Acorn User began publication on the day the BBC Micro was launched. It was the official publication for users of Acorn machines, and published by Acorn Publishing. However, it was taken into independent publishing hands after about two years, and remained independent until its demise some fifteen years later.

The Acorn User companion cassettes were available by mail order only for £3.95 each, and the cassettes were notoriously difficult to use. There was no menu system, and frequently there was a mismatch between the filename given in the magazine and what the program on the cassette was actually called.

The disc images in this library have been modified with a menu program, allowing instant access to every program, or worked example. Many of the programs complement articles in the magazine, although there are a few demos and games which are playable without referring to it.

It is not known when Acorn User started or stopped producing companion cassettes. It did also produce some standalone software, which is available over in the Professional Releases (UK) archive.

The full Acorn User library stretches to around 118 discs in total, so we have split this archive into issues 1-50 (below) and a further archive of issues 51-100. We will be adding companion discs to issues 101+ very shortly.

We have put together three DVDs featuring scans of every page of the Acorn User magazines, which you can order from our DVD page.

After issue 100, there were very few BBC and Electron programs included in the magazine.