Back in 1986, the high school had a network of 14 or so RML 380Z and 480Z (the white plastic and the black metal editions) attached to a 'winchester' 20mb server running CPM (spent a lot of time at the keyboard during lunchtime). A mouse for using PaintSpa, a lonesome BBC with floppy disc drive for Martin Harris to use and abuse, a RML Nimbus PC type thing that only ran Snake. There was also a standalone 480z with a huge twin floppy drive on a trolly so that it could be wheeled around the maths block. There was also a ZX81 in the main building that was used for lunchtime computer club during 1984/85 - this was soon abandoned when one of us smuggled in a Spectrum and started playing Starion on the huge colour TV. An Amstrad PCW8256 or whatever they were numbered (the green screen with floppy on the side monitor) appeared in the life skills room, never got to use it.
Many programs were written on the 480z, but all have now been lost.
STplot 10,10,20,30 and PUT 7 were commonly used within the games for graphics and sound.
Our secondary school had a computer room with a bunch of BBC B's in there (probably about 15-20) and I did my CLAIT module for GCSE IT in there in '91ish.
IT was a whizzy new subject so the teacher was our regular maths teacher who they figured probably knew a bit about computers. He didn't and was behind any kid who had a home computer!
Before that I (late 80's) I remember also playing some very basic adventure games in there like Grannie's Garden, one where you were on a boat and another in a house. There was a resource management one too.
We also had an Archimedes with some fancy art package on it. We did some DTP on that one too I think.
Being an old fart I went to school before they had pre-built computers but we had a lunchtime and after school electronics club where you could build your own. Were talking getting down and dirty with soldering irons. Over the period of about a term you could build something that was similar to an Altair. No display or any of that poncy stuff just a few (occasionally) flashing lights if you were lucky and it worked.
The after school clubs were fantastic for what you could do and it didn't cost anything if you just wanted to turn up and do something. If you wanted to take home whatever it was at the end of a "project" then you could buy it at a very cheap price either as a lump sum or at a "pocket money" priced sub each week. They also made sure that the clubs were complimentary to each other so with the computer you could for example take a metalwork or woodwork course to make a case for it and that sort of thing.
Over the years besides the computer I made a fibreglass kayak and a 50cc go kart, learnt to play go and bridge to a decent standard, had a term of golf lessons and 5 years of guitar lessons.
It wasn't even a posh school, just the local Grammar. I bet half the things we did wouldn't be allowed now as either too dangerous or not PC enough, a shame because it was a major part of all our educations.
Our secondary school had a computer room with a bunch of BBC B's in there (probably about 15-20) and I did my CLAIT module for GCSE IT in there in '91ish.
IT was a whizzy new subject so the teacher was our regular maths teacher who they figured probably knew a bit about computers. He didn't and was behind any kid who had a home computer!
yeah in secondary school we also had a room of BBC B's and a teacher who didn't know much about them. I remember tricking him with the 'special key' function ( I think it was called that?) which was basically a copy/paste key that you could program iirc. whatever it was I'd make him think I'd typed loads of text in seconds and he couldn't work it out :lol: #banter
I remember playing on a bbc micro at primary school, games were Granny's Garden & Dare Devil Dennis. Then later on at secondary school, we had an archimedes with Bug Hunter!. Great games! Good times!
Being an old fart I went to school before they had pre-built computers but we had a lunchtime and after school electronics club where you could build your own. Were talking getting down and dirty with soldering irons. Over the period of about a term you could build something that was similar to an Altair. No display or any of that poncy stuff just a few (occasionally) flashing lights if you were lucky and it worked.
The after school clubs were fantastic for what you could do and it didn't cost anything if you just wanted to turn up and do something. If you wanted to take home whatever it was at the end of a "project" then you could buy it at a very cheap price either as a lump sum or at a "pocket money" priced sub each week. They also made sure that the clubs were complimentary to each other so with the computer you could for example take a metalwork or woodwork course to make a case for it and that sort of thing.
Over the years besides the computer I made a fibreglass kayak and a 50cc go kart, learnt to play go and bridge to a decent standard, had a term of golf lessons and 5 years of guitar lessons.
It wasn't even a posh school, just the local Grammar. I bet half the things we did wouldn't be allowed now as either too dangerous or not PC enough, a shame because it was a major part of all our educations.
