26 Reply by bushy555

(42 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

Somewhat useless update - no videos or recordings yet.
Have started integrating playing through internal peizo speaker as well as cassette port on a few of the engines now.

Also have been dabbling in playing the music through the VZ/Laser printer interface port connected directly to some amplified speakers. It is as dead-set so simple as changing the ZX's OUT($FE), A to the VZ's OUT($E), A which is in the range of the printer port being from 0 to $F. No idea why I actually chose $E though. It works.  Connect Centronics pin 6 (D4) to amplified speakers and away we go. 
Still fiddling with it; some of the engines that can output the full 256 bits to the port will make use of a 8-bit R2R resistor DAC, or down the track the use of a dedicated 8-bit DAC chip. (....but this is going 7 bits off-topic.)

Anyway, so far the printer port sounds pretty nifty on TRITONE, Phaser1, 2, and 3, PhaserX, SQUAT and SQUATM; a far nicer fuller sound than the very "tinny" sound of the internal speaker.
Have implemented an output device menu selection for a few of the engines/songs being : Speaker / Cassette Port / Printer Port.

I really wish that this existed back in the 1983 era!

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27 Topic by bushy555

(0 replies, posted in Sinclair)

All,

I can't find the original post from six to 12 months ago, however, within the post a link was uploaded to a 71-page article/book, written in Russian all about 1-bit on the ZX.  At the time I tried used google translator to make an English version but failed miserably. Then subsequently forgot all about it. Came across it again and decided to try translating it again as I really am interested in reading it. Tried about six different supposedly Russian-to-English PDF converting websites, and none of them worked except for DEEPL.  Then uploaded both to archive.org

So, both Russian and English is available here :    https://archive.org/details/1bit-music- … um-english

It's a cool read for those that can't read Russian & haven't read it before.


(Hoping that there is no serious copyright on this book article thing)

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28 Reply by bushy555

(8 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

utz wrote:

How is that even possible though? The Aquarius runs at about the same speed as a Speccy, doesn't it?

Unsure how and no idea. The few times I managed to get it running last week, it was actually sounding way too slow.
And this is after I removed the few opcodes of the ZX keyboard read routine. It was still sounding slow so I removed the two spare timing NOP's within just to see how much affect that it would have; and it did near to nothing.

But then as I ran it again last night in the same emulator (no changes to the emu), I was incredibly surprised to hear it running at the speed that it is.  And this was without the keyboard, but with the two NOPs in the inner loop.

(For those playing along at home, it's the SquatM engine.)


utz wrote:

The Aquarius runs at about the same speed as a Speccy, doesn't it?

Identical as far as I'm aware - Both are at 3.5 mhz

Will keep fiddling with the sprinkling of NOPs to get it sounding nicer.
However I am now wondering if it is the emulator that is a bit dicey, and isn't playing nicely.
Unfortunately I don't have an Aquarius computer to try it on.

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29 Reply by bushy555

(8 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

Managed to get a very rough recording.
This version runs way way too quick, so much that the samples are being skipped.
Needs further work.

https://youtu.be/y0M9qiRdWEk

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30 Reply by bushy555

(8 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

Managed to get a very rough recording.
This version runs way way too quick, so much that the samples are being skipped.
Needs further work.

https://youtu.be/y0M9qiRdWEk

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31 Reply by bushy555

(8 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

Long delay later...


I sort of managed to get some of these tunes working / not working simply as binary files, and just needed to load them in as such. VirtualAquarius emulator allows the loading and execution of a binary at whatever address you give it - (stating the obvious : same origin address as when it was assembled)
Those tunes that write back to memory, of course, will fail, since Im trying to run these in the cartridge ROM area. 

CAQ cassette header:
Further looking and fiiddling has finally found the CAQ header, and a somewhat self creation of a BASIC loader for the binary. Just type RUN after CLOADing the CAQ file in.

Found the CAQ stuff within a few sub-directories of James Tamer's VirtualAquarius emulator.
The header is here for future reference :
https://github.com/bushy555/Aquarius_1- … uarius.asm

...however in saying this, Shiru's "LetsGo" is ~15k, and I can't get it working with this header, either in VirtualAquarius or MESS emulators. This CAQ header though seems to work fine in many other programs - perhaps it has an 8kb limit?
I've managed to sort of getting "LetsGo" working in the VirtaulAquarius emu just by making its origin at $4016, and executing it here. I'll attempt to get a video of it when I can get it working next.
(There are BASIC pointers and variables stored at $4000-ish, hence the $4016).
Weirdly though it works maybe 2 out of every ten times I try to load it in, even after killing the emu and restarting it.
Clearly Im still doing something wrong somewhere.  Doesn't matter - I love me fiddling around.

