MacBeeb 1.6

• MacBeeb for Linux: the same BBC Micro, with a GNOME app (GTK 4 and libadwaita), for Intel and Arm. Install the .deb on Ubuntu 26.04 or later (sudo apt install ./macbeeb_1.6_amd64.deb), or unpack the .tar.xz on other distributions and run ./install.sh. The MCP server, the beeb tool, BeebAsm and Baron come with it. Help ▸ Check for Updates looks for new releases.
• Elite over Econet: a new Network Studio template with Mark Moxon's multiplayer Elite. A Level 3 file server, the Elite multiplayer scoreboard and three commanders (a Model B, a 6502 Second Processor and a Master) set themselves up when the network opens; then pick a commander and launch. Add more with Elite Player in the palette, or play from another Mac: share the network, and they join with File ▸ Add Remote Elite….
• Hard discs: the Acorn SCSI interface and its Winchester discs, as the Level 3 file server uses them.
• Station windows: a network's machines open in windows of their own, side by side or each in full screen, never as tabs of one window.
• Invitations: when you share a network over the Internet, choose how long an invitation lasts: an hour, a day, a week, or never (a standing code for anyone).
• Fixed: a machine restored from a save state never used Econet again; save states now keep its Econet chip as it was.

MacBeeb 1.5

• Welcome to MacBeeb: a new welcome screen leads to everything: switch on a BBC Micro, browse the Game Library, or build a network in the Network Studio, with things to try. Choose what MacBeeb opens with on it, or in Settings ▸ General: the welcome screen, a BBC Micro, the Game Library or the Network Studio. Window ▸ Welcome to MacBeeb (⇧⌘1) brings it back.
• Econet over the Internet: share a network from the Network Studio (the globe button) and send someone a link or read them a code; their BBC Micros join yours on one Econet, from their own Mac, with Acorn's own network software: log on to your file server, print on your printer server. File ▸ Join Econet Network… (⇧⌘J) to join. Only Econet is shared, unless the host lets people share their screens and you choose to show yours: then they appear live on everyone's canvas, sent apart from Econet so they never slow it. Uses econet.acornplayground.org, or your own service (Settings ▸ Networking). MacArch's Archimedes share and join the same networks: they appear on your canvas, and log on to your file servers as yours log on to theirs.
• Network Studio: File ▸ New Network… (⇧⌘N) builds a network of BBC Micros, each running for real, side by side: start from a template such as School Classroom (four BBCs, a file server and a printer server), then arrange machines on a canvas with their screens live, use them in tiles or their own windows, and save the network to open again. See Help ▸ Network Studio Guide.
• Econet: the machines are linked by an emulated Econet: the MC6854 chip, the clock and the shared line, with Acorn's own network software (DNFS on the Model B, ANFS on the Master) and Acorn's Level 1 file server. On any machine, *NET, then SAVE on one and LOAD on another.
• Printing: every BBC has a printer on its printer port, and a network has a printer server: *FX5,4 and VDU 2 print across the network. Window ▸ Print Centre (⌥⌘P) shows each job on paper (clean or dot matrix, A4, Letter or fanfold), and exports PDFs.
• Traffic: the studio's Traffic view shows every frame on the network, read as Econet's four-way handshake.
• Level 2 file server: add a Level 2 File Server from the palette, beside Level 1. Acorn's own server runs on a BBC with a 6502 Second Processor: users with passwords, directories within directories, access rights, and boot options, so a station logging on as BOOT runs its !BOOT.
• Distributed Mandelbrot: a new template where eight BBC Micros draw the Mandelbrot set between them. Type *CLUSTER on the Guide machine to take over the workers by remote control (Econet's POKE and JSR), then *MANDEL. Each worker computes its tiles in its own 6502 and sends them over Econet, and the picture builds on the coordinator's screen. Switch a worker off part way and its work goes to another. The studio's Mandelbrot view follows the render from the traffic.
• The Econet Times: a new template, a newsroom on Econet. Three reporters' BBCs boot into a reporter's desk: choose a desk, write a headline and a story (or keep the one written for it), and it's filed with the file server. The Editor's BBC watches the desks fill, and P prints the paper on the printer server: a masthead drawn in the BBC's own characters, then the stories in two columns, with bold and underlined headlines.
• Focus view: in the Network Studio, one machine large with every machine live in a strip down the left. Click one in the strip to bring it into the large view.
• Mandelbrot in Colour: the same in MODE 2, with VideoNuLA's colours: *MANDEL2. When it's done, the colours cycle.
• AI Agents Guide: Help ▸ AI Agents Guide explains connecting an agent to the BBC Micro in front of you, or running one headless: a hidden BBC Micro of its own that runs as fast as your Mac allows and gives the same result every time.
