BBC BASIC for Windows

In this section you can find information and downloads for the various utilities and games I've created using BBC BASIC for Windows (henceforth referred to as BB4W).

Select the item you want to view by clicking on any of the sub-sections under BBC BASIC on the left-hand side of the screen.

In the meantime, a bit of background on me and my relationship with BASIC, games and "stuff":
I was born in 1966, and was a young boy in an easily-impressible age when the first video games started appearing. Spent practically all my allowance and what money I could scrape together (doing odd jobs for the neighbours and such) in the arcades, playing classics like Galaxians, Defender, Donkey Kong and Crazy Climber to name but a few.

Fast forward some years, and the first boom of home computers had entered the scene. I was ecstatic to say the least, and spent a long time deciding which computer I would buy as soon as I had the money. As it happened, I ended up deciding on the most expensive one available on the Danish market: An Acorn BBC Model B. If I'm not much mistaken, the suggested retail price in the UK was £399 - I ended up paying £699 for mine. To this day, it's the only thing I have ever truly saved up for, and that took me a whole long year.

The BBC model B came, of course, with BBC BASIC. A lot of my spare time (most of it actually) was spent reading the manual, experimenting with bits of my own code, scratching my head when same code failed to do anything like it was supposed to, and so forth.
My love for that piece of hardware and its BASIC was further affirmed when I moved to the UK, where I got a job in the film business and discovered (to my joy) that the "beeb" was not a geek-item over there, but was to be found just about everywhere. Joined the local computer club where many a Tuesday evening were spent in the happy company of like-minded and friendly people, drinking a couple of pints (too many, sometimes), playing and/or swapping the latest games, discussing our latest techniques for removal of various copy-protection schemes present on said games, showing off our latest (often abysmal, sometimes good) pieces of home-produced code, and generally having a good time.

The good times were not to last though: On moving back to Denmark from the UK, the postal service managed to completely smash my beeb and my Microvitec 14" colour monitor into tiny little fragments that even the most professional solvers of jigsaw puzzles could not hope to put back together again in a million years.
The good news was that I had it insured for a lot of money. Went and spent the money on a Commodore Amiga. That turned out to be a somewhat complicated marriage, but that's a story for another time...

Fast forward once again, this time around some 20-odd years. I can only remember being bored and restless one evening, and then some Google search criteria that I cannot recall brought me to Richard Russells' BBC BASIC For Windows homepage. I immediately downloaded the demo, and it did not take more than one or two minutes seeing the included demo programs running before I decided to purchase the full version.

It was better than my wildest dreams come true. It was, to all intent and purposes, the BASIC I knew so well and fondly remembered. Not only that, but given the quantum leap computer hardware had taken since the beeb was invented, it ran everything I threw at it at breakneck speeds.

Anyway, I could go on and on - have not even touched the subject of the "wonderful" world of 6502 assembler, but that may be the subject for another day, in another section entirely.

All but done with the rambling, just one more thing: You may notice the lack of downloadable source code on this site. This is not because it's filled with patent-pending algorithms of my own invention, nor do I hide spyware or other nastiness in my code - it's simply because I'm not confident enough that my code would stand the scrutiny of better and wiser programmers than myself.

Enjoy your visit, and thanks for stopping by. If you have any questions whatsoever, or you just want to say hello, you may do so by clicking on the "Kontakt" link.