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SCREECH

Vintage & Modern Tech Blog

JUL

2023

No.82

£0.00

With

Kink

Free

.tap

ULA or Plug 'n' 
Play Still Gaming!
Make Awesome One-Bit Music

My first full computer, was a 48k ZX Spectrum +. It's sound system was a simple beeper with one of two states (on or off), and seemingly no chance of producing multi-channel music.

That didn't stop the programmers of the time creating software with which to compose music. Beepola is a program for MS Windows that gathers together these engines & allows you to produce outstanding 1 bit beeper music you can load in to your actual ZX Spectrum.

Below is one of my efforts - I had never made a scene demo, but within minutes,was able to make awesome music (I hope!).

 

Vist the Beepola Webpage

Elexotic(GottaGoNow) - Stephen Nichol
00:00 / 00:00
Popular Posts
 Daft Facts!

 

 If you laid a row of Gameboy handheld consoles end to end from the Earth to the Moon then you 

would have wasted a colossal amount of your time on a seemingly pointless task - and made a lot of Gameboy owners

unhappy.

Style not remotely influenced by 1980's computer mags (honest).

Hardcore!

Steve Wozniak hand assembled the ROM Monitor of the Apple I, manually entering the 0's and 1's that made up the operating system of the 1976 home computer.

Why Micro?

Microcomputers get their name as a result of their size - they are smaller than Minicomputers and much smaller than Mainframes.

Hello There!
Picture of Stephen N.

Tape rewound, computer reset. A black copyright on greyish white background, maybe some 'snow' on the TV set. You type in Load "", press Return, and play the tape.

 

Last time you walked off and got a drink but, the load failed so this time you stay and watch.

 

Coloured bars appear on the screen, over the beeper - a sound that ought to make you cover your ears. You don't.

 

You know if it's an image loading, you can tell if it is a program block, and for the next three and a half minutes you and your household (now, are you supposed to be on the computer?) are subjected to a sound later to be associated with dial-up -

the Loading Screech.

 

Hi, my name is Stephen - welcome to my site about retro computing and entertainment.

 

Here I'll be sharing various aspects of my interest in the past and in particular the 8-bit 1980s Computer the ZX Spectrum.

 

If you're new to the world of retro technology (or familiar and just want to annoy someone) you can press this button to hear a typical tape loading sound, sometimes also distributed on vinyl and even broadcast by radio stations to their listeners.

If you're a fan of the BASIC programming language,  used widely in the 1980s then, you might want to check out the

Under 5 Minute BASIC section of this site for some of my short and to the point type-ins  that aim to be  useful in less lines of code .

 

You're welcome to use them in your own programs.

 

I'll also be taking the time to discuss more up to date items and events that bring recent history into the

21st Century.

 

Loading Screech

Data from the present

and the past!

I'm also on...
  • YouTube Globe

My Unlisted Videos:

(Quality Not Assured)

Building an 8-bit AVR

FORTH computer

Commodore DTV Plug and Play Hidden Features(Easter Eggs)

Articles By Date

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