Those of you with a penchant for old computers or video game consoles know that Android makes a great emulation platform. Now you can add the BBC Micro to the list of supported virtual systems. Developer Little Fluffy Toys, Ltd has released the first publicly available version of Beebdroid as a side-load app, with an Android Market release expected sometime in the future.
For the uninitiated, the BBC Micro is not a tiny, slightly stuffy news anchor who shouts out understated headlines from your shirt pocket. No, the BBC Micro was a standardized set of computers and operating systems funded by the British Broadcasting Company in the early 80s. It was distributed to classrooms across the UK as part of a nationwide literacy program, and by a happy coincidence, it got a lot of children interested in computers andd technology. You can think of it as the Macintosh for a generation of British youngsters.
The app is still in early beta, and currently the developer is not posting it to the Android Market. If you’d like to download Beebdroid and try it yourself, just head on over to littlefluffytoys.com/bd.apk (direct link) and install it via your phone’s browser or file explorer. For those with a healthy appreciation for computer science history, it’s a guaranteed nostalgia trip.
[via Twitter]
Amazing – Even a quick test with “Mode 7” seemed to work. Shame my real keyboard on the Asus Transformer dock does not work with it at the moment otherwise I’d be writing programs already!
The screen keyboard works well but is just frustrating to write a long program with!
Went to “Load” not expecting to find anything and my mind was nudged back to the 80’s !!!
Well done: Sorry, but the page you were looking for is not here.
Avaughan: there’s a problem with the link from this page (it seems to be relative to androidcommunity.com!) You need to copy/paste, or possibly click the http://www.littlefluffytoys.com/bd.apk that’s in this comment.
wow we had a bbc micro computer in our classroom at school and i remember i was number four in the queue and the programme was a counting game ten green bottles and when you pressed the space bar all the bottles disappeared to reveal a big black cat sitting on the red-brick wall happy memories