76 Reply by bushy555

(43 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

Thanks heaps Utz.

Have played around with moving bits 3 & 4 to our bits 0 and 7 in WT and also changed your listed hex within all of the sample files - alas, there really wasn't any improvement unfortunately. I'm guessing I'm just missing something. I also played with shifting bits 3&4 in some of the other engines that I haven't managed to get any audio out yet; so far with little success, but I'll keep at it as I'm still currently really enthused in all of this. Whenever I find any spare time I just tinker with various ideas to no end to try to get something working.

I also did actually finally get around to start to properly count cycles for the heck of it, for the replacement LD opcode instead of ZX's OUT; trying to get the code in blocks of 8-states. Has improved sound quality in one or two engines; Still needs a lot more time spent into it, so it might be worthwhile me in doing this to all current players that I have working to reduce noise.

A few very rough grabs of a few engines playing on an Emulator are shown below. Sorry for the useless video and audio capturing, but does give a rough indication of the varying engines that I've managed to get working.


https://youtu.be/_5EdaxGSf4U            Tritone. Song: Journey.
https://youtu.be/eH4I1I7XuJo            Tritone FX
https://youtu.be/oDN6jTbStY8            PhaserX. Song:  Frohen Mohawk
https://youtu.be/aimDaYDt2FU            PhaserX. Song: Last Summer, with equaliser demo.
https://youtu.be/PE52gYiFWw4            Pytha.
https://youtu.be/ZyS1Vlr1jX0        Quadtropic with lores and hi-res equaliser.
https://youtu.be/Stm_25S97zk            Betaphase
https://youtu.be/uFYL9rsO410            VZ demo game with ZX10 engine
https://youtu.be/EQDAdN9sNFs    PhaserSqueek


Phasersqueek is the best sounding engine yet. It is just clean and crisp, and was just a cinch to convert. And I was gobsmacked upon the first running and hearing it.

PhaserX, Quadtropic, ZX and Huby seem to be the engines that can be used for games / demos without effecting performance too much. Trying to run the same code for the text equaliser in Pytha, Phasersqueek, Beta, Octonode etc just either fails from my lack of programming knowledge or the VZ simply doesn't have enough grunt to do whatever as well as the music engine.

I really want to get zbmod working; however, have already had two separate good attempts at it now, and unfortunately both were a failure.

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77 Reply by bushy555

(43 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

I will attempt to get some more tunes playing on real hardware  very shortly in the next week.
Have managed to convert quite a number of other engines over, however, some are extremely noisy because I just can't get the timing right yet.

I finally, after a number of hours and umpteen assesmbles, managed to get Tritone working very nicely with the song "Journey" that is included in the way-depths of the _Development directory in Z88DK. Sounds pretty cool.


Something like WTFX, ...and me not having the asm experience necessary, what would be the best recommendation in this instance?
The changing of all of the ZX's "OUT(C),A" to the VZ's "LD ($6800), A"   <or>  "LD [reg],$6800 / LD ( [reg] ), A"
...and then thusly fixing the timing ?   For this Frame 1 through to Frame 5?

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.


Doh! I can't even get the bbs tag working for the screenshot.
Screenshot of WTFX asking for suggested code or pointers is here : https://imgur.com/a/RWgdHht



cheers
Dave

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78 Reply by bushy555

(43 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

...four months later :

The four engines in BinTracker (Betaphase, PhaserX, PhaseSqueek and Pytha engines) took only minutes to change over and all four are now working on the VZ. The ~seven demo songs that came with Bintracker play nicely within both MESS and VZEM emulators. I have not yet had the chance to try on real hardware, however, can not see any reason why they would not work.
Unfortunately I haven't taken any video/youtube of these playing as of yet --- I will video real hardware when I get the chance.

Have made four "Huby musicbox" programs, each with around eight to ten Huby tunes, each tune selected by menu option. My limited programming methods limit the maximum program size to 32k; hence why I have four separate programs. However, having around ~38 music tunes , just off the Huby engine, is pretty cool.

Still wanting to try to convert Stocker and Q-Chan engines.

Engines now working on the VZ / Laser:
Huby
ZX10
POWW
Earthshaker
Earshaker
LSEngine
Ntropic
Pytha
Octonode
Betaphase
PhaseX
PhaseSqueek

Buzzkick : not working yet.
ZX7: Not yet working
Plipplop : not yet working

cheers

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79 Reply by bushy555

(43 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

Thanks for the comments AtariTufty. This is so much fun - wish I had started dabbling in this years ago with what ever I had at the time. Think I first started with the Ti Calculator WAV player asm listing after stumbing across it years ago. I should have taken the initiative and kept looking!

