A trip to RetroClinic

I recently took my BBC Master microcomputer to RetroClinic for a bit of tender loving care. Mark did an excellent job of fitting a new cherry keyboard as the original keyboard had developed a fault. I also walked away with a new Phillips monitor which has much-improved picture quality than the old one.

Mark also sold me a copy of Wordwise-Plus. This is the word-processor I used when I was grasshopper high to a knee. In fact, I remember writing both GCSE and A-level coursework on this trusty word-processor and it even followed me to university (although it did not survive the experience).

Cherry keyboard for the BBC Master (thanks to Mark from RetroClinic). Looks like a 'beeb' keyboard, feels like a modern cherry keyboard. These keys actually feel soft. The original 'beeb' keyboards were designed to be school-level indestructible as they were intended to survive half a term with those monsters in 3B Mathematics on a Friday afternoon.

Wordwise-Plus comes from a time called '1984', when, as well as all the population being victims of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and propaganda, word-processors were non-WYSIWYG. This means that in order to control the layout of your text you had to enter control codes. This was way more fun than modern word-processors with their boring icons, mouse pointer-aiming, perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and propaganda.

Wordwise-Plus menu in glorious MODE 7 running on original hardware and Phillips monitor.

Wordwise also had a built-in macro scripting language. When I was a youngster living on Airstrip One, I actually coded loads of scripts to perform various jobs on my school work, such as applying headers and footers, automatically creating cover pages and numbers, etc. Youngsters today don't know they are born!

One page from the extensive scripting language manual which is now my bedtime reading for the next week, even though page one warns you that this manual doesn't make good bedtime reading.

My blog: full of awesome goodness and other relics of the Cold War.

I have absolutely no doubt that you will be finding some Wordwise-plus code floating around on these pages sometime soon. I also intend to write a post about how tremendous those red BBC micro function keys are at some point (hint, they are really tremendous).

Mark performing surgery on the Beeb. That's one Speech ROM going in as well as a battery pack replacement.

Th...th..th..that's all folks!

If you enjoyed this post, then you might want to visit your doctor and explain the symptoms to him or her. If you are sticking around for a bit anyway, then you might want to read about some Raspberry Pi posts. If you hate this blog, then you will really hate this post, not to mention this one.