Ceefax simulator in BBC BASIC for Windows

[Richard Russell]

If you run the version of CEEFAX.BBC supplied with BBC BASIC for Windows you may have noticed that the weather pages have recently stopped working. This has happened because of a change to the BBC's RSS feeds, which no longer allow the weather info to be fetched with an unencrypted (http://) connection.

If this is an irritation, you can restore correct operation by replacing FNhttpget() with this updated version:

Code: Select all

      DEF FNhttpget(url$, T%, M%)
      IF INKEY(-256) <> &57 IF (@platform% AND &F) = 5 THEN = FNhttpget_wasm(url$, T%, M%)
      IF LEFT$(url$,8) = "https://" url$ = "http://bbcbasic.co.uk/proxy1/" + MID$(url$,9)
      = FNhttpget_sock(url$, T%, M%)

You will need administrator privileges to replace CEEFAX.BBC with the patched version, alternatively save it somewhere else.

[Richard Russell]

As happens from time to time, a recent change to the formatting of the BBC's web pages has broken the ability of the Ceefax simulator to parse them. I have updated Ceefax.bbc to fix this, or at least partially so. I have also updated the web version.

On desktop platforms you can straightforwardly replace the Ceefax.bbc file with the new one. On mobile platforms you can't replace the file included with the app, but you can put the new version (along with its support files ceefax.car and weather.car) in @usr$ and run it there. If you prefer to use a ready-made executable, the builds at itch.io have also been updated.