BBC Master
So, many years ago, when I’d just left school my wonderfully supportive parents bought me a BBC Master for passing my exams. I loved that machine. Before then I’d only had a baby Beeb, an Electron. (with a spectrum 48k and ZX81 being previous to that).
Whilst at school I had built, with the instructions from a phiysics teacher, an interface to be able to control motors, take digital and analog input and I wrote some software to control it. All exciting stuff. These days I use Arduino, but that’s where it all got started.
The BeebM was eventually replaced by an Amstrad 1512 when I got to college and wanted to start programming in Cobol and Pascal, but the Beeb has always been my fave.
So, as I suspect many of my generation did after watching Micromen on TV the other week, I started to trawl eBay in search of my youth.
I managed to pick up a Master 128 for £30 (+12PP) which I didn’t think was at all bad. It arrived soon after and has now been sat on the dining room table for the last week, all wired up to the portable tv and tape deck.
After initially thinking it was broken as it came up with the message “This is not a language” we soon realised that the internal battery power had died. A quick bit of googling and we managed to get the old Master up and running. Remembering the good old command AUTO 10 and away we go with the obligitary
PRINT “Please enter your name” INP
INPUT NAME$
PRINT “Hello ” ; NAME$
We were off.
Next, to load some of those old games from tape that I had for the Electron. Tape desk plugged in, cassette rewound. CH. “” , hear the little microswitch go and wait for the tape deck to start. Nothing. Bugger. Still not got to the bottom of this, even after trying many different cassette cables. Will be a job for the weekend.
Next plan, to get a 3.5″ floppy disk drive connected and get that working.
It’s all good fun and keeps me and the kids amused, even if the wife does want her dining table back. She sounds similar to how my mum used to sound when she wanted to put the tea out. 
Happy Memories.
Now, where did I put that copy of Elite…..
Why not say hello at the Stairway To Hell forums, where BBC Micro users young and old congregate:
http://www.stairwaytohell.com/sthforums/
Might be a bit late but re: your problem with the cassette player (not) auto starting “back in the day” I had a BBC B with the same problem. Never did get it working reliably but pressing play manually was an adeqaute fallback.
Hi, I’m using the DIN lead which means that the tape player won’t play unless controlled by the Beeb. I could look at disconnecting the wire that controls this. Not had time to take a look at it yet to be honest.