ZX81 without sound? So I recorded an album on it. :)

[yerzmyey]

Hi guyz.

DOWNLOAD: http://yerzmyey.i-demo.pl/

This is a collection of songs made on ZX81 with TurboSound for ZX81 (two ZonX interfaces - on different ports - to play simultanously 6 channels).
**ALL** has been written on real ZX81 machine - NO EMULATORS have been USED.
All titles are somehow related with ZX81 machine.

The album is for fans of YM2149 and for AY fans.

Tracklist:
01. Yerzmyey - ZX81
02. Yerzmyey - New Line
03. Yerzmyey - UrsULA
04. Yerzmyey - Motherboard Circuit ISSUE ONE
05. Yerzmyey - Break Space
06. Yerzmyey - Earport
07. Yerzmyey - Touch sense

TOTAL TIME: 29:39 min.

Full quality (more/less) 3-pages cover-art to download: http://yerzmyey.i-demo.pl/zx81/yerz-zx81-cover.zip



INFO:

ZX81 is a British monochrome computer as big as an adult man's hand-palm. It has touch-sense keyboard and 1Kb of RAM only and it's been released in 1981 (American version is Timex 1000 and Timex 1500).
It had a modular construction, so people weren't forced to buy all the hardware in one machine, if they didn't need it. So - if anybody required additional RAM, he could buy 16Kb RamPack or more.
If somebody needed sound - he was able to buy a ZonX sound-module (with YM/AY chip inside).
Finally we decided it's not enough for us. ZonXes are still being produced by various guys. And now - one machine is interesting for our porpose: Mr-X, because it is a through-out device - more interfaces can be connected to it. So - we decided to connect two sound-modules to ZX81 (one of them is on different ports than another) to obtain 6 channels of sound.
And... IT'S ALIVE!!!!!! Yes - You can here listen to 6-channels music composed on real ZX81 32Kb with two YM/AY interfaces (ZXpand-AY and Mr-X). Also I recorded the music from real ZX81 hardware.
To compose the songs I used Andy Rea's "ZX81 SoundTracker" (first I made one half of every song, then the second one, because the SoundTracker for ZX81 can support only one AY chip - 3 channels).
Then I recorded them from the same ZX81 with ZXpand-AY and Mr-X modules (using TurboSound Player).
Thanx go to Andy Rea for the software (ZX81 SoundTracker, TurboSound Player), also to ZX81 hardware developers: SirMorris (ZXpand and ZXpand-AY) and to Sascha2000 (Mr-X).
If You're interested in news from ZX81/Timex1000/Timex1500 world, then visit us on our forum:
http://www.rwapservices.co.uk/ZX80_ZX81/forums/

(C) & (P) 06.2012 by YERZMYEY


Enjoy.
Y

[NCGM]

The great tunes and ideas just keep on coming!

[mal7921]

Have to agree, more great tunes but the ZX81 itself has no sound and does need some sort of expansion to get sound out of it.

I guess it was the basis for the PC sound architecture

[yerzmyey]

Thx guyz.


Mal7921:

> Have to agree, more great tunes but the ZX81 itself has no sound and does need some sort of expansion to get sound out of it.
--------------
It does have some beeper (unlike ZX Spectrum - only one channel indeed) but the output is far too silent (from its hardware side) and it isn't suitable for any reasonable recording.


> I guess it was the basis for the PC sound architecture
--------------
Well, possible. They come from the same year, if I recall. 1981.
Anyway I remember PC is older than ZX Spectrum anyway (1982).
And while Spectrum has internal system (built-in), supposedly first PCs had system loaded. From... tape!

[mal7921]

Did it? My friends machine was silent, best it could manage was a clunk as it fell to the floor!

I know the timex machines were modified but thought the British ones were silent. Mind you it would have been a CPU driven beep like the original speccy, so not much use really

[yerzmyey]

Mind you it would have been a CPU driven beep like the original speccy, so not much use really

CPU driven beep, like I wrote above, however without a proper electronic amplifier on the audio-out, so it's close to useless.
I will be probably investigate it, for curiosity, but for now I noticed the music from it is painfully silent.
Even if I recorded it and normalize and make noise reduction - it would strongly reduce... the sound itself.

So - yes, that's exactly what I meant.
Therefore there have been sold sound-cards (like we call them nowadays). Reasonable solution. Just like in PC - indeed.