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32 Reply by bushy555

(8 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

...months later:

I've managed to do about 15 tunes from about 11 or 12 engines.
https://github.com/bushy555/Aquarius_1-bit_music

Two locations for the Aquarius rom cartridge : $e000 for 8k roms and $C000 for 16k.
I can only get the combined engine + music that is in total 8k to execute in any emulator.
Up to 16l assemble fine of course to $c000, but just wont run.
Typical normal binaries assemble to $4000 - and I can't get these working either.
I want to say that, initially, the Aquarius seems very "finicky" and very particular on its needs. But it will just come down to my lack of knowledge and understanding of this computers setup.

Ive been using an old emulator 'VirtualAquarius' : http://www.oocities.org/emucompboy/
Or, roms for mess/mame can be grabbed here : https://github.com/bushy555/MESS_MAME_ROMS

I'd youtube a few tunes, but, I don't think that its really worth the effort.

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33 Topic by bushy555

(1 replies, posted in General Discussion)

I welcome Utz to jump in here and fix/comment/add to this.

For those not on his mailing list :
I read in my emails this morning (5/Feb) with great enthusiasm in BinTracker #10 News, that a windows build is now released.

https://github.com/bintracker/bintracker/releases

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34 Reply by bushy555

(1 replies, posted in Sinclair)

'Moggy' seems to not approve.

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35 Reply by bushy555

(3 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Thanks Shiru.
I found it here : https://zxart.ee/eng/authors/u/utz/trifique/  which only has the asm and a .tap file.

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36 Topic by bushy555

(3 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Randomly looking here and there yesterday, and found the .asm source for Trifique from DiHalt 2018 over on botb or may have been elsewhere. Having no info within it, I can not identify which engine/player it uses. Am really curious.
I started opening the first ~ten engines that I have in my collection to cross check to try to find out, but I gave up rather quickly.
Any clues Utz?  (Hoping you'll know off the top of your head)

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37 Reply by bushy555

(11 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

Thanks heaps Utz.  A great starting point for me  (I had nothing other than simply just fiddling away randomly)

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38 Reply by bushy555

(11 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

Question out to anyone that may be half bored and can easily answer :

I'm trying to get "trantor" music player working on the Microbee. Trantor uses IM2 interrupt mode which the Microbee does not support.
I have spent ages (many afternoons) fiddling trying to remove the IM2 initialisation routine and the interrupt playing snippet of code within, and just essentially turning it into a standard player. I am happy to loudly proclaim that I don't have much knowledge here - and trying to remove IM2 code certainly is not my specialty.

Trantor source here : https://pastebin.com/XSAwL14g

I've also looked at this from the VZ's angle, pretending that this was using VZ interrupt locations and removing required VZ interrupt code - but this is still a no go. (everything so far has just crashed for me)

Anyone interested in having a quick go at it?

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39 Topic by bushy555

(8 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

All,

The Aquarius computer has both an internal speaker as well as the fancy AY chip.
Internal speaker hangs off port $FC.

Very very small steps, but managed to get ZSPEAK and Beepola's "1943" song within the Huby engine playing through the internal speaker in two of the Aquarius's emulators.
Have spent a few hours trying to get Phaser 1 / Buzzkick / Squats / Quad / WTBeep / musicbox ...with no luck yet.
Biggest issue is/was finding the cryptic cartridge header at $c000 and the m/l BASIC loader (and/or) the header of the Aquarius's emulators tape format being  .CAQ
However, have just found more details, so I might be getting somewhere now.

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40 Reply by bushy555

(11 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

Doing the simple changes within the Pytha engine (grabbed from Bintracker) to the Microbee, this happened.
I call it RAGE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obzLe3lnWLs

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41 Reply by bushy555

(42 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

>If you don't mind asking, whereabouts in AU are you based?
Not at all. About five hours drive north west of Sydney. Small country town, very fertile surrounding land, broadacre farming 100kms in all directions. Sheep & cattle country.

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42 Reply by bushy555

(11 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

https://github.com/bushy555/microbee_1-bit_music
Have about 40 songs there now in a few various engines.

I have assembled all of these as CP/M .COM files for the Microbee. Might not be the most correct file for everyone.

