LGR - Acorn Electron Vintage Computer System Review
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ม.ค. 2011
- The Acorn Electron was the baby brother of the BBC Micro, both of which are relatively unknown outside of the UK and Europe. And although it wasn't the unprecedented success Acorn might have hoped it to be, it's still an awesome 8-bit machine that I think any computer collector or retro gamer should consider!
This is a basic overview of the history, hardware and software of the Elk, from the perspective of an American collector. How do the pros and cons stack up, and is it worth getting an Elk over the BBC Model B?
Many thanks to UKRetroGames for the Electron!
/ ukretrogames
Also a big thanks to ImperialProductions for the Elk software!
/ imperialproductions
For lots of great info on the Elk, check out Acorn Electron World:
www.acornelectron.co.uk/
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Chuckie Egg is one of the greatest games of all time, i'm glad you included it. Also does anyone remember having to mess around with the volume on the cassette deck to get the game to load? Wow! What a rigmarole that was at times lolz. Those were the days and i'm so glad i lived through the evolution of home computers and video games.
I grow up with this... Love the Electron so much..
I was raised on an Elk! My parents couldn't afford a BBC Micro so I learned to program on it. Also poured hours into (the somewhat mediocre and totally stripped down) Elite port. Happy days.
You know that Elite was developed on and for the Electron, it's not a port ... nor is it "Stripped Down"
There's a documentary that Ian Bell and David Brabham did for the 25th Anniversary of the game.
It's worth checking out.
I thought they started on the atom and then got their hands on the Beeb so they used the extra memory to program their game
I may be 9 years late to this video lol, but this was my first ever computer, and I've got a lot of love for it. I assume my parents only got me one of these because Acorn had built a ton of these things, but only sold a small number of them at launch, so after only a year the price had dropped significantly.
I would love for you to revisit this system and do a much more in-depth look at it. It was actually *waaaay* more advanced and revolutionary than most people realize. I am no expert on these things, but I do know that the Electron was the first computer Acorn had built that had the first iteration of the ARM architecture chip (or Acorn RISC Machine) inside. Now, I won't pretend that I have the first clue what that chip actually does (something to do with operating systems I think?), but I do know that your modern-day smartphone has one inside of it. They still make and sell them to this day, and have sold over 100 million of them.
Acorn (and the Electron) may have failed, but the technology they created back then allowed us to have the kind of technology we take for granted today. That's one hell of a legacy, and more people should know about it.
(on a side note, there is a really good BBC-made film called Micro Men, which is all about the rivalry between Acorn and Spectrum, with Martin Freeman playing the head of Acorn and Alexander Armstrong (a British comedian) playing Clive Sinclair. It's up on TH-cam somewhere and it's well worth a watch)
Damn, this review is six years old now! I can't be the only one who feels like 2011 was still rather recent
It's not that things are aging slower. It's that they are changing slower. 7 years used to bring huge changes. 120 channels instead of 3, imagine seeing a guy with a multi color mohawk for the first time. The only thing that changed in the last seven years is fidget spinners. Our society kind of grew up. Grownups don't change much.
I wish that it would go back on a snap, you know?
I come from the year 2019 to tell u that this review is now even older now
@@theironsword1954 Yes. Everything is pure shit now. I havent been impressed with one goddamn thing since 2014.
@@Louie_The_Dago SpaceX has impressed me recently, so now it's between living til space travel and going back to relive the best era of things I miss.
My first computer was the Electron. I live in Cambridge, UK, where Acorn was based. It is also the place where David Braben and Ian Bell wrote Elite (the world first true 3D graphical game). I still have my "Elk" along with a Plus 1, Plus 3 3.5" floppy drive and a BBC Model B with Cumana double 5.25" drives. There are still games for these that I still haven't completed (graphics were secondary to gameplay back in the 80's and 90's).
