BBC Micro at 40: How it inspired a generation of coders [video]

Re:BBC Micro at 40: How it inspired a generation of coders [... by TheOtherHobbes on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @09:33AM (#26250184)

The Spectrum and ZX81 were super-affordable, so a lot of working class families bought them, often as games machines at Christmas.

Some of those kids made a career out of them. If you programmed a game you could set up a business for the price of some cheap print ads and cassette labels.

The BBC was for (mostly) posh parents who could afford the inflation adjusted equivalent of £1500 to £2500 (with disk drives) on something more serious. It was really the UK's Apple II.

But they were still cheap computers. An S-100 business system would cost between two and five times as much as a BBC, and a low-end minicomputer like a PDP-8 or low-spec PDP-11 would be more like five to ten times as much.

IMO Acorn lost out by selling to education. If they'd sold a rebadged version as a business machine with support they'd have stormed the market.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:BBC Micro at 40: How it inspired a generation of coders [... by UncleSlacky on Wednesday February 24, 2021 @01:00PM (#26253240)

I think the business market was the target of the Torch/Acorn joint venture, which never really got off the ground:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torch_Computers#Acorn_Computer...

[ Parent | on HN ]