Why This Monitor is Seared into your Brain | Nostalgia Nerd
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 พ.ค. 2024
- Get (sponsor) Surfshark VPN at surfshark.deals/NostalgiaNerd - Enter promo code NostalgiaNerd to get 83% and 4 extra months for FREE during Black Friday! ~ Back in the 1980s, the Computer Literacy Project and the government's campaign to get Micros in schools, turned the UK upside-down. As children, no longer were classrooms a place of paper and chalkboards; now we had technology in the corner, namely, the BBC Micro (for most schools, at least). But along with the iconic, sturdy lines of the BBC Micro, there was another piece of kit ever present, and that was the Microvitec Cuc 452. Where-ever the BBC went, the Microvitec Cub went, and so, UK kids in teh 80s were brought up, in part, by these screens. Learning to type through them, learning to game through them, and learning to develop through them. We really spent a lot of time looking at them, and for that reason, they're incredibly important.
Here then, is the story of Microvitec and their Cub monitors.
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0:00 Introduction
0:49 The BBC Micro
4:57 The Microvitec Cub Story
14:26 Is it a Good Monitor?
16:26 SurfShark
17:46 Microvitec After the Cub
19:22 Credits
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![[Vowel]물고기는 물에서 살아야 해🐟🤣Fish have to live in the water #funny](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3G9MH063Cx4/mqdefault.jpg)
Apologies to my non UK viewers. This monitor may not be specifically *seared* into your brains (although Cub monitors did make it to various countries). But I hope you enjoy the story, nevertheless.
If I can obtain an Apple II and a Sanyo monitor in the future, then maybe I can address the balance for those across the Atlantic.
ya. never heard of it. north america used american computers. apple ][e and commodore.
Indeed, my side of the Atlantic had Apple ][ computers in most schools in the 1980s. I started out on the ][+ (in glorious 6 colors!) and shortly afterward would encounter the ][e often in green screen.
Can't help you with an Apple II or a Sanyo, but I do live in Norwich and have an old BBC Master Compact and monitor in storage if you want it for any content. Haven't tried powering it up in 20+ years mind.
I'm in the US and have never used a BBC micro, but I still watched the entire video and learned something new. In our school district we had the old Tandy machines.
damn, you... you nailed it... though we had a POWER!.. pc... in the library... could play organ trail 3, had encarta... FVMS!, so... so many dead animals... I KILLED THEM ALL, and then died of cholera... before I could check out the next disk to continue.
Getting computers into schools was one of the most forward looking things the UK government ever did.
In 1989, we had one in a school of 1000 pupils. They properly hosed it. The kids in that clip did not go to my school.
My primary school’s solitary BBC Micro was shared with other schools. It used to come to live at our school for a term before being taken away for the rest of the year.
And then it was all backwards regressive nonsense from there
I worked at Microvitec 1994-97 - great times before being made redundant due to LCD screens becoming the rage and unfortunately they never kept up with the changing times.
I hate it when companies do that
It is always going to be a problem running ones existing technology and investing in new lines on a change in that technology - especially as components etc get smaller or integrated and labour costs become more expensive, The west seems to do the heavy lifting of design, while contracting out to other far east etc companies - whom then take the technology and re-badge it. Not helped that investment banks dont always fund sufficiently, or want too much of a take for the risk. But the dedicated and capable staff here show it can be done , in its niche now, to the present day
So did I. My dad worked on the design team ;)
Wonderful! I was taking a GNVQ at Dixons City Technology College in Bradford and went into the offices for a visit back in 1995 ish. :-). Worked on their 'Creator' software package to demo it too as part of the coursework. LOL. Interesting times!
was not so much the rage it was the Power usage.. lcd saves home hundreds now over there life time
The CUB monitors were and are excellent monitors. They sometimes get used by arcade cab owners to decase and use them in, as they do really have fantastic image quality (you have to mod a couple of bits on the chassis to change it from TTL to analogue RGB). I picked up a cocktail cab a few years ago which has one in. Also had an upright midi cab which had one in, the chassis had something faulty on it (badly sparking driver transformer if I remember correctly) and I didn't have a spare part at the time so I just replaced it with a compatible 15khz arcade chassis, produced a brilliant picture. I have a 14" CUB in storage, but I also have a 20" CUB as well which is nice, didn't see many of those back in the day, and I haven't seen another one for years. I also have a multisync Acorn AKF monitor for testing 15khz, 24khz and 31khz arcade pcbs on, which I believe is built by Microvitec. I'm glad to own them!
