The BBC Domesday Project was a partnership between Acorn Computers Ltd, Philips, Logica, and the BBC to mark the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book, an 11th century census of England.

The RM Nimbus PC-186 was one of only two computer systems that were able to interface to the Philips VP-415 Laserdisc player and access the content from the BBC Domesday Project which was on specially created discs that were made as part of a partnership between Acorn Computers, Philips, Logica, and the BBC to mark the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book.

The RM Nimbus PC-186 was a 16-bit microcomputer introduced in 1985. It is one of a small number of computers based on the Intel 80186 processor, a version of the Intel 8086 (as used by the IBM PC) originally intended as a processor for embedded systems. It ran MS-DOS 3.1 but was not IBM PC compatible. The PC-186 could run Windows versions up to and including Windows 3.0, but only in real mode, as protected mode was only available on 286 or higher processors. This version of the PC-186 had special port which allowed you to connect the computer to the Laserdisc player.

The data on the discs was compiled between 1984 and 1986, and published in 1986. It included a new 'survey' of the United Kingdom, in which people, mostly school children, wrote about geography, history or social issues in their local area or just about their daily lives. This was linked with maps, and many colour photos, statistical data, video and 'virtual walks'. Over 1 million people and 14,000 schools participated in the project. The project also incorporated professionally-prepared video footage, virtual reality tours of major landmarks and other prepared datasets such as the 1981 census.

The information recorded from the Domesday Project was stored on adapted LaserDiscs in LaserVision Read Only Memory (LV-ROM) format. The discs were adapted by Philips to store still pictures, computer graphics, text, maps, and computer date, as well as the TV pictures they were already capable of storing. The Philips LaserVision player was controlled by the Master AIV computer, which was an Acorn BBC Master fitted with a SCSI controller and the 65C102 "Turbo" co-processor. The Master also had a Videodisc Filing System (VFS) ROM to handle the blocks of text, still and moving pictures.

The BBC Domesday System is often used as an example of technical obsolesence as the LV-ROM discs were immediately superceded by the smaller and more capable CD-ROM technology. Today the remaining discs are subject to 'bit rot' or data degradation as the bonding material between the two layers of plastic breaks down, oxygen penetrates between the layers and starts to oxidise the metallic layer. This renders the discs and data unreadable.

Manufacturer: Research Machines
Date: 1984

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH55875. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.