• For AI agents (MCP): every tool takes a machine (a network station), and there are tools for networks, their traffic, a station's Econet chip and print jobs.
• Debugging BBC BASIC: the debugger (⌥⌘D) has a BASIC view: the program's listing with breakpoints on its lines (with conditions written in BASIC, hit counts and log messages), stepping a statement at a time into, over or out of PROCs, FNs and GOSUBs (F6/F7/F8), stopping where an error happens, and the program's PROC and FN calls, its variables and arrays (LOCALs first; double-click one to change it) and watched expressions. Works with BASIC 2 and 4, and BASIC on a 6502 Second Processor. In VS Code, the MacBeeb extension debugs .bas files the same way (F5 runs one). For AI agents, the basic_ tools.
• Baron: MacBeeb comes with Baron, the successor to BeebAsm, and assembles with it for you. In VS Code, press F5 in a Baron .6502 file (or give a launch configuration "baron": one source file or several, and switches such as --opt 3): every section with a filename goes on a disc in drive 0, which is run (or booted), with breakpoints on your source lines, into macros, included files and FOR loops. For AI agents, assemble_baron.
• VS Code: the MacBeeb extension is on the Visual Studio Marketplace: search for "MacBeeb" in VS Code's Extensions view. Help ▸ Debugging with VS Code Guide shows how to debug your assembler and BASIC programs from VS Code on MacBeeb's BBC Micro.
• Credits: Help ▸ Credits thanks the people whose work MacBeeb is built from and includes: the emulators it learned from, the BBC Micro's own software, the game archivists, and the testers who measured real machines.
• BASIC programs: drop a .bas file (text, with or without line numbers, or tokenised) on a machine window, or open one with MacBeeb, and it runs.
• Your ROMs, in real sockets: add ROM image files to Machine ▸ ROM Library…, then plug them into the sockets each model really has in Machine ▸ Hardware… (⌥⌘E): the Model B's four (BASIC and the DFS can come out), the Aries B12's, the B+'s five 32K sockets. ROMs bigger than 16K that switch their own banks work too, such as Computer Concepts' Inter-Word and Inter-Base.
• Master 128 cartridges: plug a ROM cartridge, or a 16K or 32K sideways RAM cartridge, into either of the Master's cartridge slots, and set links LK19 and LK18 to make banks 4–7 ROM sockets.
• Machine configurations: save a machine set up as you like it under a name (Machine ▸ Machine Configurations), switch a window to it later, or add it to a network from My Machines in the Network Studio's palette. Networks keep their own copies of their machines' ROMs.
• Hardware expansions: Machine ▸ Hardware… (⌥⌘E) fits expansions to the Model B: Watford Electronics' 32K Shadow RAM board or the Aries B32 (with or without the B12 ROM board) in the 6502's socket, and a 16K or 32K sideways RAM module in a ROM socket, alone or with a board. The window shows the board's memory to scale, the sixteen sideways banks as the BBC uses them, and for shadow RAM, what programs and the screen each see. Load ROM images into sideways RAM from the Mac, or from the BBC with DFS 2.26's *SRLOAD or the Aries *RLOAD.
• The boards' own ROMs: the Watford board comes with Shadow RAM OS 2.40 and the Aries B32 with ARIES-B32 1.00, so their commands work as the manuals describe (*HELP RAMSTATUS, *XON 16, *XSTATUS, *RWRITE), and the Aries' own *XTEST passes.
• VideoNuLA: on any model, each of the sixteen colours can be any of 4,096. Turn it on under Video in the same window; the window shows the colours as programs set them.
• Hardware Expansion Guide: Help ▸ Hardware Expansion Guide explains each board with examples, and the developer reference has the memory maps and registers.
• For AI agents (MCP): get_hardware, power_cycle with memory_board, sideways_ram and video_nula, load_sideways_bank, save_sideways_bank, video_nula, set_video_nula_palette, set_video_nula_control, and bus_write to write any register as the BBC's CPU would.
• Ctrl-Break: Machine ▸ Ctrl-Break (⌃⌘B), a hard reset that keeps memory.
• Fixed: the debugger's Video ULA view showed the wrong physical colour for each logical colour.

MacBeeb 1.4.1

• Double-click to play: in the Game Library, double-click a game you've got to start it.
• Break with a second processor: the 6502s now disable interrupts on reset, as the real chips do (and the 65C02s clear decimal mode). Before, a Tube interrupt pending when you pressed Break could leave the co-processor stuck at a * prompt.
• For AI agents (MCP): screenshot can show the picture as far as the beam has drawn it, frame-exact at a breakpoint, or screen memory as it is now, and no longer comes back black straight after restore_snapshot. peek can write up to 64K to a file. New tools: measure_cycles, a stopwatch between two addresses, and key_sequence, for keys down and up on a timeline in one call. load_symbols with clear only clears the CPU it's loading for, and start_recording makes the folder it records into.