Frick didly what a brilliant school. Proper life skills being taught. That would be so useful now. Teach kids to build a tower from parts, install an OS, then program the computer. Maybe get a Pi, and have em build it. Brilliant.
yeh we started out with a 380z tucked away in a small classroom, the school then built a dedicated room of 480z's linked to a winchester hd
Ah yes the hallowed 'Winchester hard drive'. I remember that when ever 'the Winchester' was mentioned by a teacher, it was done so with a look I can only pin down as a blend of smugness and pride. I was convinced saying 'The Winchester' gave them a boner. Diary Entry Mr Cronshaw 6th Feb 1985, So excited was I when we got 'The Winchester' I think a little bit of wee came out. I am now overlord of the school network, all shall hail me. Sadly 'The Winchester' was sadly underutilised, because woe betide, the pupils use it. There was about three programs stored on it, one was a word processors, the other was email but no one had an account, and the third was a dictionary for the word processor. It was networked to about 5 Link 480z which later migrated to the English dept. Next we got RM Nimbuses.
Below a very typical scenario, woe betide the students ever get to touch it.
or sneaking games on, that one was not supposed to play on school equipment.
All this talk about RM Nimbuses (Nimbii?) I have to give you the link to my remake of the snake / worm game. It is as faithful as my memory allows, and then I've added some more options to make things interesting :)
I was in high school 82-87 and we had many Bbc micros,enough for two kids per unit.I do recall being allowed to play games like Cuthbert,Dare Devil Denis but most kids played Chuckie Egg.The main lesson seemed mostly fruitless to me though as most things I tried never seemed to work such as the * notify command to communicate with a networked unit,could never get that sucker to work.
WE had a BBC B and they wouldn't let me touch it cuz i said it was **** as i had a spectrum. They would let me design graphics though for there ****ty school message board for it though.
We always had multiple computers right from the start (for small values of multiple). We started off with three ZX81s. Although I love the BBC Micro, I think it was the right decision to get three or four less expensive machines rather than just one Beeb. Later in the year we got an Issue 1 16K Spectrum which you could only use with permission from the teacher in charge, and then for only half an hour or so. We were also lent a VIC-20 for a while.
The Speccy was terribly unreliable though (right from the get-go it wouldn't run the few 16K machine code games that were available - they always crashed - no idea what the problem was but I suspect probably duff RAM or it was one of the really early ones without the various fixes for the ULA). The Speccy died completely in fairly short order and got sent off for repair and upgrade to 48K at the same time and it worked great from then on.
The following year I think we got another couple of Spectrums plus one BBC Micro.
Later on (probably 1985-1986 or so) we got an econet network of BBC Micros in a lab. That's when the fun really started, while isolated computers were great, and being able to check out your latest pirated acquisitions on a C-90 tape was fun, having an actual network made it awesome.
All this talk about RM Nimbuses (Nimbii?) I have to give you the link to my remake of the snake / worm game. It is as faithful as my memory allows, and then I've added some more options to make things interesting :)
171! I'm deffo better at it now than I was back then :lol:
All this talk about RM Nimbuses (Nimbii?) I have to give you the link to my remake of the snake / worm game. It is as faithful as my memory allows, and then I've added some more options to make things interesting :)
Cool.
I remember, that our Nimbii had not floppy drives just blank plates where the floppy should go. I was quite disappointed, and wondered how one would get the data in/out not being fully aware of the capability of networked computers.
My school at first had The ubiquitous RM 380Z, an Apple ][, and a couple of ITT 2020s (an official Apple ][ clone). It then got about a dozen or so BBC Bs.
Unlike what a lot of people have said here the RM, Apple and ITTs weren't locked up as incredibly we actually had a teacher in charge of computing before the government decided that all schools had to have computers. Don't know how that happened, whether the governors decided that computing was going to be the next 'Industrial Revolution' and we'd better do something about it I don't know.
our middle school had a single beeb - crappy programs, like maths space invaders yawn
high school had a dozen or so, but we didn't get a sniff at them until half way through the 3rd year (you know, when most high schools started at the 2nd year and went on to 5th?)
no IT in the 2nd year
3rd year, it was just dull crusty old books about punch holed readers and ****e
then when the 5th years more or less leave in April except for exams, we started to get to use them.
boring, uninspiring crappy programs, loaded on by mongs who didn't understand them and just supervised us
4th year computer science, just programming BASIC, led by a boring twerp who hated sound, moving graphics, colour, and basically pissed all over anything that wasn't dull and boring, and seemed to worship TESCO I think.
