Subj : age required for classic
To   : Don Vally
From : Bob Worm
Date : Wed Apr 09 2025 21:55:19

  Re: age required for classic
  By: Don Vally to BOB WORM on Wed Apr 09 2025 12:08:59

Hi, Don.

 > I did use an Apple IIE in the US Army in the very early 80's, it was
 > hooked to a laserdisk and was used for mapping purposes running dBase.

Interesting - the BBC computers had a (pretty amazing for the time) system called Domesday which used a special interface to a Laserdisc player. Basically the project collected local photographs and text articles produced by local primary schools all around the UK and put them into a trackball navigable map of the country which you could drill down into using the computer. It was quite clever as the laserdisc was mostly analogue but if you (for example) navigated to the section about Cirencester it would skip to the appropriate chapter of the laserdisc and show you photos of the town in freeze frame (CAV) and also let you see some text related to the scene which was also encoded on the disc.

 > Are you in the UK?

Yup, I am. Specifically in Wales, though right at this moment I'm in London.

 > So it's a 6502 system from your post, so I
 > guess maybe the equivalent of my C-64?

It is. Sort of, kind of... It's 6502 like a C64 but without the VIC-II or SID chips so a little less "multimedia". It did run at 2MHz which was pretty good for the 6502, but only had 32k of RAM. There was also a BBC Master which had a slightly boosted 65CS12 with a couple of extra instructions and 128k RAM.

I hated them when I was in school but have found an appreciation of them in my old age. At the time I was comparing them to the far superior 286 PC that my dad had brought home from work, little did I appreciate that they did so much with such tiny resources.

Better late than never :)

BobW
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