I have been involved with the BBC micro since about 1990 when I did a year of I.T. at School using the School's BBC Econet. Most of the machines were Master ETs, some were Master 128s and there was one BBC Model B lurking in the corner for the "unlucky" pupil who arrived last.

The first BBC I owned was an American BBC Model B with a single Viglen floppy drive. I had a lot of fun with this machine but its days were numbered as far as I was concerned when it became clear that I could not upgrade it to ADFS due to the unusual layout of the American issue PCB.

I upgraded the BBC B to a Master 128 in 1992 and, combined with a daisy wheel printer, this setup saw me through my GCSE coursework and A-level essays. I think I killed the Master 128 in about 1995 by adding some sort of BBC Model B expansion board to it with disastrous results. I was Beebless for far too long.

By 1999, my interest had returned and after finishing university, I got into the BBC emulator scene. What drew me into this was that the emulators were running original BBC programmes, not files translated to run on a PC. There is only so much nostalgia that an emulator can satisfy, so before long I wanted the real thing.

The first BBC I got the second time round was a friend's old BBC Model B which had been in his shed for about ten years. It was a tape only machine and appeared to be 16K only. I added a disc upgrade and bought a floppy drive but to this day have been unable to get the thing to become a 32K machine. At the time I had no software and no way of transferring files from PC to BBC. In order to format a disc, I disassembled the FORMAT programme from one of the utility discs using PC-BBC and poked every individual byte into my BBC Model B manually. This took about three weeks but at last I was able to format a disc and save the format code to floppy.

Again ADFS cried out to me so at Easter 2001 I bought a Master 128 with floppy drive. I wired the new drive to my existing drive to create the double drive I used on Station 1 until 2005.

After a year of tinkering about, I began to look into Econet. By this time I had a fully working BBC Model B which happened to have the Econet upgrade fitted. I had enjoyed my time in the School computer room with the likes of *I AM, *NOTIFY and *PRIV and thought I should have a go at building my own network. By mid-2002 I had collected a network clock, an Econet module for my Master 128, a Master Turbo to use as a fileserver and a set of 3 T-pieces. I had no Econet leads at the time so I cut the cable off a Microsoft mouse, soldered one-inch lengths of paper clip onto the end of each wire and used a couple of these as leads by pushing the soldered ends into the Econet sockets. Miraculously, my temporary Econet worked and I have never looked back!

Since then, I have installed a permanent Econet which consists of a Master 128, Master Turbo, Master 512 and BBC Model B with a FileStore as the main server. I am always adding extra bits to the machines on my network. It is my aim to have the largest working Econet still in use. I think 5 stations does not break the world record but I would be interested to hear from people with their own networks - if yours is bigger then let me know!

My four main Econet workstations each have second processors: Station 1 has an internal ARM7 co-processor, Station 128 has an external 6502 second processor, Station 200 has an internal 65C102 co-processor and Station 201 has an internal 80186 co-processor. That's quite a lot of processing power when you think about it! Well, it was in the 1980s!

Just before Easter 2005, I dismantled all the network cabling for my Econet with the intention of expanding the network with a 32-bit machine. It was also my intention to have the socket boxes mounted on the wall rather than trailing on the floor. Various attempts to re-wire the network have proved unsuccessful with all kinds of errors occurring so I think I need some new socket boxes. For the moment, my Econet is held together with T-pieces and Econet leads, until Summer 2009 worked rather erratically!

I could never understand why the Clock signal didn't always seem to reach Stations 200 & 201 and why net errors kept occurring. Eventually, I undertook a full test in the summer of 2009 using my Econet FLAT box and pinpointed the problems to a faulty T-piece, which I replaced immediately, and my network has been running very smoothly ever since.

Summer 2009 saw a major change, initially envisaged as a temporary measure, but now likely to be a long-term feature. I have moved principal File Server to Station 200, the Master Turbo, which is running a Retroclinic Compact Flash Hard Drive. The reasoning behind this originally was for use as storage space for Teletext page capture which I began in the summer prior to the analogue signal switch-off in the Granada region in November and December 2009.

I have also relocated the clock to between Stations 200 and 201 for ease of access, although (hopefully) it is now unlikely that much access will be needed since the replacement of the dodgy T-piece.

I have a second Econet, which I affectionately call my "weekend" Econet because I can only usually put it together on a weekend, when I take over the dining room at BeebMaster Towers. My Weekend Econet differs in configuration depending on what I need to use but it always involves my MDFS, and sometimes my second MDFS as well, and normally a Master 128 and occasionally a 32-bit Acorn like one of my A4000s or A420/1 if I want to do a lot of file copying.

The hope is that my MDFS will one day be connected to my main Econet via a Bridge.

