When I first started collecting Acorn Electron stuff when I was around 15 years old, like everyone else of the era, I concentrated mainly on games. I quickly got hold of the best ones and eagerly popped the cassettes into my datacorder. When I finally got hold of a reasonably priced second hand disc drive - some four years later - I found out that many cassette games could be transferred to discs. So I set about creating the archives of disc-based games that these days are referred to as the Professional Releases libraries on this site.

However, what of the games that never made it to a "professional" release? Welcome to PD World; PD stands for Public Domain and means that the programs were never for sale anywhere. Several PD libraries did exist alongside the professional releases (notably BBC PD, later 8BS and HeadFirst PD) and catered almost exclusively for the BBC owner with a disc drive.

A few of these discs would occasionally come into my possession bundled in an eBay lot, and the 8BS (http://www.8bs.com/) website has a colossal number of discs for the Public Domain officiando. Hence, for a few years, 'PD World' included just a few entries. Mostly these catalogues consisted of PD games for the BBC that also ran on the Electron.

When 8BS went down from 2006-2010, I 'rescued' the BBC PD catalogue and added it here for want of anywhere else to put it.

PD World is now my favourite part of the Acorn Electron World web site, and features completely exclusive content for the whole of the BBC series. Here you'll find software that takes more of a risk with its host machine, whether through Lars Osterball's super-sized scrollers, The Horny Elk's X-rated slideshows or taking on the role of Hitler in MRM's Nutter. You'll find games galore too - many of which would have held their own compentently as a professional release.