Badly designed???
I must refute Tony Hopkinson's comment of the BBC Micro being badly designed. It had many attributes that computers of today would do well to emulate, for example:
1) Instant boot up - because the operating system was in ROM. So it couldn't be corrupted/infected and it occupied no RAM.
2) Hardware input/output built in and controllable from the built-in BASIC interpreter
3) Software available in ROM (simple to plug in) and instantly switchable - up to 4 applications inside the basic computer. No complicated installation procedure to go through. Also piracy was difficult - unless you had access to a PROM programmer - not an everyday device.
4) Second processor option - if you wanted more power you could buy a second processor and attach it to the main computer by a high speed link.
5) BASIC language included OS calls, Assembler and sophisticated graphics commands including FILL which would fill any outline shape (including irregular hand drawn shapes) with a colour - try that in Visual Basic - it's not available.
6) Hardware switchable colour palette - great for animations. It enabled you to do things you can't easily do with today's graphic cards.
7) Teletext mode
8) Up to 80 columns of text on the screen - rare in home computers in the '80s
I was so impressed with the design of the BBC Micro that when I learned of the new ARM chip I got a job working for Acorn (who designed the BBC Micro) and was involved in the development of the first ARM-based desktop computer, at the time (1987) the fastest desktop computer in the world. Great times!