:lol: What mode though? Some modes are much easier than others.
I struggle to get over 100. I am utterly crap at every game ever, even ones I make. I remember actually filling up the screen with worm while at school though - but I had to stop my game because I had to go to a class. I remember being robbed of an ultimate score, or something. There were probably legends at my school about what happened when you reached 1000.
I stumbled uppon this photo when looking for something completely different on-line. It got me thinking and reminiscing. Do you remember when schools had 'a' one) computer and that a school getting a computer was a news worthy event.
Do you remember your first school computer experience?
I do we had a research machines Link 480Z. I remember I was 7 and it was just before I got my spectrum. The computer was in a small but well lit stock room. I got told off for pressing the keys to hard and sneezing near it. I remember we played some kind of adventure game, but I don't remember quite what.
This is not a photo of my school, but does remind me very much of the attitude. Look at them so proud.
Yes!! I remember first hearing about the Apple II the primary school I went to had. There was of course before that the "mythical" school computer, that no pupil had seen. But that there was hints that it did exist. Turned out to be stored in the caretakers cupboard if I recall correctly. Boy was it a treat when our class's turn to use it came! All I can remember now was that we got to play Space Invaders, but we had to pair up to use the keyboard - apparently the teachers had not got the hang of Space Invaders and the complicated key combinations of left / right / fire.
I think we should go back to one computer per school for primary schools!
yer give em a bit of slate and them flappy desks *WITH* ink well...
I'd say them fountain pen, but thats too hi tech.. I recall having them desks, I found em pretty cool.
right off to woolworths to make out like it's 1978 to buy some plimsolls.. or perhaps when I was 14.. a nice pair of woolworths own "addidas 4 stripe" hehe . next to the ladybird books and the bargain bucket of music , including top of the pops. the local was the only place I played a vectrex.. and the place where I saw pud pud and didn't buy it... grrr.
Comments
Much to my confusion I managed to get a "Winchester Error" once during a Computer Studies lesson.
What does it say?
Just tried it in an emulator... It says "Silly". Yup, that's a good one! :)
Many programs were written on the 480z, but all have now been lost.
STplot 10,10,20,30 and PUT 7 were commonly used within the games for graphics and sound.
Download the latest version of Bomb Munchies Ver2210 4th July 2020
IT was a whizzy new subject so the teacher was our regular maths teacher who they figured probably knew a bit about computers. He didn't and was behind any kid who had a home computer!
Before that I (late 80's) I remember also playing some very basic adventure games in there like Grannie's Garden, one where you were on a boat and another in a house. There was a resource management one too.
We also had an Archimedes with some fancy art package on it. We did some DTP on that one too I think.
The after school clubs were fantastic for what you could do and it didn't cost anything if you just wanted to turn up and do something. If you wanted to take home whatever it was at the end of a "project" then you could buy it at a very cheap price either as a lump sum or at a "pocket money" priced sub each week. They also made sure that the clubs were complimentary to each other so with the computer you could for example take a metalwork or woodwork course to make a case for it and that sort of thing.
Over the years besides the computer I made a fibreglass kayak and a 50cc go kart, learnt to play go and bridge to a decent standard, had a term of golf lessons and 5 years of guitar lessons.
It wasn't even a posh school, just the local Grammar. I bet half the things we did wouldn't be allowed now as either too dangerous or not PC enough, a shame because it was a major part of all our educations.
yeah in secondary school we also had a room of BBC B's and a teacher who didn't know much about them. I remember tricking him with the 'special key' function ( I think it was called that?) which was basically a copy/paste key that you could program iirc. whatever it was I'd make him think I'd typed loads of text in seconds and he couldn't work it out :lol: #banter
Frick didly what a brilliant school. Proper life skills being taught. That would be so useful now. Teach kids to build a tower from parts, install an OS, then program the computer. Maybe get a Pi, and have em build it. Brilliant.
