Orac running with a BBC computer will it upgrade ?

bradders · Wed 17 Oct , 2007 14:40 pm

I have recently found out that the old BBC computer running the ORAC has died!!.
I need to get a copy of the software that runs the machine and ask a few questions as to what I need to run it on a newer pc

Thu 18 Oct , 2007 15:20 pm

I'm pretty sure the only upgrade available is to Mach3 or something similar - people like davidimurray and sweep have done this to their machines.

It'll need a fair bit of electrical modification though, to get it working on a PC.

davidimurray · Thu 18 Oct , 2007 23:29 pm

I thought the Orac's all had their own control system and it was the Starrturn 4 and 8 that relied on having extenral computers connected?

bradders · Fri 19 Oct , 2007 7:32 am

The initial comment was from a school, i was hoping Mr Magoo would be online to answer, as it was his era at Denford's

Fri 19 Oct , 2007 8:36 am

As far as I know, there is also some hardware (at least an EPROM) inside the BBC. If thats missing or damaged, then the BBC software will be of no use anyway.

Mr Magoo · Sat 20 Oct , 2007 0:20 am

The Orac did have it's own controller - so the BBC is just for the offline programming / simulation.

I think there is a PC DOS version in the download section.
No way to get your old BBC CNC programs back though

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