In 1982 , when i was 12 we only had a ZX81 with the 16k pack and a Vic 20 with the 3k Superexpander in school. When my school upgraded to the C64 and Speccy 48k , the Vic was offered at a very small price (50 quid i believe) to any parents whose children were at my school. My dear old dad bought it for me and now i have it in a display cabinet here in the lounge. Thanks for this video , loved it 👍
These tech history docs are gold!
hell yes
It sort of saddens me that I grew up in a kind dark age when it comes to coding. The 70s and 80s had microcomputers in just about every school which, due to their limited processing power and storage, necessitated interaction via command line alone, and required kids to learn how to code in order to use them.
In the 90s and early 2000s (when I grew up), computers had GUIs, and almost all of our school instruction involved using that to do what we wanted. I really tried to get into coding. I joined the coding club at school, but it was mostly aimed at the older students, so I didn't understand what was going on. I also tried to learn coding myself, but it's hard to do something self-motivated like that when you're an adult, let alone just a child. I remember my IT teacher beaming with delight when he discovered that I had used a simple set of If statements in an Excel based form that was tasked with, because doing any actual "programming" was well above the requirements - _of my GCSE ICT course!_
In the late 2000s, I remember hearing on the news that they were going to reintroduce coding into the national curriculum - after I left school. "Good for them!" I thought, but felt jealous and even a little bitter that I also couldn't have that experience for myself. If coding is the new literacy, then I'm a 17th century peasant. 😥
You should be happy.😔😟 If you would have made something mildly successful 💰💰💰 you might have end up on Bill Gates his hitmen list.🥺🥺🥺😯
it’s never too late to start!
@@mrkitty777 what.
I also grew up in the GUI era of the 90s and 00s, and programming wasn't a thing for us, either. In fact, I grew up hating programming, having fancied myself a "hardware" person. I knew basic DOS commands and how to edit startup files, but making programs was alien to me.
Then much, much later, I entered grad school, and my program required that we learn SAS, a little SQL, some SPSS, and a miniscule amount of R. I thought I'd hate it, but, alas, I actually enjoyed it and became a data analyst intern for the local school district.
I still don't know BASIC or any of the explicit programming languages. Not like the kids back then, who had to write their own programs. I just know some data science and statistics stuff. But it's cool to see where things have originated.
ohhh no it is not
…yet?
I just brought two of these babies back to life on my channel. They are very easy to work on and built so well. The other point to mention is that there are many British components internally which seems odd now. They are too important to lose. I love its lack of subtlety. It's literally a cube, its handy for putting things on top. I love it and it'll be burned on my memory forever.
Had these in the classroom when I lived in Germany (British army school). We had one Windows PC and about 5 of these! Oh the memories!
Aaah the memories of playing "Frogger" on a BBC micro then after school heading down to the video Club to rent "Cannibal Holocaust" or any other "video nasties" best days of my life.
Superb! Back in the day I always assumed those Cub monitors simply came as standard with a Beeb, don't think I ever saw a Beeb connected to any other display in my school! Great to hear the story behind them, thanks for making this 😀
This is so interesting because I grew up with Commodore, the Apple IIe and the IBM 8086/8088, and have never seen the BBC micro before. I had no idea it existed. Very cool
I remember the massive static shock I would get leaning over the monitor to reach the power switch on the back. Happy primary school memories :)
Me too. You could hear the static crackling when you turned the screen off also.
Yes!
Getting suckered into being zapped was kind of a rite of passage for many schoolkids.
I was just going to mention this.
When you turned them off, you could put your hand on the screen and zap your class mates my touching them.
I remember these monitors very well
3:22 - it's interesting to note that The Computer Programme's first broadcast run was mid-afternoon, 3.05pm. It was repeated on Sunday mornings, and it wasn't until its third outing that it was finally shown in the evenings, but it was one of the last programmes of the day, typically between 11pm and midnight.
wow brings a lot of memories studying Computer Science in the 90s
in Denmark we had RC Piccoline forced upon schools (and they came with RC monochrome monitors) - RC is an akronym for "Regnecentralen", the state department probably best known for creating DASK. Not entirely sure what the hardware was in the Piccoline, but almost every Danish kid who went to public school in the 80s was exposed to them, and to us they're possibly just as iconic as your BBC Micro
Hi there,
I worked for another monitor manufacturer in the UK which was formed in 1976, we did do a cub equivalent but was more expensive so did not sell that many.
The company was called "Digivision" and was based in Leicester were were more an industrial supply company which supplied monitors to British rail, London Underground the national coal board and British Steel, we also supplied lots of mutlisync monitors (Yes we were early in doing multi standard monitors) for the yuppies in dealer desks in London this was really the cause of the company failure during the 1986 financial crash. Most of our orders disappeared over night the company was bought out in 1990 and the name was no more.
