Hello again.
Well, it's been about 14 years since
the last 8BS disc was issued
(29/10/1998), doesn't time fly?
So, why another one? No reason really,
other than finding a couple of messages
on the Winchester disc image when I was
looking for something else. It's been a
long time since I last looked at that
image, for quite a few years, I was
unable to read it. Even now I have only
found one program that will read it, a
simple split program by Wouter Hobers
X ADFS. I found the unused messages and
thought it would be a pity not to use
them (even though there were only a
couple).
I don't think there is any point in a
detailed recap of what has gone on in
the intervening years between 1998 and
2013 as it is all documented on the 8BS
website on the 'History' page there.
Main changes since 8BS-66 are:
Lost all my BBC equipment to a
condensation disaster in the loft.
Recently acquired a new setup, a Master
128 using John Kortink's GoSDC and my
TV. Hopefully K8G will help me out with
some other bits I am after.
As I write this bit in 2012, I have put
an announcement on the 8BS website that
8BS-67 is under construction and sent a
similar message to the BBC Mailing List
asking for submissions. I was amazed to
get a response from a couple of people
requesting User IDs. Even some
submissions from CNC.
I suppose it all started when I was
trying to put the old magazines on
line. For a few years, I had been
thinking about the best way to do it
and had written a script to present the
raw extracted teletext files from the
disc images in HTML. It worked to an
extent but my programming skills didn't
extend to making a decent job of it, it
was difficult getting all of the
teletext codes converted. It would have
been a massive job defining all of the
characters. Instead, I put a 'cover
all' graphic where any of the graphic
codes were, so a lot of the content of
the magazine went unseen. Another
option tried was an on-line emulator,
that as I write this is still on the
8BS website, but it doesn't work very
well at all. There is a website at
http://8bs.nerdoftheherd.com/about.html
where Matt Robinson has converted
8BS-51 to 8BS-66 to HTML. His
conversion gave me a few ideas with
what is the current conversion page on
the 8BS website. On the 8BS website now
are all of the 8BS magazines up to and
(hopefully if I remember) including
this one. The plain text files are
displayed as such. Teletext *RUN files
were painstakingly screen dumped from
Beebem 4 and joined into png images. I
adapted the *RUN code so it would
display a page at a time rather than a
line at a time which speeded up the
process considerably, then using
Irfanview 'Create Panorama' vertically
to join the dumps. Double height went
a bit odd if it was at the top or
bottom of a page so that needed fixing.
The text of those Teletext *RUN files
was converted and placed alongside the
png images. BASIC listings were made
and images converted. Some sounds were
recorded. Some video was created too,
animated Christmas menus, other things
like the Star Wars demos and the
Musical Snowmen were turned into
movies. An advantage of all this is
that the whole 8BS magazine library is
now searchable using the 8BS website
search. A disadvantage was that there
were large quantities of telephone
numbers and addresses amongst this
stuff that I am fairly sure folks would
not be happy about being available on
the internet, so the longest job was
(hopefully) removing all of these.
I discovered two of the disc images had
become corrupted at some stage. 8BS 36
and 39 had their side 2s messed up.
Fortunately I had backups from very
early on that were OK but there must be
several hundred of these bad copies
milling around the place.
Something else I noticed was that
Steven Flintham's Prisoner's Dilemma
competition didn't ever elicit a
response from anyone. I have added that
to this magazine disc in an effort to
revitalise it.
This last magazine is a bit sparse
really, despite the heroic efforts of a
few contributors to who I am very
grateful. So my apologies for that, it
has been in the pipeline for almost a
year. There are new submissions from a
couple of members. There are no
messages such as adverts and help that
appeared in the earlier magazines
although there are some new messages
there. There are a couple of messages
that I found on my Winchester disc
image, it was these that gave me the
idea to produce this last magazine.
The magazine is padded out with games
that I found on the internet. They
required the text at this URL to
accompany them:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ but that
was not really possible due to the file
size, it more than filled a DFS disc on
its own. Instead I have placed a copy
of the text in the zip file along with
the magazine disc image.
Thank you to Joel for the space for the
8BS website on courgette. Thank you to
the dedicated band of contributors that
in the past and currently send stuff to
8BS for the website. As I type this,
there are 45.7 gigabytes of downloads
available on the 8BS website. Keep it
coming, there are a lot of people that
appreciate it.
Well, that's all folks! I hope you find
a few minutes entertainment on here.