251 Reply by Shiru

(11 replies, posted in General Discussion)

I tried to experiment with Rombeep and ROM sound code in general some time ago, and had not much luck - they're too slow in note switching, and do reset phase, introducing unwanted clicks. Still, I believe something interesting and minimalistic can be made, probably will also get its own unique character due to the limitations.

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252 Reply by Shiru

(3 replies, posted in Sinclair)

It is possible to modify, but this sound effect approach specifically designed to be called repeatedly each interrupt or each game loop - to play sounds alongside the gameplay, in trade for (relatively) poor sound quality.

A shameless plug, you can use my BeepFX routines that is capable to much more sophisticated effects, but stop action while they're playing. As far as I know, it was hooked up to z88dk already: https://github.com/z88dk/z88dk/wiki/beepfx

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253 Reply by Shiru

(11 replies, posted in General Discussion)

I think the attention span is over by now, so I can share some stats:

46K views on YouTube, brought 160 subscribers too (up to 620)
19K plays on BandCamp, 6.5K complete plays (of a single track)
32 supporters on BandCamp (17 visible there, others supported by picking whole 'discography' or a single track from the album)
46K views of the Russian language making of article on a major IT blog website
23K views of the English language translation of the making of article at the same IT blog website (not much popular compared to US/Europe majors)

Some posts:

https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/08/feel- … d-speaker/
https://omicrono.elespanol.com/2019/02/ … -speakers/
https://www.osnews.com/story/129396/pc- … to-eleven/
https://omicrono.elespanol.com/2019/02/ … -speakers/
https://pcforum.hu/mediatar/5565/itt-eg … omponaltak

So yeah, it generated quite some attention that I did not expect, although maybe not as much as a popular 'underground' (like chiptune) music release from a well known artist would - those gets reposted all around profilic websites, mine wasn't reposted anywhere i think (besides my own posts). Anyways, pretty good for an 1-bit release. Too bad I wasn't expecting any real attention, so I didn't stiff some of ours best modern ZX 1-bit stuff to the articles in order to provide more visibility to our scene.

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254 Reply by Shiru

(164 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Thanks for report. Will take a look and figure it out whenever I'll get time to do another chunk of updates.

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255 Reply by Shiru

(11 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Wrote an in-depth article on making of System Beeps: https://habr.com/en/post/439192/

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256 Reply by Shiru

(11 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Reaper PCSPE export works like a log recorder. You start export, start playing music like usual, plugin catches in realtime all it receives from MIDI tracks and writes down all the data that it produces and that goes into emulated PC Speaker registers. That's the same way some YM2612 plugins work. Once you got BIN or other file format, you can make a simple player program that will just send the pre-recorded data to actual PC Speaker port. There is an example of QBasic program alongside PCSPE that does just that. If anyone needs, I sure can provide help with implementing player in other language or for other needs.

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257 Reply by Shiru

(11 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Thanks a lot, utz! In meanwhile, promised stuff is added.

I think next logical step would be to make a ZX monophonic engine with high quality synthesis and try to apply the same techniques to that. Like Full Throttle 2 title song.

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258 Topic by Shiru

(11 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Fresh and steaming, just uploaded my new 1-bit PC Speaker album to https://shiru8bit.bandcamp.com/album/system-beeps

An MS-DOS player program with all of these songs is also ready, will be up a bit later (will post a link here and there). Also going to publish all source stuff, including Reaper project files.

Edit: it is here: program and sources

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259 Reply by Shiru

(130 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Congrats, utz! A winner combo of impressive engine and tune! Actually wanted to use wtbeep too, but didn't have enough time to make a fully new song, had to rely on unfinished backlog.

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260 Reply by Shiru

(4 replies, posted in Sinclair)

As far as I remember, SDCC assembler simply does not allow 'current address', because it gets calculated at linking time only. So the second approach should help, i.e. ld (var+1),sp.