Took a looong time, but I managed to get hold of a Plus 5. Also obtained a Music 500 system and an external DataCentre for my Beeb, and the RetroClinic guy gave me some extra stuff so my Electron could use the DataCentre and Music 500 items aswell. 8)
Bagging the Plus5 was the big thing though, was amazed one even showed up on ebay.
So do I. The first few computer I used were Acorn RISC PCs...
I loved this computer, my Elk was my best friend! then i moved onto the Beeb about 3 years later. I loved programming this machine and muckin around with the graphics. Repton was a classic game and loved it to bits!! Good Vid!!
Hah! It has Exile, go for it :)
Very nice to see American taking an interest in British home computers of the era. I actually forgot the Electron was this powerful, Acorn and BBC hardly marketed their computers abroad so very little was known about them outside England at the time.
My first computer was the simpler Acorn Atom. A very nice home computer from the earlier BASIC era, with the forerunner of as you say ever awesome BBC Basic.
The British Computer scene is just such an wonderfully odd and unique thing to me, especially considering how radically different things were here in the US with consoles. Most of the computers made during that time period are also some of the most aesthetically pleasing
I first learned to program on one of these! (When it was probably already considered a vintage machine)
It says it needs 19v DC, but I had it running from a 9v battery once!
We had one of these when I was a kid! I remember loading games from cassettes and it making a horrible noise and taking ages to load!
Thanks for uploading. Great to see one again.
Something if only we'd known: using a hifi tape deck instead of a generic mono "datacorder" is far more reliable, and it's possible to change the baud rate (make it more reliable with cheaper tape units). Even a decent boombox of the day works much better.
Three words that will ping your brain: "Data, rewind tape"
:D
The Electron though was aimed at Programming rather than games. Since "All" UK schools had BBC Micro's in the 80's, and if you were doing "Computer Studies" like most of us at that time. Then you had a load of coursework to get completed. I remember my Computer studies class had about 15 BBC micro's. So generally you had 2 kids per machine which was still cool.
The Electron being BBC Basic compatible meant you could do your coursework at home, so that was the main selling point to Parents. But it didnt take long for the software houses to start bringing out tons of games. So you could do your homework, and then play games afterwards !. Happy memories......
@UKRetroGames Awesome, I am quite happy to have your approval!
Having an HD camera now I figured it was about time I start showing some sexy innards in my videos, since all the little details show up so nicely. And it gives me a place to talk about technical specs, which I've left out of many of my other hardware reviews.
The Elk was my first experience of home gaming! Repton, Palace of Magic and Citadel were by far my favourite on that machine.
Thank you so much for the trip down memory lane!
I have vivid memories of playing 'Spitfire 40' on the electron when I was a small child.
I used what I believe was a BBC Master back in the very early 90's when I started primary school, because I have a vision impairment I attended a school for the blind and we had many games and educational programs for the BBC in our classroom, I believe a lot of the games has to be reverse engineered so they would work with a voice synthesiser we had so the totally blind people in the class had some idea of what was going on. It really was an interesting machine, all our games were on disks.
Came back to see this after watching Micro Men (720p version on YT) since I'd never seen one1 Thanks for sharing it.
(it's the 40th Anniversary of the BBC Micro; The National Museum of Computing ("tnmoc" channel on YT) has a nice playlist of short interviews with the folks that created the Acorn/BBC Micro hardware and software, too. Neat!)
As I now have a working ELK I thought I'd review all the good stuffs!
Your episodes are so well produced! Kudos and bravo!
This put a smile on my face, thanks!
I love watching your hardware videos, LGR. I don't understand half the stuff you're saying, but I feel like I've learned something.
I can't even begin to find the words to describe how awesome this review is! I absolutely love your style!
Everyone nowadays is calling it an Elk but back in the day me and the friends who had one never heard of that....even owners i know from further afield never heard of that nickname for it. I think it's more likely a more recent name for it. Dont like it though.
+cmdfarsight It was frequently called the elk in "electron user" magazine back in the day...