I remember these with much fondness, as I used them at school in Computer Studies O'Level classes on the BBC Micro. What stood out to me was how sharp they were and how bright the colours were compared to the blurry black and white image of my ZX81, or the dot-crawling, blurry colour TV picture of my friend's issue 1 ZX Spectrums.
Of course the most use I got out of them was playing the Acorn arcade rip-offs Planetoid, Snapper, and Rocket Raid at lunchtime in the School computer room, and these games truly looked arcade quality on them. Fun times!
@@fightswithstairs6292 My first computer program was written in 1977 on optical cards in maths class. You had to write out your BASIC program on paper, manually translate the ASCII codes to binary, then use a soft pencil to colour in the 'holes' that represented the binary code.
The cards would be sent off to a university to run on their mainframe, and two weeks later you'd get a printout back with 'syntax error at line 30' printed on it.
My school had a philips and a cassette drive, I tried computer club once, decided that it was too much aggro for the results back out in the time availible, but went to work with computers after college - inc IBM, DEC, Thorn EMI Fujitsu and others , from hard disk packs to many other loading and software. Cannot say I coveted a BBC - got a cheap 8088 IBM colour PC and used that at home and sold it for what I paid for it
We had RML machines at school, but I think even those had CUBs on them. I remember regularly getting a static shock off the screen and case when they were switched off.
Metal cases clearly had their ups and downs.
Even Sony PVMs are sometimes a bit shockey indeed.
I still use one fairly regularly. I used to enjoy all the tiny static shocks off the screen, like you could trace an invisible line that crackled under your fingertips
You needed to touch someone else’s arm first 🙂
The static shocks from those things were brutal!
Great video and remember them so well. All the ones in my school had a great picture, some even had attachments like a touch screen to go along with the other crazy peripherals such as the concept keyboard!
I was in Primary school from 1980 to 1986 (where I passed my 11+ and went to Grammar). I remember the BBC Micro, the CUB monitor and the disc drives with a Vivid fondness . VERY vivid memories as these were my first intro to computing and computers. 1984 I seem to remember. x. Another excellent video. Thanks. :)
We never had BBC Micro's at high school. Only at primary school. At high school we had Research Machines LINK 480Z and they were still using them when I got my Amiga 500 in 1987. I'm sure they used the Cub monitor though. A year or so later we had the RM Nimbus which used a 186, meaning it had compatibility issues.
RM I used to loove those!
Ironically, I think they chose the Nimbus because it had compatability with BBC Basic.
My primary had a 480Z too and a 186 nimbus. 480Z, of course, was pared with a CUB. Sadly, never used a BBC - used to try and program the 480Z but none of my teachers knew how and the library books I now realise were for different BASICs so never worked. Oh well :)
Nimbus were glorified word processors.. was disappointed that my high school got a load of them. And only 2 Archimedes.
@@AcornElectron they had Snake and that train game... :)
Great content about an often overlooked and forgotten peripheral. Easy to listen to, your commentary style is superb.
There were still a few kicking around in the British army into the early 2010s (I wish I was joking!).
The vast majority were replaced with Pentium 4 era Dell desktops and old 4:3 LCD monitors, but a few still hung around in various places, having escaped the modernisation purges along with a very few VT100 style terminals.
They were nearly all replaced in the early 2000s by PCs that ran emulators for the various old systems. Worked surprisingly well!
Not sure how much longer they stayed around, as I left in 2011.
By contrast, my local school got rid of their last BBC micro & cub monitors by the late 90s! My primary school still had them into the late 90s.
Comp never had them, instead having relied on a handful of IBM PC's ranging from the original PC to various 386/486 systems until 2003, when they used a PFI programme to get a new school building along with several *thousand* P4 era IBM Netvistas.
The comp wasn't badly funded. Rather they straight up refused to use the BBC's because "we can't get Welsh translations for them or any of the material" aka "local businessman friend of the headmaster wanted a favour". That was typical of Welsh medium education!!
I remember spending alot of time playing text adventures at breaktime and dinner time at school, we were on the bread line, and couldn't afford a computer at home, but I spent my childhood roaming the streets, finding old TV's and electronics in skips, to learn and teach myself how they worked, one day I was given a zx spectrum 48k that was not working and managed to fix it, and opened up my world the Beebs were basically challenger 2 tanks with a keyboard 😂, I used to watch them being tested as a kid as Vickers defence system was hakp a mile from my house and so was the testing ground, man the stuff we used to do as kids, none of this wrapping you in cotton wool or protecting you from bad words,😂😂
High schools in New Zealand were still using the BBC Micros with this monitor running off a giant hard drive (11 inch ?) in 1993. Still remember programming Axel F. Those were the days.