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261 Reply by Shiru

(16 replies, posted in Atari)

Finally got a working Portfolio. Seems to be a long way before anything is going to be made, though, as connectivity certainly not a strong side of the system, and any cards/adapters are really difficult to obtain here. So no promises so far. Hopefully will figure out something before it mysteriously stop working, like it happened with a Ti calc.

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262 Reply by Shiru

(9 replies, posted in Sinclair)

1tracker follows pattern-less design. It is possible to add patterns support into engine, not too difficult, but you would have to prepare data manually somehow, as 1tracker won't split it into patterns automatically (engine script can do this potentially, but that's not an easy way).

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263 Reply by Shiru

(9 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Yep, there is a ton of problems with laptops, as they has very shrinked down keyboards, and the lacking keys is different. I'm trying to add alternative key combinations for laptops whenever issues discovered, but there is always more.

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264 Reply by Shiru

(9 replies, posted in Sinclair)

You don't need to edit assembly code in order to use loop (if it is supported by an engine). Use Ctrl+Home to mark loop start, Ctrl+End to mark loop end.

This piece of code

begin:
    ld hl,music_data
    rlca
    add a,b   
    call play
    ret

is totally not correct, the other one is. Probably some bug, the engine is very fresh and wasn't tested much, if at all.

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265 Reply by Shiru

(2 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Synth drums code is about 120 bytes large. Are you sure that's what makes the most impact on the size? I would expect song data itself to take up a few kilobytes.

Phaser1 code is quite compact, and song format in its original version is well optimized. Although Beepola's implementation may be more efficient for a particular song.

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266 Reply by Shiru

(35 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

Thank you, guys.

Should note that this was a side step related to the original intents. I did not use any software 1-bit synthesis in this demo, it is just the plain single channel 8253 music (very much like classic PC Speaker), created with PCSPE. Truly 1-bit and truly monophonic, though.

Still going to do a music sequencing, or a performing software perhaps, using this platform, with a custom 1-bit engine.

Also thinking on creating a cut down replica version of the schematics, omiting all phone line related stuff, and a PCB layout, so more people can get the thing without relying on buying old hardware overseas. The device is quite easy to assemble, and does not need rare parts (the obscure single piece LED display obviously has to be replaced with some modern ones).

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267 Reply by Shiru

(35 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

Thanks! At least some real outcome of messing around and flooding this thread with this stuff. Also helped to improve the emulator. Also my first 'full' demo since 1997 when I first learned what a 'demo' is.

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268 Reply by Shiru

(35 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

Another fun fact gained by the means of digital archeology. I was messing up with the firmwares that featured the sampled speech stuff, attempting to make a sample decoder. They use different formats, I did only one (4-bit samples at 5000 Hz), other ones is well distorted, but recognizeable. I learned that there was the first version to feature voice, it had male voice that only spelled a few numbers and short messages, then there was the second one (Selena), it had best quality female voice. Latter has been ripped, downgraded, and reused all across other firmwares. Derivative versions has varying sample set, some say tens and hundreds, and extra messages, some not.

The fun fact is that one of the firmwares, the only one (of those I checked so far, at least) that features good quality female voice, also has an angry male voice clip in the middle of the data: FUCK OFF! (in Russian)

That made me remember that an urban legend circulated at the time, that if you enter some secret code, you can blacklist a number with such a message played to the caller. Turns out it wasn't really a legend.

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269 Reply by Shiru

(35 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

Got yet another unit, nothing to show really, but it is an old large Z80 board build with one of the oldest firmwares - Arctur 36. Tried to find this one on the webs, and alas, all dumps is now gone. So I dumped it (it is very different from all others), the ROM was unstable, so I had to stare to the hex compare quite a bit. This way I figured that I may seek for hidden messages in firmwares. And there is indeed some! Here is the list for your digital Indiana Jones pleasure.

Fortuna
Fortuna. (C) Copyright 1995.....Digital voice from version "Selena", special thanx !....Illegal copying is strictly prohibited !!!....Hacker - Alex Taran 2:461/256.11 @FidoNet....Phone number (0572) 62-32-79 (24h)

Arctur 36
(p) S.Batalov 095-939.75.05: Improvements, settling to 2764, voice adjusted.

