I didn't say anything about a Mac. Though I accept I am taking it way off topic with my little grumble. Really I'm just still smarting at being told off :-)

It absolutely wouldn't have been an Apple II; I never saw an Apple II in the UK until they were retro. It would have been a port to the (similarly 6502-based) BBC Model B. We had loads of those in schools [0].

A bit of a google suggests that it was likely based on code from a 1978 computer listing, though it would have been 1983 when it was inflicted on us.

Funnily enough I don't think we spent more than half an hour with the computer. A week or so with the assignment.

[0] the Apple II would have been more expensive, and didn't provide the opportunity for schools-television-related content or a loan of the county's (truly groundbreaking) Domesday Book laser disk system:

https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co83846...

> I didn't say anything about a Mac.

True, but this is a post about Macs - see title.

Yes -- edited my comment. I'm really just dragging it off topic and should be ignored :-)

> You may be misrembering - a Mac would be very rare in a UK school - it was probably an Apple II.

Getting even more off-topic, but I remember being a kid/teen in 1980s/90s Australia, and the diversity of machines we got to use at school impresses me in hindsight: Apple IIs, Commodore 64s, classic Macs, Acorn Archimedes, IBM PC JXs running DOS, Atari STs, no-name IBM PC compatibles running Windows 3.x/9x and Netware. (Not all at the same school, that was across four different schools I attended K-12.) My own kids don’t get exposed to anywhere near as much technological variety.

I went to a .. I want to say not very affluent school in Scotland, but that'd be an understatement. But we were taught to type on classic macs. I don't remember exactly what model, but definitely these ones with the little offset grin.

All I really remember is a shufflepuck game. That's it.

Just to confuse things, this would have been about 1995. That awkward gap between the beebs, and Tesco taking an interest in the matter.

We had a room of BBC Micros, a room of RM Nimbuses, and a room of Macs at school (UK). The Macs were evidently the coolest. Pretty much the first thing I did when I got to university was buy a IIsi (funded by the articles I was writing for an 8-bit magazine).

The Nimbus was such a disappointing machine. At least the 380Z and 480Z looked like they came from a sci fi movie.

> At least the 380Z and 480Z looked like they came from a sci fi movie.

Nah. they lookd like what they were, clunky bent-steel boxes.

I agree the Nimbus was a dead-end.