+cmdfarsight True. I cut my teeth on one of these babies, and nobody I knew called it an Elk. But then again, everyone I knew had speccies and amstrads, and didn't even know what an Electron was. It wasn't a popular machine, and the selection of games available was abysmal! First time I ever heard it called "Elk" was when I discovered Gus Donnachaidh (I hope I remembered his name right!) and his Electron User Group on a BBS in the early 90s
Ditto, the Electron was my first system, I used it so much I wore out the kybd, but only much later did I hear anyone use the Elk name.
Had one back in the day, called it an Elk as this was, as someone already pointed out, a term used a lot in electron user magazine. Guess if you didn't buy the mag you may never have heard the term as few people had this machine. I only new one other person.
@@navalenigma it seems some did hear the nickname and some didn't. Maybe a regional thing for it or perhaps depends on who bought the mags.
I love this machine! I never had one myself but many of my friends had one here in the UK and I'm still fond of it today. You gotta love an underdog computer. Great video!
@farcher3 Yeah man, it's in the works! I have a review of the Atari ST that being worked on right now, and then the BBC Micro is after that. Summer is still the goal (which is through September, at least around here).
Another great computer review. Like I said on your ZX Spectrum review. It is really great getting a point of view from an American on a British retro computer. I really like your reviews they are so detailed, professional and well edited. Seeing the games in action in this video was a nice bonus. The Elk is a cool machine. I have one myself and it does have some good games. I have a tutorial on my channel of how to load games from a CD to your Elk.
@DylanMayhew I know on other computers I've used where you need to load things through cassettes the volume is of utmost importance. Usually it will need to be rather high! Also, every one I've used has required a mono audio cable. Not sure if you're using the official cable for it of if it's proprietary or what, but that may be something to consider.
Ah, the old rigmarole of having to fiddle with the volume on the cassette player to get the games to load. I had similar issues when loading games on the old 48k Spectrum and the Dragon 32. When the Amstrad CPC464 and the 128k ZX Spectrum +2 came along with the cassette deck attached to the keyboard/system, it was an absolute god send! I love your channel, you cover such nostalgic and interesting subjects in your videos. Thanks! from West Yorkshire in the U.K.
@gamerslivingroom Thank you very much! Means even more coming from someone who's owned the machine for such a respectable amount of time.
I've since tried out Citadel and Planetoid and can attest to their awesomeness :D
Great system. Wonderful of Mark to get you this!
Great Video Clint about the acorn computer. I have never heard of it before and you did a great job showcasing it. 🙂
Great review as always! You rock! Thank you very much!
My first computer! I loved playing Citadel
Man, I love how you increased your video uploads. Every day with a new LGR Video on the Frontpage is a good day! :)
You might have already been told about this but if not there was an hour long docu-drama made about the struggle between the ZX Spectrum and the BBC Micro and their respective creators made for BBC4 last year called "Micro Men" someone has posted it on youtube and if you haven't seen it then a big old Cambridge computer nerd like you would probably love it.
Also thanks for posting these videos they are excellent.
This was my second computer after the Amstrad CPC 464, which I got really cheap from a second hand place in the 90s. BBC BASIC was awesome! I made a colour financial graphing program with it which I used to track my savings.
Funny thing is, I went the other way, from Electron to CPC 6128, and never regretted it!
The Dragon 32 and Acorn Electron both gave me buyer's remorse, but I have fond memories of the Amstrad to this day. :-)
This takes me back to xmas 1984. I think the Acorn only had about 27k of useable memory (as apposed to it's big cousin's 32). Elite on it was still good (even if it only had about 4 ships and was in monochrome). Those were the days of waiting patiently for the tape to load, praying there wasn't an error message.
i love your hardware reviews!
I've just got an SD card reader for my Electron, Realy useful.
Thanks for this review , it was awesome
i have never used a BBC micro and was very pleased to see it is quite a capable computer judging from the selection of games you showed us. the inside of the box revealed it is really old school electronics, looks almost like a hobby computer. nice video thanks for posting. take care.
I love learning about computer's I've never heard of. Thanks for this!
Love those retro noises!