Ah yes the hallowed 'Winchester hard drive'. I remember that when ever 'the Winchester' was mentioned by a teacher, it was done so with a look I can only pin down as a blend of smugness and pride. I was convinced saying 'The Winchester' gave them a boner. Diary Entry Mr Cronshaw 6th Feb 1985, So excited was I when we got 'The Winchester' I think a little bit of wee came out. I am now overlord of the school network, all shall hail me. Sadly 'The Winchester' was sadly underutilised, because woe betide, the pupils use it. There was about three programs stored on it, one was a word processors, the other was email but no one had an account, and the third was a dictionary for the word processor. It was networked to about 5 Link 480z which later migrated to the English dept. Next we got RM Nimbuses.
Below a very typical scenario, woe betide the students ever get to touch it.
or sneaking games on, that one was not supposed to play on school equipment.
It came locked in a kind of mobile fort knox though - and we spent loads of time "playing" that turtle game or I think Puff the magic dragon
Secondary school was BBCs and old PCs
The Speccy was terribly unreliable though (right from the get-go it wouldn't run the few 16K machine code games that were available - they always crashed - no idea what the problem was but I suspect probably duff RAM or it was one of the really early ones without the various fixes for the ULA). The Speccy died completely in fairly short order and got sent off for repair and upgrade to 48K at the same time and it worked great from then on.
The following year I think we got another couple of Spectrums plus one BBC Micro.
Later on (probably 1985-1986 or so) we got an econet network of BBC Micros in a lab. That's when the fun really started, while isolated computers were great, and being able to check out your latest pirated acquisitions on a C-90 tape was fun, having an actual network made it awesome.
171! I'm deffo better at it now than I was back then :lol:
238... the challenge begins...
Cool.
I remember, that our Nimbii had not floppy drives just blank plates where the floppy should go. I was quite disappointed, and wondered how one would get the data in/out not being fully aware of the capability of networked computers.
Unlike what a lot of people have said here the RM, Apple and ITTs weren't locked up as incredibly we actually had a teacher in charge of computing before the government decided that all schools had to have computers. Don't know how that happened, whether the governors decided that computing was going to be the next 'Industrial Revolution' and we'd better do something about it I don't know.
Regards,
Shaun.
high school had a dozen or so, but we didn't get a sniff at them until half way through the 3rd year (you know, when most high schools started at the 2nd year and went on to 5th?)
no IT in the 2nd year
3rd year, it was just dull crusty old books about punch holed readers and ****e
then when the 5th years more or less leave in April except for exams, we started to get to use them.
boring, uninspiring crappy programs, loaded on by mongs who didn't understand them and just supervised us
4th year computer science, just programming BASIC, led by a boring twerp who hated sound, moving graphics, colour, and basically pissed all over anything that wasn't dull and boring, and seemed to worship TESCO I think.
:lol: What mode though? Some modes are much easier than others.
I struggle to get over 100. I am utterly crap at every game ever, even ones I make. I remember actually filling up the screen with worm while at school though - but I had to stop my game because I had to go to a class. I remember being robbed of an ultimate score, or something. There were probably legends at my school about what happened when you reached 1000.
which later became to be owned by a German software publisher called Magix.
http://bbc.godbolt.org/
Yes!! I remember first hearing about the Apple II the primary school I went to had. There was of course before that the "mythical" school computer, that no pupil had seen. But that there was hints that it did exist. Turned out to be stored in the caretakers cupboard if I recall correctly. Boy was it a treat when our class's turn to use it came! All I can remember now was that we got to play Space Invaders, but we had to pair up to use the keyboard - apparently the teachers had not got the hang of Space Invaders and the complicated key combinations of left / right / fire.
yer give em a bit of slate and them flappy desks *WITH* ink well...
I'd say them fountain pen, but thats too hi tech.. I recall having them desks, I found em pretty cool.
right off to woolworths to make out like it's 1978 to buy some plimsolls.. or perhaps when I was 14.. a nice pair of woolworths own "addidas 4 stripe" hehe . next to the ladybird books and the bargain bucket of music , including top of the pops. the local was the only place I played a vectrex.. and the place where I saw pud pud and didn't buy it... grrr.