Ravel19f
Corrected by FALCON inc. 7-095-404-6807

Rus7
KMON-U-Overlay read error

Rus13p
Thanx 2 Selena8!

Rus19e
(c) 1995 by RAVEL

Rus20c
(c) 1995 by PASHA. Tel:(095)-251-17-80

Rus20e
(c) 1991-1995 by PASHA, SERGEY. Tel:(095)-251-17-80

Rus20f
(c) 1991-1996 by PASHA, SERGEY. Tel: (095) 268-22-81, 268-28-74

Rus22c
(c) 1991-1996 by PASHA, SERGEY. Tel: (095) 268-09-33

Rus23c (transliterated from Russian)
(c) 1991-97 Pavel Sukhodolsky, Sergey Kosov Tel:(095)2680933  Moscow

Julia25pr
JULIA-25  (C) Copyright Alex Serov (Nj/VIMS), 1993-96.....  FidoNet: 2:461/256.111 (Aka 2:461/144.11)....Digital voice from version "Selena", special thanx !....Special thanx to Alex Taran, 2:461/256.11 @FidoNet

Julia27dp
JULIA-27 d  (C) Copyright Alex Serov (Nj/VIMS), 1993-97.....FidoNet: 2:461/60.1....Digital voice from version "Selena", special thanx !....Special thanx to Alex Taran, 2:461/60 @FidoNet

Julia27f
JULIA-27 F  (C) Copyright Alex Serov (Nj/VIMS), 1993-98.....FidoNet: 2:461/60.1, E-Mail: heiki@iName.com....Digital voice from version "Selena", special thanx !....Special thanx to Alex Taran, FidoNet: 2:461/60, E-Mail: alex@dnp.ukrpack.net....Very big thanx to PS Design, Kharkov

Julia27lp
JULIA-27 L  (C) Copyright Alex Serov (Nj/VIMS), 1993-99. <Nin_Alex@email.com>....For all questions about distributing, future versions, hardware..please refer to Boris (PS Design, Kharkov). E-Mail: <maxlab@kharkov.com>

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270 Reply by Shiru

(35 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

At this moment I'm on the 'make it work' part, before 'make it pretty'. I need to figure out lots of details to create faithful emulation that is useful for new developments. VCL just helps me to speed this process up, as I know VCL very well, while I don't know anything about CLX (yet). Sure, eventually I'll put some time to make it more accessible and useful.

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271 Reply by Shiru

(35 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

So, I finally made my emulator work, more or less. I used the 8253 core recommended by utz for this time being. Sorry, no docs whatsoever so far. A ton of firmwares included, so please be my guest and feel yourself a true hacker exploring them!

I can give you a crash course, though. Load 'rus23c_z80.rom' firmware. All firmwares of this branch use a system where you press * twice to enter F-unction mode, then you press a number to select a function. Press ** 5 to enter Alarm Clock setup. In most modes singular * presses switches between available parameters. Press it until you see 'PLAY 00'. Enter a number between 00 and 24. Hold down * to hear selected tune (it plays while you hold the button). Try song 21 for extra fun.

If you have issues with sound stability, check the cfg file, you can change buffer size there.

Download: http://shiru.untergrund.net/files/aonz80emu.zip

http://shiru.untergrund.net/temp1/aonz80emu_screenshot.png

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272 Reply by Shiru

(130 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Finally, a website with compo rules and explaination on how to send an entry, with the english version: https://chaosconstructions.ru/compos

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273 Reply by Shiru

(130 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Interesting. Never seen this one, and there is silence all around russian web (at least to me) regarding this year. Moreover, this website only lists planned compos, but there is no details, no rules, not even contacts to send entries. My guess this is a website for visitors only.

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274 Reply by Shiru

(130 replies, posted in Sinclair)

I still don't know if the party going to be held this year, and where is their website at all (they have plenty, can't find 2018 one).

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275 Reply by Shiru

(6 replies, posted in Sinclair)

7 entries this year. No full results just yet, but congrats, AtariTufty!

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