More BBC Micros in the garage, including a screen I'd not seen before on the 6502 Second-Processor version of Elite.

Another chapter in the Econet saga - this time using an SJ Research MDFS system to provide a fileserver appliance. I wired up the half-height rack, put the A4000 and A5000 machines in to support it, and wired the Econet across the garage to the desk. Hurrah!

The annual Acorn show at Wakefield. I seemed to be the only 8-bitter there this year, demonstrating the Domesday Project and some other interesting bits and bobs.

Throughout the years it's been known as Wakefield BBC Micro User Group, Wakefield Acorn Computer Group, and Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club - but in its many incarnations it's gone on for 25 years (I first attended in 1985!). I took along the Domesday Project setup which got quite a bit of interest.

Trying out some of the Micro Primer series, Podd, and of course more Granny's Garden at Ellie's request.

One of the classic BBC Micro educational games, under an emulator on a Mac. Ellie tried it, and enjoyed it. Oh, and I realised how much Beeb stuff I had stashed away *blush*

After some fiddling, I finally got the Domesday system running and was soon browsing the Community Disc. Some pics here of the steps along the way including debug screens, and showing the genlock overlay in action on the BBC Master AIV.

For the first time, Joel held a stand at the Acorn show selling 8-bit hardware and lots of different (and interesting) boards and software. There was much interest, and not much was left at the end of the day!

After many months of poking, prodding, soldering, sourcing and things, I managed to get a 3-station Econet working tonight. Phew, now I've got to work out how to do the next stage - dialup BBs!

Some more of the BBC Micro kit arrived to build the Econet, and I wanted to get some pics of the odd Watford Electronics kit I'd acquired.

I don't think friends and colleagues are fully appreciating the level of 8-bit madness which is in progress, so here's an update.

Picked up a pile of Beeb stuff from Teeside tonight - including a Master 512 with DR-DOS and a 30M hard disk, a couple of Beebs, an Electron with various interfaces, a pile of disk drives, and a metric f***ton of original games, ROMs and manuals.

I've just taken delivery of an original Domesday laserdisc player with SCSI interface and stuff. Woohoo.

I'll be honest, I went for the BBC Micro stuff - there was a fully working Acorn Domesday system and a development Acorn Phoebe (RiscPC 2) run by the guys from BinaryDinosaurs, as well as a mobile phone development kit running BSD. I was good to meet a few old friends too.

My old BBC Micro fetish has returned, and I'm building stuff together using old bits to create among other things a working Econet system with authentic BBC hard disk stuff. Oh, and there's a v23 modem involved too. Ohhhh the evil.

BBC Micros, Ben stuck in his chair, etc.etc...

I hitched a ride with Ron, to go to the Acorn World Show at Wembley and buy some more bits to pimp up my A310. Otis and Gareth came along too, and we met some fun people including the Acorn Computing magazine crowd.