Title : BBC Master 512 55555 1 222
Date : 5th May 2025 5 11 2 2
Author : Vela025 5555 1 2
Category: Old Tech, Life 5 1 2
5 1 2
I've had a rest from the BeeBrowser this 5555 111 22222
week following last weeks phlog post, but
not the Beeb in general. It's been a busy week with college and
lots of new plant names to learn; as a side note I use an app
called Knowt to create flash cards to help me learn the plant
names, which I share with the class but recently they've updated
the website, so now it's pretty un-usble and the images on the
flash cards appear tiny which is rather frustrating! This week
we were working on open seed sewing techniques (when to use
each) and next week we're going to be creating baskets and
planters although I have no idea why it's not in the RHS spec
and we already have a lot to try to get done before out next set
of exams in June. I really wish they'd just focus on covering
the syllabus instead of a scatter gun approach where we miss a lot
of content. Because of this I end up creating a website that
goes topic by topic, although I'm a bit behind in populating it
and obviously I haven't done any of it this bank holiday
weekend!
Instead I've been faffing with setting up my BBC Master 512 DOS
partition, which I am writing this phlog post on and if all goes
well I should be uploading straight from the Beeb DOS partition
to my phlog server. It has been quite a journey (and I still
don't think quite as good as the previous HD image which I
lost). You can find out more about my M512 setup on the BBC
Micro pages form the main Gopher page.
I decided to try and use the GEM Programmers Toolkit this time
to create a basic terminal application, but I can't get Turbo C
to link with it, despite following the manual to the letter
..TWICE. So have given up on that for now, I did find that the
earlier versions work with Lattice C so I might try that.
The Resource Toolkit (which makes the GUI elements) can export
for BASIC, C, FORTRAN, PASCAL but I've only found the Pascal
GEM libraries so far, ideally BASIC would be my choice but I
have had no luck with that; the closest I came was X86Basic (or
similar) which mentions supporting the Atari GEM calls, but not
sure it would work with the "IBM" Gem. After a few hours in and
out I then found an obscure website that had a source file for a
terminal already made, it just needs to be compiled in C
(Lattice) so will report back if I have much luck. As the M512s
RS-432 port does work under DRDOS...but has to be accessed
legally via OS calls and not directly via memory address /
hardware. Thus far I've only found one DOS package that supports
it called Deputy.
We took my mom for a belated Mothers Day trip the weekend to a
local garden centre and cafe (one she's not been to before), I
chose it as it has a private garden to walk around which is
lovely, but the weather took a turn for the worse once we'd ate
?and had a look around the shop. We decided not to brave the
gardens and instead will go again some time soon. I think she
enjoyed the people watching, I am a little concerned about her
memory as she doesn't always seem "present" but I'm keeping a
look out more telling signs.
Today we straightend up the Christmas tree we brought in January,
it still seems alive...but only just. There's a few brown
needles so we've moved it to somewhere it gets a bit more light
(but nothing too harsh) and topped up the pot with some compost.
Somehow horsetail (Equisetum telmateia) had managed to take
root in the pot since Jan; it was massive. Oddly our Rhodi has
decided to give up, it's not flowered yet (although does have
buds) but the leaves have flopped down and it looks very unwell.
I think we've only had it around 10 years it would be nice if
it could cling on a little longer!
Right wish me luck I'm about to try to upload this to the phlog
via Deputy and Z-Modem! I'm not 100% confident that it saves as
a raw TXT either from 1st Word Plus [we shall see]..toodles