I used to play Jet-boot Jack on one of these machines. Loved it. I had no idea Exile was on this machine. Will have to find it and try it out. Loved that on the C64.
My first ever computer, good times.
We hardly knew anyone with a C64 until much later on when the C64C bundles started coming out, the vast majority of youngsters here had Spectrums with the odd few like myself with an Electron.
There was always that odd kid whose parents had a bit more cash who had a full on BBC Micro setup or a Trash-80 but they were few and far between.
Excellent system review mate & a great computer for sure :)
I'm from northern England and It's nice to see a British computer in America and getting great reviews. I have one and owned a BBC micro, Acorn (in my opinion) were really on to something with the Electron nowadays i own a BBC A3000 which is kind of similar to an Amiga as far as 32 bit computers go. Any advice I have would be keep hold of the Electron as (maybe) someday it will be worth something. Appreciate the video Thanks, Mike.
That was a totally awesome review Phreakindee. I loved that you opened the machine up and showed us what its guts look like. I've owned one for nearly 30 years, in fact it was my first machine, and I'd never seen the inside before.
Loved your choice of games; Arcadians, Elite and Chuckie Egg are ones that I spent a lot of time playing in my youth. However, you missed off a couple of the greatest games from you highlights. If you haven't played Citadel and Planetoid you should check them out.
Love The Sims shopping music for your store info. Makes me want to play The Sims (1) again.
I found my dad's old Electron while clearing out my grandad's loft in Northern Ireland a few weeks ago and it still works despite having been up there for about 30 years. My dad told me that it may have been up there about 13 years ago yet he couldn't find it when he had a look. I managed to find it though. It's quite yellowed but I think this is because it was sitting by his bedroom window (which faced west) while my dad was at university in the 80s.
Nice vid. Had to laugh at ""weird power, video signal", but understandable as I find NTSC and 120v:60Hz as weird, especially since most the world use 230/240V:50Hz and PAL.
Actually the part that always bugged me is why TVs for NTSC markets do NTSC only. That, and they did not have SCART, with its RGB signal, a godsend for me.
In the end, its fun to dabble with both systems, especially the Mega Drive and the effects on gameplay speed haha!
It's a shame really that PAL systems can't often be coerced into dropping back to the simpler NTSC colour coding (the two systems have an awful lot in common, just PAL is effectively FM to NTSC's AM, in more ways than just making a cheap analogy about the level of tech involved) so that older machines can properly show off the same colour artefacting tricks in the 50hz world as they did in the 60hz... but still able to give much better native colour rendition for the later systems which didn't need to play tricks with the colourburst.
S Midnight Sparky SCART was a horrible connector: Big, bulky, flimsy and kept falling out. S-video was a much better solution even though it lacked the automatic control signaling.
My first ever system. :)
Great review!
"Exile" shows the odd trick of using part of video RAM for program code, causing the edges of the screen to fill up with multicolored garbage.
And as the story goes, the BBC Micro was briefly sold in the USA (in modified NTSC form), but was hugely unsuccessful here, so most of the machines were shipped back to the UK, converted to PAL, and resold there.
God thats a blast from the past. I have a garage full of old computers. Vic20, Electron, BBC B and Master, Archimedes A3000 and a few more. Those cassette games really brought back some good memories. Only recently I spent a small fortune getting a games rig after not touching games for over 20 years. Although these games are like playing a movie they have nothing of the charm of these old simple "fun" games. Maybe it's just be or do others think that also ?
Your vid makes me want one of these, I am a lover of the 8-bit computer era for sure. Though I doubt it will happen any time soon if I have to ship it from the UK (I am in the USA). Cool machine :)
great commentary, your videos are interesting to watch.
I had one back in the eighties! Great fun. It also came with BBC Basic, an easy to learn programming language in which you could create very nifty stuff yourself....
Ahhh. Playing Repton on an Electron. Now, that takes me back... :-)
Love the SimCity 4 music in the background.
I just had a thought.
