BBC Micro Domesday Project.
Between
1984 and 1986 the BBC together with schools and colleges across the
nation
undertook a project to compile an electronic Domesday Book. The project
involved compiling and creating facts and figures about the area
around each school to create a library of information. Schools, and
later community groups, were asked to generate three photographs
and 20 40-column pages of text about their local community and this
information was put onto two Laser Discs.
Surprisingly this enormous project has almost been forgotten about. The specialist equipment that is required to run it is obsolete and very little usable equipment still exists. Much of the equipment has broken down or simply been thrown out due to it being seen as obsolete.
In an attempt to preserve the efforts of thousands of contributors there are a number of people who are maintaining working examples of the original system. There are also a number of people including myself who are attempting to rebuild a working Domesday system.
The purpose of this section of the site is to gather together as much information as possible about the original system to help people maintaining or build a system.
The original system was based on a special customized version of the Acorn BBC master. Although I will continue to look out for one of the special AIV models, they are not easy to find as they look identical to a standard BBC master. People wouldn't know if they have this model unless they knew the history of the Domesday project. I intend to build a system from the parts that are available.
So far I have a BBC Master Turbo with a co-processor board & a set of the Domesday Laserdisc's. I also have a VFS ROM required to drive the Videodisc player and Tracker Ball. I have a Marconi Tracker Ball that is identical to the Acorn one as the Acorn one just had their logo stuck on it. I am still looking for an original SCSI interface if anyone comes across one even a dead one.