PCSPE VSTi - create oldschool PC Speaker music with a DAW (Page 2 of 2)

x64 support is there now. What I love about releasing tons of free stuff that actually worth a fortune in development, is the feedback. Previously it used to be 'oh, but it does not work on my 64-bit system'. Now when I just get this resolved, it turned into both of 'oh, but it is not for Linux', 'oh, but it is not for Mac'.

I'm sure up to making software more accessible and to supporting more platforms, but only if it does not take too much effort/resources that could be otherwise spent to other developments (or to make damn music, I got a dozens of music tools already that I have never used myself). Unfortunately, for VST it is anything but easy. The original framework documentation is exceptionally bad, VST3 is exceptionally over engineered, there is tons of compatibility quirks between hosts, none of numerous VST wrappers out there are easy to setup or use, possibility of hooking up Qt or SDL is a total mystery, etc. No wonder most of VSTs out there were made with the SynthEdit, and you can barely find a properly programmed open source one.

I deal with this kind of feedback since 2007 or so, so yeah. Still difficult to stay cool at times.

A while back, way before I took the VST route, I had a desire to support LMMS, which was the best free FL-style DAW out there. I come to their IRC channel and started to ask questions, like, how to make native plugins, are there people who would want it. They said - nah, do VST instead. So I did eventually, and I guess it has been a good advice, after all.

Of all places and possibilities, the (probably) first PCSPE use in a published production that has been done by someone but me, is the Bad Apple port to the USSR designed pocket computer MK-90. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qESkvDjKXA

This is kind of an answer of the Soviet electronics to the graph calculators such as Ti-8x. To my knowledge, it is a totally unique design, not a copy or derivative of something (like most of other Soviet electronics), yet it is based on the cloned CPU architecture, yeah - the 16-bit LSI-11, which is at heart of the BK line of home computers. It even had a dock station MK-92 with a 4-color plotter and tape interface. First prototyped in 1986, released in 1988, produced till 1992. At the time of release it used to cost nearly as much as a small Soviet car. Not a vapor hardware either, I personally seen it in a shop being a kid.

It was the last mass produced device of such kind in the USSR. There was a similar but 8086-powered MK-98 follow up in the works, a few production quality fully functional prototypes were found, but it was never available to the mass market.