history we are talking about. When they
were
relatively new the "cheap" Epson would have been something like the
RX80
(although the one people would have really wanted was the FX80, and in
today's money they would have been well over a grand)

I got a Panasonic that emulated the RX80, with "near letter quality". I
think it might have cost around £200.

Probably the equivalent of £700 in today's money... ISTR recall I got a
Brother M1009 9 pin dot matrix to start with - not a bad FX compatible,
but smaller cheaper and the tractor feed was optional. I think even that
was about £130 at the time. Nearly as much as I paid for my first VIC-20

In those days you *bought* a printer, rather than getting one (almost)
free and paying through the nose for the consumables.

IIRC you still had to pay through the nose for consumables

tim

On Monday, 6 March 2017 11:02:05 UTC, tim... wrote:
"Max Demian" wrote in message
...
On 05/03/2017 15:02, John Rumm wrote:
On 05/03/2017 13:10, Max Demian wrote:
On 05/03/2017 01:32, John Rumm wrote:

I got a Panasonic that emulated the RX80, with "near letter quality". I
think it might have cost around £200.

Probably the equivalent of £700 in today's money... ISTR recall I got a
Brother M1009 9 pin dot matrix to start with - not a bad FX compatible,
but smaller cheaper and the tractor feed was optional. I think even that
was about £130 at the time. Nearly as much as I paid for my first VIC-20

In those days you *bought* a printer, rather than getting one (almost)
free and paying through the nose for the consumables.

IIRC you still had to pay through the nose for consumables

tim

or reink the ribbons with printing ink plus meths. But not too many times or it ends up catching on & ruining the pins. 24 pin machines were much worse for that, being thinner pins.


NT

On 06/03/2017 10:28, Alan Dawes wrote:
In ,
Roger wrote:
On 05/03/2017 14:57, John Rumm wrote:
On 05/03/2017 10:14, Roger Mills wrote:

The shop which supplied my BBC-B also supplied me with a TV which had
been modified to take a video input - by-passing the tuner. That
worked reasonably ok (by the standards of that time).

I got hold of a redundant daisy wheel printer from work, and could
produce quite good quality printed output. ISTR that connecting it to
B's non-standard serial output was a bit of a challenge.

Ah yes, had forgotten about that... RS423 physical interface. ISTR you
could hook most "normal" serial things up with nothing more than a
custom lead - but more of a pain than would have been nice.

(Much like trying to get an HP7475 pen plotter talking to a serial
port - the most bizarre interpretation of RS232 handshaking you could
imagine)


Yes, the connector was circular rather than a 9 or 25 pin D plug. Might
have been 180 degree DIN - can't remember. I don't think there was any
handshaking as such - not in hardware at any rate - 'cos I think there
were only 3 wires. I think I just had to run at a low enough baud rate
for the printer always to be able to keep up. BICBW - it was a long time
ago!

The BBC had a 5 pin DIN-plug - pin 1 was ground, 2 was CTS (Clear To
Send), 3 was TD (Transmit Data), 4 was RD (Receive Data) and 5 RTS (Ready
To Send).

Alan


Right. So it did have hardware handshaking. I'd forgotten that!
--
Cheers,
Roger
____________
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

On 06/03/2017 10:28, Alan Dawes wrote:
In article ,
Roger Mills wrote:
On 05/03/2017 14:57, John Rumm wrote:
On 05/03/2017 10:14, Roger Mills wrote:

The shop which supplied my BBC-B also supplied me with a TV which had
been modified to take a video input - by-passing the tuner. That
worked reasonably ok (by the standards of that time).

I got hold of a redundant daisy wheel printer from work, and could
produce quite good quality printed output. ISTR that connecting it to
B's non-standard serial output was a bit of a challenge.

Ah yes, had forgotten about that... RS423 physical interface. ISTR you
could hook most "normal" serial things up with nothing more than a
custom lead - but more of a pain than would have been nice.

(Much like trying to get an HP7475 pen plotter talking to a serial
port - the most bizarre interpretation of RS232 handshaking you could
imagine)


Yes, the connector was circular rather than a 9 or 25 pin D plug. Might
have been 180 degree DIN - can't remember. I don't think there was any
handshaking as such - not in hardware at any rate - 'cos I think there
were only 3 wires. I think I just had to run at a low enough baud rate
for the printer always to be able to keep up. BICBW - it was a long time
ago!

The BBC had a 5 pin DIN-plug - pin 1 was ground, 2 was CTS (Clear To
Send), 3 was TD (Transmit Data), 4 was RD (Receive Data) and 5 RTS (Ready
To Send).

Although IIRC, the RTS/CTS behaved more like DSR and DTR on a more
conventional port... but yup they could be used to handshake.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/