Yes, i remember these very well, was so exciting to see these & the bbc micros at school, even though i remember never really having much free time to use them on my own, usually had a teacher trying to show us things and ending up just wasting the hour which went all too quick :)
Wow brought back some great memories we had one at home due to some slightly dodgy family friends so by the time I my brother's and I went to primary school we were showing the teachers how to use the system they wer gobsmacked started a life long passion that not so little BBC micro and cub partnership great memories thanks for bringing back some beautiful life long memories
The EMC test lab I worked for back in the 90s did a lot of the CE testing for the Microvitec monitors. Some really good people worked there. We also had one of their Cubs hooked up to the BBC Micro we had in the lab for some of the automation, way before we went down the PC route for equipment control
I had my own Beeb B in the early 80s, as well as our school having 1 or 2, my Dad was a teacher so he brought home the cub monitor and 5" disc drives/ games at the weekends, That monitor used to give a right powerful static shock and weighed an absoulute ton!
That was lovely, it's amazing that a Government initiative actually did some good!
A CONSERVATIVE Government initiative no less.
@@tibsie Absolutely!
Another excellent video ! Learned so much from this - even though I grew up with BBC B's and Microvtec monitors in school. Thanks a ton!
brilliant video, i was always curious about the cub monitors.
Had one of those monitors with a BBC Micro. Remember later trying it out with Castle of Illusion on the Mega Drive via RGB and it looked absolutely beautiful…
Yup, I grew up at a school with a lab full of Masters and these monitors. Lovely things. I've always liked the subtle industrial design to them, with the non-nonsense practical cube and the contrasting dark brown plastic trim at the front with the symmetrical CUB logo and power light adding two spots of colour. Simple but surprisingly subtle. I've always wondered how stackable they were, and whether it'd be possible to make a video wall from them.
This one brought back great memories!
Luckily my secondary school seemed to had invested heavily in computers and I remember walking in to one of three computer rooms during my first week there, and being confronted with about thirty BBC Micros and glowing Cub monitors.
Exciting, static-shocked times!
Got sick of the electric shock if you touched metal case and turned the monitor off or on
Great video, brings back a lot of happy memories (remarkable considering I hated school). In our primary school we had 3 or 4 Beebs with these monitors as well as two Acorn A3000s, the latter were popular thanks to the game "The Crystal Rainforest". I think we also had an Archimedes but my memory is fuzzy now. When we went up to secondary school we had 2 beebs left with the computer of choice being the Acorn Risk PC 600, though the IT head had a Risk 700 and some RISC handheld device which he infamously crushed one day after leaving it in his back pocket and sitting down on a desk. They also had 4 IBM PCs and an old Amstrad, the PCs were networked and had Doom 2 installed, ah happy days ;)
I used BBC micros (with this monitor) very briefly in primary school in 94/95 before we got Acorn Archimedes machines, then eventually windows PCs. But when I moved to secondary school there they were again! This was well into the 2000s, there were some specific programs that the science dept. used which they hadn't quite parted with yet. They also used one for the annual house quiz.
Yeah, there were quite a few BBCs hooked up to run expensive lab equipment in academic institutions that hung around for ages because of the cost of replacing the equipment.
Still got my acorn atom, fantastic machine to start with microprocessors. Also I saw the Newbrain flashing by. I used to work for a Dutch company who has bought the rights for this machine after they lost the deal with BBC. Thanks for the memories.
The best fun we had back in the day was running our hands up and down the screen to charge up with static and then slowly moving our fingers toward the metal case, seeing the purple spark when it arced, followed by 15 seconds of shouting "OW! OW! OW!" continuously 😆
The beeb, Clare board and floor turtle:) loved playing with those at school back in the late 80s, early 90s:)
Cool little background story!
Frankly as a cross canal dweller, I’d never thought about this. The BBC was even rarer here than the already rare Speccy. But now that you mentioned it, it’s always the same monitor and I had quietly assumed that these were bundled deals from the BBC. Everyday you learn something new :)
Wasn't it all Commodore 64s, MSXs and the still British (but probably rebadged) Amstrad CPCs over there?
@@GeoNeilUK here in NL it was mainly C64. And the odd MSX on schools (obviously since Philips made MSXs). I only ever seen one Schneider CPC at a friend’s house. I guess here in NL we were pretty much standardized on the C64 - even the Amiga didn’t really become as big as it was in Germany and the UK.