Utz: thanks for the files and info. Have just replied to your email with a few listings and info on the VZ sound.

Cheers.

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80 Topic by bushy555

(43 replies, posted in Other Platforms)

Hi all,
I'm a bit of a 36 year fan of the VZ200/VZ300 computers, also known as the Vtech Laser210 and Laser 310 and a few other names around the world. When I was younger I always wanted to know if it were possible and would love to see the day that this little computer could sing anything like the ZX , or heck, anything like the C64 sid chip. For years I always wondered.
Along came Z88dk, and the closest thing was the bit_synth() and bit_fx() that the fella's created. Then in Z88dk v1.9a they released Tri-tone for the ZX in this release, but for the life of me I couldn't work out how to create a VZ library to integrate with it. However, looking at Tri-tone within Z88dk source started my search for its origin as well as other 1 bit players...

Then one day a few years ago I was doing a google, and found Utz's "how to create a 1 bit player" thread on this forum. I spent the next few weeks at work trying and trying to get either or both methods to assemble correctly and to , simply play something. And I just couldn't do it. Couldn't get anything to work.  I simply then gave up.

Only about six weeks or two months ago now something twigged inside me, and I got re-motivated again. I grabbed all of Utz and Shiru's source code for umpteen players that I could find. For both the ZX and the Ti Calculators, grabbed Beepola and 1-tracker - and quickly saw that they wrote the asm source code to each players engine along with the tune data. Wowsers, thats pretty awesome stuff right there. And then I started dabbling. First with Huby, then Poww, ZX10, Ntropic etc. Changing all of the ports OUT($FE),A to AND 33/LD ($6800),A , a few small mods for the VZ (a lot of this trial and error), and then assembing with TASM. And bugger me if I wasn't blown away when I finally got Huby to play coming out of the speakers. I was jumping for joy.  I was making history --- The first time ever , as far as I am aware of, that a 1-bit tune was playing on a VZ "something" - in this case , the "something" was a ~98% accurate emulator (VZEM) by an Aussie bloke Guy Thomason.  I then quickly shoved it on to my real VZ300. And I was *gobsmacked*. Never before such an awesome tune came out of this little device. The original manufactures in downtome Hong Kong in 1983 would not have ever known what their little Z80 @3.5Mhz could achieve something so masterful , so pure and so mesmerising to the ear.

That was perhaps a month ago now, I've since tinkered a lot more and now have 29 songs within 4 Huby "music box" programs, POWW, Ntropic, Earthshaker, LS Engine, ZX10, and the original Octode player all working - at least in the Emulator. A few timing / interrupt issues are stopping all of these engines working on real hardware, and am working on resolving these. Huby, ZX10, Octode, POWW, Ntropic and Earthshaker now all work on real hardware. Octode with its 8 channels is glorious, whilst Earthshaker sounds the most crisp and cleanest on the VZ's little piezo internal speaker.

What I am after now is a source (website or ftp) for asm sources for more songs written by proper 1-bit music artists. I am certainly not a composer, and couldn't compose a song if I had to. Does anyone know of a website where a composer has numerous songs in some of these formats?
I've had a go at searching for .bbsongs for beepola and .1tm's for 1-tracker, but there really isn't all that much floating around. I have already gone through all of ~50(?) Beepola's examples and have extracted those that sounded ok in Huby.
I guess I really need to attempt to get some of these other engines working - (....though my Z80 asm is somewhat limited when it comes to trying to read & decypher others uncommented highly-optimised listings.)

Anyway, just wanted to sing a huge shoutout to Utz and Shiru and all others that have provided these asm listings. It has given me a great new perspective on these little computers - and has given me a lot of joy in getting these players up and running over the past month.  Currently trying to get Pytha and Anteater up and running....


These youtubes were my first early attempts after I had just gotten then running on real hardware.
I should re-do them, and I now have cleaned these all up and are much better in appearance at least.
I also have a hacked piezo speaker output into my od monitor, hence why the sound is so much louder.

Octode
https://youtu.be/-nJnMcd-UVY                               

ZX10
https://youtu.be/I8Tyv0i0U8I                               

Huby
https://youtu.be/rYspaBVw0tk                               

POWW & Ntropic
https://youtu.be/59Cebnxb7Mc                               


/cheers,
Bushy.

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