Sideway RAM board determination program
Here's swrtype 0.7 (zip)
I made this program to find out what sort of SWR is available in a given machine. I.e. which slots are RAM, and how the RAM is selected for writing; This is one of
none (machine without SWR)
single (almost) always selected bank. This is what you get with 2 x 8K static RAM chips on an ATPL sidewise or Watford ROM board for example. I think the single 16K RAM banks like the 'Acorn user' SWR that fit in a ROM socket and have one flying lead to R/W are also always write-selected; depending on exactly how the chipselect works in EPROMs and the BBC it may be possible to use CHIPSELECT to select the RAM bank and thus use just one lead to get the ROMSEL method. I'm not sure, haven't really thought about it or checked the data sheets and BBC diagram.
ROMSEL (FE30, some home made boards use this, and the Solidisk 2MEG 128K, others? Also used by the BBC B+ 128K computer). The old Solidisk boards can be made to use this method too, by not connecting to the user port (6522), but to IC76 (I've implemented this on one of my BBCs with a 3 pole switch to select between FE30 and user port). That still leaves incomplete address decoding which my program doesn't handle correctly for this method, I think)
RAMSEL (FE32, Solidisk 2meg/4meg boards (except for the 2meg 128K), others?)
Solidisk with incomplete address decoding (the old user port abusing boards)
ditto with complete address decoding (don't know if it exists!)
Watford ROM-RAM board (this is being added, not yet tested).
This contains almost all the ROM images I've ever found anywhere (I've yet to merge in images from a few of my old disks) and also ROM images I made from original ROMs and copied EPROMs that I encountered. This includes all the ROMs from 'the bbc lives'. Updated from the 2004-12-23, 2004-12-27, 2005-01-09 and 2005-5-23 zips. Most dupes have been removed and images from copied/original ROMs included. Some files still need to be moved to the right directories and there are a couple of dupes. If you have original ROMs, send me images to insert please and if you try any ROMs, let me know if they work or not so a reliable archive of known working ROMs can be built.
N.B. If there's no help with this I can't update this archive any further...
Solidisk vol 1-10 + extra disk (disk images from original disks): Solidisk 1-10 (zip)
Solinet disk images:
I have no idea what's on them, I got them long ago, never got round to examining them. Might be interesting, might be rubbish :) solinet_pd (zip) (1.9 MB) solinet_1 (zip) (3.7 MB) solinet_NL (zip) (120K)
MacMillan press: Advanced graphics on the BBC microcomputer model B
The software from the 2 tapes that accompanied the books (one of the best books for the BBC micro btw.): advanced graphics (zip) (loose files, any interest in disk images?)
Advanced Basic Tubelink advanced_basic (zip) After asking about advanced basic on the BBC mailing list, someone mailed me the software, which is quite interesting and includes hibasic87. It was distributed in 1987 by Tubelink. I've included the text of the November 1987 Tubelink ad from 'Acorn user'.
