Category: software

  • GalleryNes Appeared!

    gallerynes_02galleryNES – galleryNES is an open source picture gallery for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Create your own pixel art and view it on a real NES in slideshow format!

    via no-carrier.com.

  • Playing Samples on your Atari 2600

    The Little girl is having a shining moment over samples.
    The Little Girl is having a Shining moment over samples.

    BOOdAw posted a link to interesting code for adding samples to your 2600 tracks. From the TROGblog:

    I have a habit of checking out the 2600 programming forums every week or so, and two weeks ago I started commenting on the topic Advanced sound techniques: how do they work? My interest in this topic was mostly in sample playback. I’ve been messing with digital sound samples since 1990, and I was very impressed when I found out a couple years ago that the 2600 was capable of playing back decent quality sound samples. My only exposure to this was the Berzerk Voice-Enhanced, which is a thing of beauty (and a joy forever.)

    …

    If I get the time and energy, I’ll enhance wav2atari to work on 16-bit samples, and add a downsampling option so you can specify the output sample rate. I also need to clean up the playback asm so the delays are balanced.

    The zip file I’m including below contains the wav2atari.pl script, the HELLO.BIN Atari binary, the hello.asm dasm assembly file, and the original hello.wav file for comparison. Enjoy!

    HelloWorld.zip ( 11K ) Number of downloads: 29

    Here’s another demo that varies the pitch of the sample:

    HELLO2.BIN ( 4K ) Number of downloads: 22

    Here’s the modified source code:

    hello2.txt ( 45.82K ) Number of downloads: 21

    While you are there check out his hilarious Lehman Bros. game, and the sadly stuck in turnaround, Nort.Exe.

  • Big Mess O’ Wires

    gallery3Via Infradead

    One more demo: I wrote a music visualizer to show off the AY chip tunes, and also converted a bunch more AY songs for use with BMOW. Now there’s something cool to look at while you listen to that glorious 8-bit music!”

    http://www.stevechamberlin.com/cpu/2009/03/29/music-visualizer/

    talks about the different chips he was thinking of using for the audio here.

    “The AY-3-8913 is a variant of the AY-3-8910, which was used in systems such as the Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Intellivision, and Vectrex. It was also at the heart of the Mockingboard sound card for the Apple II family.”

    http://www.stevechamberlin.com/cpu/2009/01/11/audio-plans/

    earlier demo of ay

    http://www.stevechamberlin.com/cpu/2009/02/07/music-demo/

    Project Page

    [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/1lScTUyEsA4" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

  • GoatTracker 2.68 for OSX released

    Great news for all SID music enthusiasts running OSX! GoatTracker 2.68 OSX

    GoatTracker is a cross-platform tracker written by Lasse Öörni, producing SID chiptune music for the Commodore 64, and released with source code under the GPL.

    […]

    This Mac OS X port of GoatTracker integrates the cross-platform code with a standard Mac OS X GUI, and adds additional features, such as MIDI keyboard support and comprehensive built-in help.

    Versions of GoatTracker for other operating systems such as Windows and Linux can be found on the Covert Bitops page.

    The previous OSX port of Goat Tracker was version 1.4, which in my experience was running really slow and unstable. After a few minutes trying out the new update on my MacBook, my impression is quite the opposite.

    This time around, the Mac OS X integration is much more complete, offering standard keyboard shortcuts, built-in help windows, and open/save dialogs for songs and instruments. There’s more room for future improvements though. If you’re actively using GoatTracker, please let me know of any ideas and suggestions you might have.

    The port is made by Andreas Varga.

    via http://www.sidmusic.org/goattracker/mac/

  • 8Bitone Synthesizer + Sequencer appeared

    8bitone_iphone8Bitone – a “Retro 8-bit Synthesizer + Sequencer” – has been announced to be released for iPhone and iPod Touch in June. It is being developed by the Japanese company Yudo, which have also released a vocoder and audio recorder for the same platform.

    The software is said to “faithfully simulate SSG and PSG instruments”. It will feature:

    • Piano roll style sequencer
    • Up to 128 monophonic voices per song
    • 1 oscillator or LowBitNoise (I assume per channel. Not yet clear what types of waveforms.)
    • LFO
    • Envelope
    • Hi-Speed Arpeggiator
    • .WAV export

    Will be available on the iPhone App Store in June. The price has not been confirmed yet, but their previous iPhone apps costs about $17.