Germany had more Schneiders for sure but also a massive C64 community.
Speccies and BBC’s were and are about as rare as unicorns 😜
@@CallousCoder Yeah, I heard the CPCs and maybe Orics were big in France (though I'm guessing their schools were full of Thomsons) and behind the Iron Curtain it was all Speccy clones. And up in Scandinavia it was all about Nintendo!
@@GeoNeilUK I think you could be right. The DDR had the u880 (which I recently discovered when fixing an East German chess computers in my channel). So apparently they had a lot of Speccy clones I think. France was Amstrad domain for sure. Spain too, also a lot of MSX in Spain.
Superb monitor! The quality was (is) amazing! I really need one for my collection!!!
School and computers... at least not in the 80s here in Germany in primary schools. When i came to what you might call middle school, here in Germany it branches of into Hauptschule, Realschule, Gesamtschule and Gymnasium, we had 386es with some no-name B&W screens.
Another thing to mention is about the forward thinking of the internal electronic design in that the Cub Monitors were ALSO compatible with the last Micro to bear the BBC Badge , the A3000. If you look at the Service manual you can adjust the RGB offset values inside the monitor with jumper settings allowing it to be used as a Colour Text ONLY monitor, used in Airports and Train Stations etc back in the day BUT also forward compatible with computers that could display many colours instead of the standard BBC 8 colours. Truly amazing engineering foresight in the internal electronic design of these monitors. Allowed for a crisper display than on other similar specced monitors if you take full advantge of these different 'serviceable' modes/settings. Very smart design.
I guess the "apples for students" program wasn't international and the UK had these instead of Apple II computers
Correct. You had Apple II's with Sanyo screens, we had BBC Micros with Cubs
I don't think Apple II was ubiquitous at schools anywhere except for US, Canada, maybe some other countries in Americas. USSR had Apple II clone Agat among other more popular options (Yamaha MSX, BK-0010). West Germany i don't think had a single most prominent platform, but some schools i think had Apple II "Europlus".
At the end of the 70s US computers like the Apple ][, TRS-80 etc were expensive compared to their UK competition. I think this might have been due to exchange rates etc. It took a while for the Commodore PET to get traction, mostly because they already had a presence in Europe due to their calculator business, but they got into schools (the school I was at had a RML 380Z and several PETs by the time I left).
Yup. I remember doing the coupon program to get my elementary school Apple IIs.
BBC micro was also extremely common in Australian schools at that time though not with this monitor. The availability of education-focused software from the UK would have helped the decision. Plus realistically the name probably did count for something given that Australians are well aware of the existence of the BBC as a broadcaster, so anything they'd put their name on would've been perceived as credible despite not being the actual manufacturer.
Aaah the Cub! I always assumed they were bundled together!!
BBC Micro was definitely still in heavy primary school use up until about 1996-1997 in my school, there were a few Archimedes machines I remember but the BBC plodded on until then. I remember being tasked with installing software on the first PC the school bought around then and yeah, those cube monitors are seared into my brain.
I think high schools moved on earlier, I remember going and finding a computer lab of networked RM PC's and lots of Archimedes.
I so need one of these monitors. It will complete my setup with my twin Cumana disk drives! Hey, can't have everything at once! Great follow up video, mate :)
Nice video and yes I remember those monitors very well. My middle school (do we still have middle schools? no idea) had them for all the BBC computers and I do remember them being much clearer and easier on the eyes than my Commodore 64 on a cheap portable TV. Moving onto secondary school they also had many of these, some connected to a BBC Master instead (I think this was basically a BBC B with more memory and ROM slots and a separate number pad on the keyboard). They also had some RM Nimbus computers that were popular with schools for some reason and ran some sort of propitiatory OS and then finally moved to Windows 3.0. They did have some sort of BBC Emulation software on them so even once on Windows you could still run the BBC software (I know the school themselves used one of the database applications on the BBC for some of their own admin work).
Thankyou a Very interesting video , we have lived in Bradford since the 70’s , Tony Martinez had a small workshop in Clayton ( a village in the suburbs of Bradford) he would advertise refurbished Commodore 64’s for sale in the local paper telegraph & Argus , this is where I bought my Commodore 64 from in about ‘84. I remember Tony and his workshop well , he invited me in to his workshop and It felt like being in a mad scientists lab or something, with all the electrical components wires and monitors everywhere, but I remember him giving me a great price and being a really nice chap and the refurbished 64 lasted all through my young life and worked perfectly .
