'Browse or search the old BB4W forum' broken

[Hated Moron]

I use the following link on my Android tablet to access the old forum:
www.bbcbasic.com/oldforum/bbcbasic.conf ... index.html
I can't remember where I picked this up from, but it works.

A completely different forum! This thread is about the copy of the old BB4W forum, which was hosted at David Williams's site and became inaccessible when it disappeared recently. You are referring to the copy of the old BBC BASIC forum, which is hosted at bbcbasic.co.uk and has remained unaffected.

Unless your memory is even worse than mine (barely possible!) you will recall that before conforums.com closed down there were two forums dedicated to 'my' versions of BBC BASIC. There was the BB4W forum, supporting exclusively BBC BASIC for Windows and administered by DDRM, and the BBC BASIC forum supporting (primarily) BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0 and administered by me.

When conforums.com announced their closure, with very little warning, we captured both forums using a web-scraping tool and uploaded them. Links were added to the front page of this forum (where they still are) for accessing them. You would be advised to use those links rather than any you have separately cached, in case they need to change again.

Unfortunately you can't carry out a physical search within the site, but you can step between the topics.

Oh. You certainly should be able to search, as that was all set up at the time they were uploaded. Having just checked, the search of the old BBC BASIC forum (not the subject of this thread) seems to be working fine. I searched for sophie and it returned these hits:

Code: Select all

26 Feb 2018 ... As I had researched long ago, Sophie Wilson did create BBC BASIC (the language) , but you created BBC BASIC for Windows and BBCSDL and all ...

1 Mar 2018 ... I had some exchanges with Sophie over the enhancements she proposed to BBC ... work quite differently from those in Sophie's ARM BASIC.

So I have no idea why the search isn't working for you.

[Hated Moron]

A completely different forum! This thread is about the old BB4W forum, which was hosted at David Williams's site and became inaccessible when it disappeared recently. You are referring to the old BBC BASIC forum, which is hosted at bbcbasic.co.uk and has remained unaffected.

Incidentally, in an attempt to ensure the two forums wouldn't be confused, they used different colour schemes. The BB4W forum was an orangey-brown colour scheme and the BBC BASIC forum was a pinky-red colour scheme. It doesn't seem to have worked!

[RNBW]

I have never accessed a BBC Basic forum hosted by David Williams, so it's not surprising that I wasn't aware of it.

[Hated Moron]

I have never accessed a BBC Basic forum hosted by David Williams, so it's not surprising that I wasn't aware of it.

Sorry, but you seem to be rather confused. Neither of the forums was "hosted by David Williams", it's only the 'scraped' copy that was stored at his site after Conforums closed down (and you won't even have been aware of that unless you studied the URLs closely).

The point is that there were two forums at Conforums supporting my BASICs: the BB4W forum (the subject of this thread) which supported BBC BASIC for Windows and the BBC BASIC forum (the one you linked to) which principally supported BBC BASIC for SDL 2.0.

The BB4W forum was the original, the larger of the two, and the one with by far the greater number of members (664, compared with 169); that's why its loss was so potentially serious. If you only remember one forum it was probably that one, not the smaller BBC BASIC forum.

[Hated Moron]

Sorry, but you seem to be rather confused.

Perhaps these grabs will help clear up your confusion, the BB4W forum at the top and the BBC BASIC forum at the bottom:

forum1.png

forum2.png

[RNBW]

I am not in the least confused. I was not aware of the other forum. I used the terminology used by yourself

Sorry, but you seem to be rather confused. Neither of the forums was "hosted by David Williams"

when I said it was hosted by David Williams. Seeing as I wasn't aware of David Williams' site, I knew nothing about it. This seems to be an absolutely pointless discussion and, as far as I am concerned, I am ending it here and will contribute no further.

[Hated Moron]

This seems to be an absolutely pointless discussion

I'm sorry you feel that way, but I don't think it's ever "pointless" to attempt to correct a misapprehension. I'm conscious that messages posted here are archived '(unless deleted) and may be found in a future search, so I'm keen to correct the record to avoid anybody being misled.

[Hated Moron]

On the basis that 'a picture tells a thousand words' here's a rough graphic illustrating what has happened to the two original forums over time (running downwards):

forums_graphic.png