3 ms·

Chips? Luxury! In the mid 1980s the ZX Spectrum only had a 3.5MHz Z80, a sound chip that could only beep, and synthesis had to be done in hand-optimised assembl

Chips? Luxury! In the mid 1980s the ZX Spectrum only had a 3.5MHz Z80, a sound chip that could only beep, and synthesis had to be done in hand-optimised assembler! Uphill, both ways! https://youtu.be/3qqfNgA8_OY?t=1m58s https://youtu.be/3qqfNgA8_OY?t=1m58s

greggman 11y ago
I think this one from Apple II is just recordings not synthesis https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9sptDXptWeM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9sptDXptWeM Here's one that might be synthesis https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3QV_2hq8qU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3QV_2hq8qU Apple II was a 1mhz 6502 with a click speaker
ageofwant 11y ago
Oh man those were the days. If only I had the moxie to stuck with it, I might have made something of my life.
avian 11y ago
It was not so much sound chip as a GPIO connected to a speaker.
beagle3 11y ago
C64 had a 1mhz 6502 and had way better speech in the form of SAM (software automated mouth). The c64 had a real sound chip (SID, arguably the best of its peers), but SAM did not use it except as a PWM output - it did the formant synthesis in software, and used the SID only to output the resulting 4-bit waveform. (Which is 3 bits more than the ZX spectrum had... Or the PC effectively until 1990 or so when sound blaster became ubiquitous)
- mrspeaker 11y ago
  Does anyone have any links/info on the algorithm used in SAM? I remember playing with it as a kid on my friends C64 and then trying to figure out how I could make my own version of it on my obscure (in my part of the world, at least) SpectraVideo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SV-318 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SV-318 using only BASIC "Play" commands. Needless to say, I failed miserably and have been wondering about SAM ever since!
  - beagle3 11y ago
    https://github.com/s-macke/SAM https://github.com/s-macke/SAM has everything you need to make a SAM clone. Does your SV-318 still work? :)

greggman 11y ago

I think this one from Apple II is just recordings not synthesis https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9sptDXptWeM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9sptDXptWeM Here's one that might be synthesis https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3QV_2hq8qU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3QV_2hq8qU Apple II was a 1mhz 6502 with a click speaker

ageofwant 11y ago

Oh man those were the days. If only I had the moxie to stuck with it, I might have made something of my life.

avian 11y ago

It was not so much sound chip as a GPIO connected to a speaker.

beagle3 11y ago

C64 had a 1mhz 6502 and had way better speech in the form of SAM (software automated mouth). The c64 had a real sound chip (SID, arguably the best of its peers), but SAM did not use it except as a PWM output - it did the formant synthesis in software, and used the SID only to output the resulting 4-bit waveform. (Which is 3 bits more than the ZX spectrum had... Or the PC effectively until 1990 or so when sound blaster became ubiquitous)

mrspeaker 11y ago
Does anyone have any links/info on the algorithm used in SAM? I remember playing with it as a kid on my friends C64 and then trying to figure out how I could make my own version of it on my obscure (in my part of the world, at least) SpectraVideo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SV-318 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SV-318 using only BASIC "Play" commands. Needless to say, I failed miserably and have been wondering about SAM ever since!
- beagle3 11y ago
  https://github.com/s-macke/SAM https://github.com/s-macke/SAM has everything you need to make a SAM clone. Does your SV-318 still work? :)