I have a couple of memories of the Microvitec Cub monitor from using them:
1. We used them with BBC Micros at school, and one Saturday we moved a couple of computer sets to the other block for some fete or something, and I was trying to carry the monitor in my arms, and at one point I felt like resting it on a balcony rail. I never did so, because I then had horrible thoughts about the Cub monitor toppling off the rail and smashing on the floor below!
2. I had an Amiga 500 at home and was still using Cub monitors with the BBC Micros at college, and asked the computer technicians if it was possible to have a Cub show Amiga graphics. They said no, because of the TTL connector only permitting 3-bit RGB for the BBC Micro at most. But they did say it was possible to adapt it to do so.
Ah, the Microvitec CUB. :-D
'My' first proper computer was a BBC B with twin 40/80 track FDD's and one of these monitors on loan from my dad's work...
(Easily the best computer set up I have ever had the pleasure of using when compared to anything else available at the time)
...oh, how I came down with a bump when his work wanted it back and my parents could only afford a ZX81.
I never heard of them in the '80s. The Atari 800 was standard in North American Schools.
Just bought my second working Cub monitor.
(BTW You forgot to mention that the Cumana floppy drive was synonymous with the trifecta -
so I had to get one ! Got Sentinel, Thrust and Elite too)
I have 2 x Amstrad (colour) CTM644s, 1x CBM 1085-D2, 1x CBM 1084S-D1,
1x CBM 1701 (the brown one), 1 x Philips CM8833 Mk II,
and the 2 Microvitec Cub 1431S4Cs (and 7 CRT TVs for my light gun and other games).
No other display can take me back to 1985/86 (my Computer Science class) just by showing the micro's boot screen.
Going to try and re-cap them all to preserve them till my last days.
I had to buy a second Cub as I would have been heartbroken if I had lost my only one.
You could give yourself or a fellow classmate a nasty static shock upon switching on the monitor. Just wipe off screen static and touch the metal outer rim of the screen (probably happened by accident for most) or swipe and touch a friends skin for some laughs .
Chucky egg, manic mole and frenzy were a favourite at my school in the late 80s early 90s on the BBC
Learn something new every day. I always thought cub was the company and a microvitec a specific type of monitor. I remember the advert in magazines of a basketball player graphic on the screen.
I started primary school in September 2000 and we were still using these until about 2002/3. I vividly remember them finally being sent to the tip. Our headteacher spent the day dismantling them and stamping on the innards "for security". Not sure why he gave the monitors the same treatment, but there you go.
Such a shame they were treated that way in the end, likewise for so much of what was produced back then and still today. And trust me, the headteacher did that because he didn't like them, not for any security concerns, it was his little bit of revenge. I had to contend with a head of similar character, he was a bit of a luddite when it came to tech, though I left for uni in '87, before the time when the hw was replaced.
Yes fond memories of these in lower and middle school. By the time I was in upper school, they'd all been phased out in favour of Acorn A3000's with their respective (Philips?) monitors, and then they too went in favour of 386/486 PC's. Even still, there was always a trusty old BBC Master tucked away in the library. Entertained many a rainy lunch break!
Rather oddly, it wasn't actually hooked up to a Cub monitor! Instead, a white 14" Philips CF1 monitor-style TV that featured the same DIN socket with TTL RGB input was in its place. Quite a neat thing in itself! Interestingly, there were a few tellies around during the microcomputer boom that carried the feature, or could have it fitted as an optional extra by the dealer. Often marketed as 'suitable for home computer use'..
It was quite a sorry sight towards around 1997 when a huge skip arrived by the school gates and all of the BBC's and monitors were thrown in. All looked as though they'd been deliberately broken in some way to prevent anyone taking them. Quite a shame..
In the US (at least in SoCal), the staple of 80s schooling was the Apple II and IIe.
That was followed by the Macintosh from the late 80s into the 90s. By the time I graduated in 2000, colorful iMacs were put in most classrooms after a local influx of school funding came in around 1997-98.
My first introduction to the BBC Micro was watching a Let's Play of _L - A Mathemagical Adventure_ by *ahope1* (aka Ant). Love British humour. I enjoyed this video of a BBC Micro peripheral.
These last two vids bring back some memories! Please can you do a follow-up on the Archimedes (and Virus, Interdictor and all the other games that we played in the computer lab in the late 80s!)
I'm kind of wondering which video will come first, Cumana or Watford Electronics?
