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!

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, and works rather erratically!

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 (although since about the summer of 2005 it has become something of a permanent feature!) 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.

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 over the years but I am struggling for 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.

To this end, I am committed to providing as much help and assistance to anybody who needs it, whether it be about Econet or BASIC programming or writing 6502 assembler. As BeebMaster expands, I hope to maintain sections about all these topics as an online reference. 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 am trying to build 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.

Following on from the success of the BeebMaster Econet module, I had the idea in the summer of 2006 of putting together an Econet "starter kit", along the lines of the kits sold by Acorn and SJ Research in the 1980s and 1990s. The difference would be that my kits would contain Econet interfaces, either the BBC B upgrade kit I provide or the BeebMaster Econet Module, in addition to the socket boxes, cables and clock.

I have been working on an alternative to the Econet socket box, and my initial tests using readily-available off-the-shelf items were very positive. There will be more information on this in the summer of 2007.

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!

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.

Click here for information about Picture Quality
Click here for information about Navigating around BeebMaster

Click here to go back