If we call the Sinclar ZX Spectrum the ZX Spectrum, then the Commodore 64 would be just "64"!
I know this is an old video but was nice to see it running, I have just been given an electron and a commodore 4 plus. The elk has nothing with it but powered up on a DC supply (only did this for a short time as to not cause damage) thanks :)
I loved my acorn electron when I was at school in the 80s
Great video Clint, I had one of these in the 80`s loved it. Have a look if you haven`t got these, Thrust, Plan B and Citadel. Those were my some of my fav games including Chuckie egg and Strykers Run.
@DylanMayhew If you have the audio in and out plugged in at the same time, that may also screw things up. Make sure to only have two plugged in at once, ie. either audio in or out and REM.
Great review as always man! I've never messed w/ this one, though that's not a surprise. I tend to let thrift stores start my collections for me ;) Not much chance of finding one of these in a goodwill. lol
Hi, I'm from 10 years into the future. This was my first computer, my mum bought it for me when I was about 10 years old. The games were pretty dreadful so it wasn't long before I started coding in basic and making my own adventure / RPG style games. They were also dreadful, but the fun I had was immeasurable. I just bought one of these on ebay, can't wait to play boxer again. Thanks for the review
ah yes, the "fine, i'll do it myself" that you pretty much had to do with most old microcomputers
the work u do is awesome
Nice review, it is good to hear an American's view on a UK retro computer. I really enjoyed this review, I own an Electron and I think Elite and Chuckie Egg are awesome. By the way if you have the emulation files. I have a tutorial on my channel on how to load games via a CD-ROM. Once again great review.
Nice little system. The speaker reminds me of a cross between an IBM PC and a 2600. The color palette seems very vibrant...have to check this one out for myself.
was Sim city on everything
+Charles Westhoff just about
+Almighty Janitor
Pretty much. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, if an electronic device was classified as a"computer" in any way, someone somewhere made a SimCity 1 port for it at some point or another. LOL!
+Almighty Janitor It's sort of like doom. If it has a CPU, someone's gonna make a simcity game for it.
In an odd twist of fate, while learning to program, Will Wright developed two tools to create game worlds on his Apple 2. The tools he created eventually evolved into SimCity, but SimCity itself was never ported to the Apple 2 series.
I have Sim City in my TI-83.
ok...I have to have a lgr t-shirt...or a mug, I drink a ton of coffee and tea. Acorn's sound is a lot like the PC speaker, so even though I never played one, it makes me feel nostalgic to hear it. 3d-pool on an 8bit computer is quite a feat!
Friday = LGR time, hell yeah!
This should be a saturday morning show :)
Ah, few things better than watching some vintage LGR while sipping on some tea 🙂
The prices for these and the Micro have gone up a fair bit, I blame you.
Also, what drove Elmo to kill?
I can't find any for sale at all
Yay, a new hardware review! :D
Man id love to see a 2022 remake of this or the acorn 3000 with his modern day setup :)
The Acorn Electron was my first computer
I had one as a child, it might have been my first home computer.
Oh, I forgot to say you make awesome videos.
Now this is a computer i forgot about. I remember being upset because the Acorn version of elite was supposed to be better than the c64-and i loved that game!
Nice to see the electron getting reviewed across the pond :o) Did not realise it needs extra hardware for a disk drive (I don't own an electron). Not much inside of it is there :o)
Repton!!! Arcadians is awsome on the Beeb :o)
It was my first computer. Great times. Had a built in assembler code also, which I wished I knew how to do, but it was waaaay above my 14 year old brain. HOWEVER, because the BBC's CEEFAX system used BBC micros, and the AE used a very similar grfx, it was possible to create perfect replicas of a CEEFAX news page. I set one up to say a 7.0 richter scale earthquake had hit Dublin and fooled a long-suffering relative into a minor episode. Evil 14 year old, evil. (We still have the old machine up in the attic).
Also, WTF? Sim City!!!!! Wish I could have played that back then. Bonus points for reminding me about Chuckie Egg!
