ATV on the BBC

I have a YouTube channel called “stupidrubbish” where I put bits and pieces of video I’ve created as and when I get the chance.

The channel’s name “stupidrubbish” comes from the rather unaffectionate term my wife uses to refer to television presentation. Her usual question would be “Are you working or are you doing stupid rubbish?”. The answer would often be “Both.” In Hungarian, the term translates to “hülye szemét” and sounds even ruder than it does in English.

Absolute bobbins, and I freely admit it

Amazingly, although it contains all sorts of bits and pieces I’ve poured my heart and soul into getting as accurate as possible, the most popular video on the channel is something I very nearly didn’t upload at all, and did nearly 25 years ago. It was my first attempt to recreate some presentation on a computer and it was not done in Flash, or even on a PC. It was done on a BBC Master 128 computer in 1986, written in BBC BASIC and was the ATV colour zoom logo.

I hadn’t seen an ATV logo in years in 1986, and wondered whether I would ever see one again. You can see from the animation that I couldn’t really remember what the logo looked like, or even what happened in the animation, but I suppose it all adds to the charm. I planned the lightspots and the logo out on graph paper using a pencil and pair of compasses.

To draw the logo I used the Acorn Graphics Extension ROM (GXR) arcs (the GXR extensions were included in the Master by default), a GXR custom fill pattern and screen memory bank switching in order to animate the thing. I also used GCOL1 for mixing the colours using a bitwise AND in the lightspots and palette switching to allow me to animate on bits of the logo without having to wait to draw them.

A number of commenters expressed interest in the code, so here it is:

1REM The “ATV” logo
2REM by
3REM Dave Jeffery
10MODE2
20VDU23;8202;0||
30HIMEM=&3000
40*FX112,2
50*FX113,2
60PROCnext_setup
70HIMEM=&3000
80*FX112,1
90*FX113,1
100PROCcircles
110HIMEM=&3000
120*FX112,2
125*FX19
130*FX113,2
140PROCnext
150PROCletters
160END
170DEFPROCnext_setup
180CLS
190VDU23,2,&2A2A;&2A2A;&2A2A;&2A2A;
200MOVE600,500
210MOVE950,700
220PLOT173,250,700
230MOVE600,900
240MOVE250,700
250PLOT173,950,700
260GCOL0,0:MOVE600,700:PLOT157,600,892
270GCOL1,1
280MOVE600,300
290MOVE950,500
300PLOT173,250,500
310MOVE600,700
320MOVE250,500
330PLOT173,950,500
340GCOL3,1
350MOVE600,500
360PLOT157,788,500
370GCOL0,134:GCOL0,7
380PLOT133,600,500
390GCOL16,0
400GCOL0,129
410PLOT133,900,50
420PLOT133,600,688
430:
440c=1
450GCOL0,128
460FORbox=250 TO 958 STEP 8
470GCOL2,c
480MOVEbox,288:DRAWbox,900
490c=c+1:IFc=7 c=1
500NEXT
510GCOL3,15:MOVE600,700:PLOT157,600,888
520:
530ENDPROC
540DEFPROCnext
550VDU19,15,7||
551FORF=0TO75:NEXT
560VDU19,0,4||
570FORF=1 TO 6:VDU19,F,4;0;19,F+8,7;0;
580NEXT F
590FORF=1 TO 6:VDU19,F,3;0;19,F+8,3;0;: FORW=0TO100:NEXT
600NEXT
610VDU19,15,4||
620ENDPROC
630:
640DEFPROCcircles
650VDU19,0,7;0;19,8,0||
660COLOUR8
670Key=GET
680GCOL0,1
690FORloop=600 TO 792 STEP 8
700MOVE600,700:PLOT157,loop,700
710NEXT
720GCOL1,2
730FORloop=500 TO 692 STEP 8
740MOVE500,500:PLOT157,loop,500
750NEXT
760GCOL1,4
770FORloop=500 TO 692 STEP 8
780MOVE700,500:PLOT157,700,loop
790NEXT
800PRINTTAB(5,26);”IN COLOUR”
810FORwait=0 TO 1000:NEXT
820ENDPROC
830:
840DEFPROCletters
850GCOL0,128:GCOL0,3
860MOVE500,708:MOVE500+50,708+150
870PLOT85,500+75,708
880PLOT85,500+125,708+150
890MOVE500+100,708+150: MOVE500+150,708: PLOT85,500+150,708+150: PLOT85,700,708
900MOVE550,708+50:PLOT101,675,708+25
910FORwait=0 TO 1500:NEXT
920MOVE500,652:PLOT101,700,628
930MOVE575,628:PLOT101,625,528
940FORwait=0 TO 1500:NEXT
950MOVE500,328+150:MOVE500+50,328
960PLOT85,500+75,328+150
970PLOT85,500+125,328
980MOVE500+100,328: MOVE500+150,328+150: PLOT85,500+150,328: PLOT85,700,328+150
990REPEATUNTILFALSE
1000ENDPROC

If you want to run the code, why not pop along to BBCMicro.com, where you can get hold of a BBC Emulator to try this out for yourself.

If you run the code in an emulator (or on a real BBC Master 128) you’ll notice I took a few liberties with the timings when I was editing the video together to upload to YouTube!

Hopefully I’ve got a bit better at recreating the ATV logo since then. A more recent attempt, in Macromedia Flash 8, is here:

3 Replies to “ATV on the BBC”

  1. Yes, they are indeed. I've found they're rather effective as Playschool presenters as they make a mean envelope from a piece of A4 but my youngest really wants be another Nancy Kominsky.

  2. Almost works on BBC BASIC for Windows as well (but there's only one screen bank), if you fix all the double-bars and remove the HIMEM=&3000 statements. (HIMEM *is* at &3000 after MODE 2 anyway, why set it manually?)

    I'm quite pleased that http://mdfs.net/Software/Video/VTClock only required two hardware-specific cludges removed to get it running on anything that can run BBC BASIC 😉

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