I remember finding one of those RM computers in a cupboard in one of the science rooms in my school when I was in 6th form in the mid 90s. This took me straight back
Microvitec Cub monitors always used to give me electric shocks. Especially on the exposed metal bits. I was the "prefect" in charge of my high school computer lab and dreaded having to lean back to flick the power switch, as I would always get a jolt ! Perhaps there was some static electricity build up ? But I do remember the superb resolution and colour from them, especially as all us kids had our home computers hooked up to B&W televisions or the like....
We never had that, though we did have a strange cp/m clone or something named Tiki data (after kontiki),
Any norwegian kid about the same age will probably recognize it how british kids recognize this
Really enjoyed this vid and learnt something that I never knew before despite it surely being obvious yet never really though about
I had the Microvitec 1438S (irrc) on my Amiga. Had a native amiga connection and handled PAL and VGA modes. It was a great monitor!
I've just been in a Nostalgia Nerd video, well I can tick that off my bucket list. Also best possible topic it is the iconic CRT for the BBC B. I have one that needs servicing that I must get round to at some point.
You’re a Cub monitor?
@@SproutyPottedPlant 🤣
Hah, the blurred logo on TV is Šilelis, made way back when in Lithuania.
Parents had one of those.
I'm very lucky to have picked up a 653 recently, along with a beeb. Aside from the instant nostalgia overload, I was really impressed by the image quality & vibrance of the colours. Chuckie Egg just isn't the same on any other monitor!
Made in Bradford.
The flat top square shap was useful if you needed to move lots of them; you could stack them up on a trolley.
31 here, both my primary and secondary school were apparently hugely underfunded because both still had BBC Micros haha
Primary school, it was "the computer", we got a PC in the classroom when I was in Y3 and a full IT room with Encarta (Mmm nice) appeared when I was in Y4, it took over the music room.
Secondary school, there was one room in the block where all the history teachers form rooms were, and it had a full length desk that went across two walls resplendent with BBC Micros.
Good times.
I love the way you in detail explain the history of these, fascinating background and amazing quality for its time. However - it's very much an UK phenomena (sans the arcade machines) since the BBC micro was mostly popular in UK, the rest of the world - not so much.
I wish there was still an easy way to filter out American content.
Acorn and the BBC Micro did see usage in other Commonwealth countries. But as a whole you are correct to say it was very much a UK phenomenon.
Also what was not mentioned that while they dominated the schools market. They struggled to get a foothold in the home market which in the 80’s was mainly dominated by Commodore, Sinclair and Amstrad.
Acorn went on to create the ARM processor which they first used in their Archemeaies range of desktop computer and successor to the Micro. But they stopped making computers by the late 90’s due to dominance of Windows
Can't remember what kind of monitor they had hooked up to the Beeb at my school, but at home I had some 14" colour Grundig screen that had been modified to be a monitor for our Beeb - it had an added TV/monitor switch and the circular RGB video-input connector on the back of the case. It was a proper monitor with a wonderfully clear and sharp picture compared to, say, the Speccy on RF.
Love, love love the protruding screen PAL-N style monitors/TVs. I have an mid 80s Grundig TV set from Argentina. It needs to be serviced, but outside of it's home country a service would be considered something herculean.
I’m a 48 year old Canadian. No idea about this monitor but great video anyway. It was all Commodore Pet for me. Also remember the Icon computer with built in trackball in high school.
I had one of these at home with my BBC Micro. Wasn’t a rich little girl but had rich relatives, so they handed it down to me in 1990, knowing I loved computers 😊 My Microvitec 452 was a reliable and great display, the only drawback being that it required a *PRICE IN BLOOD* to use… or at least, in less fun, dramatic terms, it liked to give me a big, painful static shock whenever I touched the back corner of the monitor where the power switch was.
In my more cautious adulthood I think I’d be too worried to use a CRT monitor that liked zapping me, but to be fair I used that monitor for years without the problem getting any worse or any other faults developing. And the risk of a little zap was not _nearly_ enough to keep a young nerdy me away from the computer that both taught me programming and patience (waiting for games to load from tape)!
In the USA, the Commodore 1701 was a great companion to the VIC-20 and the Commodore 64 computers as the rear video inputs were separate Luma and Chroma connectors which gave very good picture quality. I think it was also suitable for VCR playback using the front mounted composite video inputs.
In 1982 (I was in grade 6) we got a few BBC Micros at our primary school. I'm in Tasmania. The Beeb definitely made its way to Australia (plus Wombles, Jullian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy the dog, and The Goodies). We also got LOGO and the Turtle plotter robot thingy. Impressive for a small island on the other side of the planet. Thanks Poms. $0.02
Can you recall, were you encouraged to learn how to program on the Beebs at all (not just LOGO I mean), or was it more making use of existing programs?
