Welcome to

Acorn Playground

BBC Micros and Acorn Archimedes, on your Mac and in your browser. Emulators that run them for real, a RISC OS ROM rebuilt from public source, and tools to write and debug their programs in VS Code.

Switch on a BBC Micro Switch on an Archimedes

Both run right here, in your browser. No downloads, nothing to install.

Model BB+Master 128Compact

MacBeeb

The BBC Micro, on your Mac. Cycle-exact, with second processors, the classics ready to play, a debugger for 6502 and BBC BASIC, and classrooms of BBCs on Econet, across the Internet too.

Switch On Download for Mac
A310A440/1A3000A5000

MacArch

The Acorn Archimedes, on your Mac. ARM2, ARM3 and ARM250 machines running RISC OS, a shelf of Archimedes classics, Econet with Acorn's own file server, and an ARM assembler and debugger.

Switch On Download for Mac
Public sourceApache 2.02MB ROM

ArcLibre

A free ROM for the Archimedes, restored from RISC OS's public source. It starts the desktop, with Edit, Draw, Paint and BBC BASIC, and it's the RISC OS MacArch runs in your browser.

Download the ROM Find out more

Things to Try

Eight-BBC MandelbrotIn your browser, over Econet
Debug in VS Code6502, ARM and BBC BASIC
Econet, onlineBBCs and Archimedes, together
Let an AI driveConnect an agent with MCP

Write it, then step through it

Two extensions for VS Code connect to the emulators: press F5 and your program is assembled, put on a disc and run, with breakpoints in your own source.