MacBeeb 1.4

• Green and amber screens: View ▸ Monitor puts the picture on a monochrome monitor with a green (P1) or amber (P3) phosphor, with any display style. Like the real thing, there's no colour grille, colours become shades by their brightness, and the phosphor glows on briefly.
• New Disc: File ▸ New Disc… (⌘N) makes a blank disc, formatted and ready to save to: DFS on 40 or 80 tracks, single or double sided, or ADFS S, M or L. Give it a title and choose a drive to put it in.
• Disc contents: File ▸ Show Disc Contents (⇧⌘I) lists the files on a disc, DFS or ADFS. Drag files out to Finder, each with a .inf file holding its BBC name and addresses, or drag Mac files in. Rename, relock, readdress and delete files, make ADFS directories, and set the title and boot option, all with undo. On ADFS, type *MOUNT afterwards, as you would after swapping a real disc.
• BASIC as text: drop a .bas text file on a disc and it becomes a BASIC program, tokenised just as BBC BASIC would. Export as Text… turns a program back into a listing.
• Quick Look: select a disc image in Finder and press space to see what's on it: the title, boot option and files on each side or in each directory.
• Game Library: File ▸ Game Library (⇧⌘K) has a shelf of BBC Micro Classics: the twenty favourite games chosen by the StarDot community and published by BBCMicro.co.uk, from Elite (the 6502 Second Processor edition) to Snapper, plus a book for the whole archive. Get a game from its BBCMicro.co.uk page in your browser, and MacBeeb notices the download and adds it to the shelf (if you let it look in Downloads; or import or drag in the disc yourself). Play sets up the right machine, such as a Second Processor for Elite or a Master 128 for Exile, and boots the disc. MacBeeb never downloads or includes the games itself. To make it a games machine, set Settings ▸ Games ▸ When MacBeeb opens to show only the Game Library.
• Author's Picks: a second shelf of twenty favourites, chosen by MacBeeb's author, from Elite and Exile to Holed Out!!, SimCity, U.I.M. and Knight Lore. They come from BBCMicro.co.uk in the same way, and a game that's on both shelves only needs getting once.
• My Games: your own games, in the Game Library's third tab. Drag in a disc image, a cover picture, or both together (a disc and a picture with the same name make one game), then give it a title and choose the machine and how it starts: booting the disc, typing a command such as CHAIN "GAME", or just putting the disc in. Add the missing disc or cover later by dropping it on the game.
• Quick Save and Quick Load: File ▸ Quick Save (⇧⌘F6) saves the game in drive 0 exactly as it is, discs included, and Quick Load (⇧⌘F5) goes straight back to it. Each disc keeps its last five, with a screenshot and the time, and they survive quitting. In the Game Library, a game with a snapshot says Resume under its cover, and its details show all five as screenshots: click Resume to carry on from the newest, or a screenshot to carry on from there. F5 and F6 on their own still go to the BBC.

MacBeeb 1.3.1

• What's New: this window opens after an update, and Help ▸ What's New in MacBeeb opens it any time.
• Master Turbo: the Master 128's internal 65C102 Co-Processor, a 4MHz 65C02 on the Master's internal Tube.
• Disc drive sounds: the drives spin up, run and step as they work, from MAME's recordings of 5.25" drives (3.5" on the Compact). Machine ▸ Disc Drive Sounds turns them off.
• Open Recent Disc: File ▸ Open Recent Disc lists the last ten disc images and boots the one you choose.
• Controls for each disc: key mappings and gamepad settings can belong to a disc image, and apply while it's in drive 0. Set them in Settings ▸ Keyboard and Settings ▸ Gamepad, or from Machine ▸ Controls for This Disc.
• Gamepads on keys: a game controller's buttons and directions can press BBC keys, alongside the analogue joystick or instead of it. Controllers drive the window in front.
• AI agents: MCP ▸ Connect an AI Agent… shows the commands to connect Claude Code or Codex to the running app. MCP ▸ Activity Log lists every tool call, and a light in the toolbar shows when an agent's connected. The debugger's breakpoints and symbols survive an agent restoring snapshots, loading states and power cycling.
• Fixes: the Master 512 can only be fitted to a Master 128, and code in main RAM no longer disassembles from shadow RAM on a B+ or Master.
• About MacBeeb links to the source on GitHub, and the app includes the GPLv3 licence.

MacBeeb 1.3

Full Changelog: v1.2.2...v1.3

MacBeeb 1.2.2

Full Changelog: v1.2.1...v1.2.2

MacBeeb 1.2.1

Full Changelog: v1.2...v1.2.1

MacBeeb 1.2

Full Changelog: v1.1...v1.2

MacBeeb 1.1

Full Changelog: v1.0...v1.1