@@mapesdhs597 I don't think my teacher knew what to do, but by then my mates and I were typing in games and saving them to cassettes anyway. This was an era where computer magazine centrefolds were full of fine printed listings of homebrew games.
We used Commodore PET computers. My mate had a Beeb and I was very jealous, as I had a Spectrum.
A similar display for people in Sweden of my age (and near-capital area?) is a certain TV model purchased by schools that the teachers would roll out on That Rackety Black DoubleDecker Tall Cart. Rarely could a teacher figure out or remember how to operate the TV and-or the VCR leading to time wasted, win-win even for the teachers I'm sure. From first grade to final year of high school I remember the units as visually the same. Interesting bit about the design opting for that boxier more professional style and its effect. It's like a PVM but without the forward protection of the glass.
Gor us in the UK, the TV of choice was a ginormous Ferguson TX that always, for some reason, had a sticker on one side that read PUSH FROM THIS END ONLY.
We had Beebs at school until 1995 and those monitors. Usually on a beige metal stand so the back half of the Beeb itself could slot in under. And connected up via Econet. Ctrl-N-Break, then Shift-Break to log on, upon where a text menu of the finest edutainment games of the 80s would appear.
We had them set up in The Computer Shop (as it was called) when I worked there for the BBCs too :)
I started secondary school in 1997 and the computer room still had 30 of these bad boys flickering away. It was a few years later that they finally got replaced
Early to the party. Loved the BBC. Loved my Acorn Electron at home too.
Very nice video! I remember in the middle of 90s the 14” multisync model was simply the best monitor on the Amiga. Too bad in Italy was impossible to find. I eventually bought it few years ago.
Btw you CUB needs a recap, it is trembling very much 😉
I left school in. 82, so missed the bbc micro/ cub dominance by a year. I did have a cub for my QL tho....loved that monitor :)
I worked in a Acorn dealer and repaired BBC micros every working day, in those days all repairs except psu were component level repairs, the BBC B was very easy to work on especially thanks to the amazing service manual.. it was incredibly rare that those Microvitec monitors needed repair. The Computer and the Cumana Disc Drives were far more likely to need repair. The Acorn was certainly the best choice for the BBC educational program, it was far better than anything in its class, not without its faults, but overall very very good.
5:20 shots fired!!
I hope not literally. More seriously, though, I love these long form retrospectives of yours.
We had a black plastic cased Microvitec Cub with our Beeb. It had a super crisp screen.
Damn, the memories of primary school! We had these still in the late 90s.
I remember towards the end of my time in secondary school being blown away when one of these was in the physics lab. They ran some sort of particle simulator on it as late as about 2000 (maybe much later, who knows). I'd used them in the 80s so they seemed like an incredible relic at that point.
Around 1998 we had a school trip to the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge (I'd been with my primary school, too, but I don't remember much about that). They were only then getting rid of their BBC's and upgrading to Windows 98 boxes (bet those didn't last as long!). So I scored a free one and a twin disk drive. We had another BBC when I was a little kid, too, dunno what happened to that. I bet they're both still at my parents' house, and would doubtless fire up first time if plugged in!
i had a Microvitec 1438 multisync monitor i think 1438s - it could display all the Amiga modes and VGA etc. I then got a 17inch multisync - not sure if that was Microvitec or not. But i am 54 and we had model A and B, with CUB monitors back in 82- 85. And ZX81, PET etc. When I left they had a Spectrum and some KODE antique - which when I started work they were still using in the office !!!!!!!
I have three of those CUB monitors, love them to bits. :D Fascinating tale, I didn't know anything of the monitor side of the Beeb history. Mindblown btw you have a CUB with its original box, and in such good condition too, awesome! I have various other models of monitor aswell, but the CUB reigns supreme.
I'm 37 and never saw a BBC micro, my elementary school had a computer lab with Apple computers in them and we played Oregon Trail... Or just Buffalo hunting for some of the kids
My computer school teacher must have broken at least 6 of these monitors because when the vertical hold went rather than trying to fix it his quick way was to just slap them hard on each side
For my computer studies project I programmed it to make a simple “windows Explorer” file menu programme for the BBC
The ones we had at school all had disc drives not cassette tapes
Research Machines were based just down the road from where I grew up. Our school got a lot of the new and trial RM hardware. We had the first RM Nimbus and most new machines until the first Pentium systems appeared. The Cub was used until RM started shipping their own monitors. I wrote my first programs on those systems. Good times.