BBC microcomputer: Books, catalogues, leaflets

Scans (for books: of the covers) are enough in most cases, but I will show images of a few useful books and some catalogues (I may remove this section once I've added good scans or replace the pictures by links to the scans).

Acornsoft catalogues:

Autumn 1982, autumn 1983, autumn 1984, winter 83, business (early 1984), Acornsoft software '86, Acornsoft software '87:

Full titles of the catalogues:

Programs from Acornsoft for the BBC Microcomputer, Autumn 1982
Spectacular programs for the BBC Microcomputer from Acornsoft, Autumn 1983
Spectacular programs for the BBC Microcomputer from Acornsoft, Autumn 1984
At home with the BBC microcomputer, Winter 1983, Selected home education programs distributed by Acornsoft
Tidy up your office with acornsoft/Mirle software.
Acornsoft software '86, a new selection of software titles for the British Broadcasting Corporation microcomputer system
Acornsoft software '87, a new selection of software titles for the British Broadcasting Corporation microcomputer system

I never thought there would be an Acornsoft 87 catalogue (Acornsoft, at least the game section being handed over to Superior software mid 1986), but there it is... It contains various new titles compared to the 86 catalogue, especially a number of Superior/Acornsoft ones (Ravenskull and Speech for example, although I don't recall seeing a version of Speech actually labeled Superior/Acornsoft).

Complete scans of the autumn 1983 and winter 1983 catalogues can be found in the scans section, the others will be scanned too.

Are there any more? Is there a catalogue from 1985? If you know of more or have some yourself, please send me a mail. UPDATE: I've got hold of the 1981 (or early 1982?) catalogue and 1986 programming languages catalogue. Do any others exist?

Books:

Essential:

Bray, Dickens, Holmes: The advanced user guide, Cambridge microcomputer centre, 1983:

You need this book!

Interesting:

Left: Jeremy Ruston: BBC micro compendium, Interface publications, 1983:
This has a complete disassembly of the BASIC2 ROM, I think Acorn stopped further publication of this title, as there don't seem to be many around; Acorn definitely stopped publication of another book with a disassembly of OS1.20. Other interesting topics covered are floating point calculations in assembler, and making your own compiler.

Right: Jeremy Ruston: Advanced programming guide to the BBC micro, Interface publications, 1984:
This book seems the result of the above: It's essentially the "BBC micro compendium", but without the BASIC disassembly. The top of the even numbered pages even say "BBC micro compendium"... The advantage of this book for reading is that it's not so bulky!

Interfacing, hardware modifications:

8 bit computers are relatively easy to connect to the outside world, and the BBC micro has a lot of ready to use inputs and outputs. Several books were published to show the beginning hardware tinkerer what to do and how it works:

Don Thomassen: BBC hardware projects, Melbourne house publishers, 1984:
Bruce smith: Interfacing projects for the BBC micro, Addison Wesley, 1984:
Joe Telford, Practical hardware projects for the BBC micro, Century Communications, 1985:
DIY robotics and sensors with the BBC computer John Billingsley, 1983, Sunshine books:
The BBC microcomputer in control, Paul Beverley & Nigel Eames & Geoff Osborne, 1985, Prentice-Hall:
Interfacing the BBC microcomputer", Colin Opie, 1984, McGraw-Hill:

A hardware guide to the BBC microcomputer, Wise owl publications, 1983

Mostly useful for having almost all useful datasheets in one book (6502, 6522, 74LS series, 8271 fdc, HNG eproms, 4816 RAMs etc)

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Last modified: Sun Apr 22 06:33:52 CEST 2007