It has been something of a toil to put together and maintain even the small Econet I am running. With this in mind, I want BeebMaster to be a worthwhile point of reference for anyone starting or running an Econet.

If Econet is my first great interest in the Acorn world, then hard discs must be the second. Econet brings the possibility of mass storage available to network stations, in many cases using Winchester discs connected up to Beebs. Most of the time these hard disc drives can be used by the BBC computer independently, and it is the dream of many a Beeb fan to own a BBC hard disc.

It is my ambition to have a hard disc connected to each of my main Econet stations. The addition of the Compact Flash Hard Drive to Station 200 brings me a step closer, but I'm still a good way off!

In this regard, I am luckier than most and I have spent a great deal of time collecting and testing as much Winchester disc hardware as I can since 2003. The BBC micro can support hard discs but it was designed at a time when discs using the ST506 interface were current. This interface does not have a built-in disc controller so a separate Winchester controller board is required. I have built up a reasonable collection of ST506 drives and in 2009 I bought a job lot of 8 Adaptec ACB4070 controller boards. Some early SCSI drives can be used with the Beeb, but the ADFS filing system and host adapter board are pretty fussy about what they will and won't accept. My experimentation and testing continues, in the hope that one day I will have the definitive answer to this problem.

My third main area of interest is the Domesday Project. My interest began late on in 2003 when I got hold of some bits which I thought could be used to build my own Domesday System. In November 2003, I put together my first "Domesday Machine" and by February the following year, I had what could be classed as a working Domesday System. The BeebMaster Domesday Machine has taken various forms over the years as more and more original parts have been added, and I was able to put together my most complete Domesday System in time for the twentieth anniversary in November 2006.

The Domesday Project is without doubt one of the most potent reminders of how rapidly technology goes out of fashion and just how diligent we need to be in preserving machines like the Beeb. I think that the BBC micro deserves more than just to be a fondly remembered computer of the 1980s and 1990s. I, like many other devoted individuals running their own sites, believe that the best way to preserve the memory of the greatest of all 8-bit computers is by keeping these machines in use forever.

The demise of Teletext as the analogue television switch-off sweeps throughout the country has made Teletext a fourth area of interest. I haven't had as much time as I hoped to capture Teletext pages, and my attempts to record Teletext onto videotape haven't been as successful as I might have liked, but I've done a reasonable job in capturing and saving as many Teletext pages as I could from May to December 2009. Stations 1 and 200 on my Econet, as Teletext receiver and file server, really demonstrated a tour-de-force during this period, sometimes running continuously without a break for four or five days at a time.

I hope I am able to provide as much help and assistance to anybody who needs it, whether it be about Econet, hard drives, Domesday, Teletext or anything else BBC or Acorn related. If you need anything more then all you need to do is e-mail me.

As time goes by, it is becoming harder to get hold of spares or some of the more exciting bits of hardware like second processors or Winchester drives. Most of the larger microchips inside the 8-bit Acorn machines like the 8271 floppy disc controller or the 6502 processor are obsolete. EPROMs suitable for the BBC are beginning to fade away. A lot of the logic chips are going to be obsolete in months rather than years.

I have built up a stock of as many spares as possible to further my commitment to keeping the faithful old Beeb in service for ever and ever. I have been lucky enough to get hold of some brand new 8271s and 68B54s so that I can provide disc and Econet upgrade kits on an ongoing basis. These are now available for sale along with my 16K sideways RAM module for the BBC Model B.

My BeebSpares section is now online where I am selling brand-new replacement parts for as many of the bits inside a Beeb as I can.

In late 2003, I embarked upon what must be the first Acorn 8-bit related manufacturing effort of the 21st century and in January 2004, the BeebMaster Econet Module was born. This was something of an experiment to see if long-obsolete bits of hardware such as the Master Econet Module could be resurrected. I am delighted to say that I was able to persuade a company to make up some Econet Modules and the BeebMaster Econet Module is now available for anybody searching for the Econet upgrade for the Master and Archimedes machines.

In October 2006, I commissioned a production run of 100 new Econet Clocks and in November 2006, the prototype arrived and worked a treat! The BeebMaster Econet Clock is now available from the BeebShop!

Eventually it is my intention to be able to provide an alternative to the Econet socket box and terminators. I did some testing in the spring of 2007 which worked well, but it's going to cost me a couple of hundred to buy in everything I need and test things thoroughly, so I will need to wait until the BeebShop starts to bring home the bacon before I can progress much more. Watch this space, though, it will happen one day!

In the meantime I have been expanding the BeebShop range, and I am now offering single and dual 3½" floppy disc drives, monitor & TV aerial leads, EPROMs and Sideways RAM chips.

I hope you enjoy my website. If there is anything you would like to see on BeebMaster or want help with anything BBC related, please e-mail me.

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