Not sure if it is the same as MAME as it is for MESS, however, find up an old copy of MESS. (Im using one from 2009)
Find and download/install the appropriate Microbee ROMs . Fire up MESS.
Then , essentially, it is like loading in a snapshot file.
Devices --> Quickload --> mount --> *.com      (and the file autoloads, executes and tunes play)

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43 Reply by bushy555

(11 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

Five different emulators and I couldn't get anything to work. I thought I was doing something wrong or going bonkers.
A lot of mucking around and finally worked out how to load the assembled object code into MESS correctly.
The other emu's either don't emulate the speaker correctly (or at all).
Using an old version of MESS from 2009, and the 1-bit tunes sound great.

Three examples :

Lets Go                 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jil6W1oLxzo   
Standing Wave     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU2Qv_bwOPg   
Catching Up          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF3dtUdJbnc

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44 Reply by bushy555

(42 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

Another shed video.   Shiru's "Lets Go" - SquatM engine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLj5PDpigEw

...I totally love this song and it's not hard to see why.

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45 Reply by bushy555

(11 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

Days later: Haven't gotten very far with anything at all unfortunately.
Contacted the fellow that wrote nanowasp emulator. His reply :


>In terms of tape formats and sound - I don’t think I ever got around to supporting sound output in
>any of the emulators I wrote. A long time ago someone did fork one though and created uBee512,
>which is much fuller-featured than mine. Perhaps this is the one you’ve found?
>
>I’d guess that it probably just requires a file with the raw bytes that would appear on the tape.
>If you take a look at the code here you’ll see the what the format looks like:
>https://github.com/dgchurchill/nanowaspjs/blob/master/src/virtualtape.ts#L140-L196
>
>Roughly it’s a header, followed by a simple checksum, followed by 256-byte blocks which each have
>a checksum. (see
>https://github.com/dgchurchill/nanowaspjs/blob/90ecdb01f897bac4830ad5902105956a8e5e3e05/src/utils.ts#L276
>for how the checksum is calculated)
>
>I believe you should still be able to find Stewart Kay (author of uBee512 emulator) at
>https://microbee-mspp.org.au/forum under the username uBee. There’s lots of good info there too
>about his emulator, and there may be tools for creating the tape header.

...I'm on to it.

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46 Topic by bushy555

(11 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

Hi all,

The Microbee computer is another 1980's z80 computer (Australian designed & built). Probably unheard of outside of Australia - they were built in their thousands and I would go so far as suggesting that nearly every Primary & High School throughout the country had one or a dozen.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroBee

Being bored and doing a little dabbling, the speaker hangs off bit 6 on Port 2 of it PIO chip via a single transistor.
I've made the very simple changes to a number of various engines, and have managed to get a few beep bop dreadful sounds coming out an emulator. I think that the emu that I'm using just isn't emulating sound correctly. Acknowledging that the earlier Microbee's were only 2 Mhz, the later 32mb keyboards were running at 3 point something Mhz.

I have found four Microbee emulators:
- MESS/MAME : can't for the life of me work out how to load in object code & execute. Needs more experimenting.
- Nanowasp (local install as well as an online version; neither supports sound at all)
- Ubee512 : can not get it to load the ROMs correctly.
- PiccoMozzy Mbee32k. This works great, but I feel as though it does not emulate sound output correctly.

I have two Microbee computers sitting on the ground underneath my parents house. Will have to dig them out, see if either works, and then attempt a WAV file load-in of the players. I feel as though if I were to give someone with a working Microbee system these assembled players, they'd just work and sound like they had intended to.
Anyway, I'll post up a reply If I ever get anywhere with this little side project.

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47 Reply by bushy555

(164 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Heh, ignore the updates, keep the brilliant music releases coming.  'Lets Go' is the best!

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48 Reply by bushy555

(43 replies, posted in Atari)

> Like this? https://github.com/luamfb/tempest-lcd

Weird coincidence that this was on Hack a Day only yesterday?
Or did someone send it into them..

https://hackaday.com/2022/08/18/lcd-mon … -the-hits/

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49 Topic by bushy555

(8 replies, posted in Sinclair)

Performing random googling within github. Found this work-in-progress disassembly of Tim's engine for Chonos.
Thought others may perhaps be interested in it.
https://github.com/ZoomTen/chronos-zxbeeper


Downloaded it, managed to get it working on the humble VZ/Laser computer, and it also sounds great. (Without the AY)

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50 Reply by bushy555

(164 replies, posted in Sinclair)

WOOHOO!   v4.0 and v4.1 works on XP again.
Whatever libraries that you are now using Shiru, its awesomely good! 

(Heh! ...I wonder how many people are scroffing at me still using XP)

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