@zedeighty The guy who sent it to me, UKRetroGames, modded it before shipping it over here. From what I understand it's not a tremendously painful process.
god, i was playing GT5 while watching the video, and i realised how much games changed in just some years.. wonder what games will be like in 20 years time..
Yknow, seeing mention of it on the BBC Micro video, and then this popping up on the sidebar as a reminder... One really rare and unique thing for you to find and review might be the Acorn Atom. Like, I personally don't even really know anything about it, other than it was the Electron and Micro aka Proton's predecessor... spec, software/games availability, etc...
I enjoyed playing Chuckie Egg on the Acorn Electron and BBC Microcomputers
a decade ago, my fellow intership colleague programmed games on acorn pc's but thats the era with the risc processor. Lol he officialy licensed the games it and sold them in Brittain... which is only across the north sea.
You forgot 1985's one and only Citadel! My brother purchased his computer in Feb 1986. Problem was (as with many PCs) the cassette recorder, it took some time to load games....also I wish I had learnt Basic....
When you were writing the script for this, did "Nifty" sound better in your head? haha, nice video man.
Now it's time to review the Archimedes!
The Arc had some pretty awesome hardware for the time, the custom RISC chip they designed for and R&D it would lay the groundwork for a large percentage of CPUs in today's smart phones.
Eddie kid's jump challenge was my fav game on the Electron :)
Killet Elmo at 6:00 hehe. Good review : )
makes my day when I see a video uploaded by phreakindee
No mention that the most popular computers ("phones") are powered by Acorn RISC Machines (ARM) ?
Although, to be fair, i think the Electron used a (pre-ARM era) 6502...variant
I have 4 whole Acorn Electrons & one mobo which I restored to full functionality.
The RAM is held back because it can ouly be addressed though a 4-bit bus hence half the access speed. The reason the RAM is accessed on a 4-bit bus is because they used 4 64K 1 bit chips. So the ULA chould only access 4-bits at once (4-bit to access the first 32K & another 4-bit access cycal to access the final 32K of the chip). Normaly when a system used 1-bit 64K chips there would be 8 of them so the machine could access all the memory at once aka 8-bits. Some examples of machines that used 1-bit memory chips are ZX Spectrum, Atari 800XL, IBM 5150 [Extra chip for error checking aka parity], Commodore Plus4 & the last example Acorn BBC B
Ahh the good old days of cassette gaming, nice to see that some electrons made it over the pond to stateside. Was a brilliant if limited system.
Dare Devil Denis was a brilliant game, worth trying.
Acorn Electron was eventually replaced in our house by the Atari ST.
I remember the loads
CHAIN "CHUCKIE EGG"
Please rewind tape...
Or in short, how to waste 30 minutes of your life on a game you'll play for 10, lol
Great review. Nice to see one of these cross the pond. If you don't mind me asking, where did you get your Electron modified to output colour composite? My Electron won't tune into my relatively modern CRT TV and it's a bit of a shame that I have to play games in black and white only. Thanks.
6 Years later I finally did a composite mod. Wish I had sooner, it's the easiest mod ever (just one blob of solder across a connection).
Hey LGR, what about a Dragon 32 or 64 ?
I can't say when I first heard it called the Elk but it was Long Ago! I'm sure the magazines regularly used the term. I can't find a specific definitive example but web sites like Acorn Electron World have references going back over 15 years.
Very interesting. Are you planing any coverage on the Acorn Archimedes line? I find the RISC CPU/OS intriguing.
@cjspartacus Same here: absolutely loved that machine. Citadel and Repton 2 were a couple of awsome titles that I still play to this day.
I got a tandy color computer 2 when ever I try to use a cassette recorder to try to store things i code it wont load it, it does record it on it and everything and even stops it for me, I just wanted to ask on if there is a certain volume you need to play it back at the computer for it to understand it? sorry about the random question but you made me think of it with the video lol
@dcpgirl34 Thanks! It was from Hot Topic, so you might still be able to grab one from them.