Tandy 1000 and 3-channel PC speaker

While I did know that Tandy 1000 had a 3-channel PC speaker, I did not know that it also has a noise channel. I discovered this just a few days ago.

If you do not know Finnish, I suggest you click the [CC] icon to enable subtitles. I tried speaking the intro in English first, but after a few experiments I found out that I can achieve a more natural tone of speaking with significantly less effort by speaking in my native language. It's still not natural, because I am reading from a script and I am feigning fascination, but it is a lot better than it would have been in English.

Technical bits:
- All video editing, aside from encodings done with MEncoder, was done with my custom C++ and PHP programs. I do not own a copy of Adobe premiere or any other video editing software that may or may not be commercial. Such video editing includes the purple subtitles, the testcard in the beginning, the floating Tandy 1000 image, and the inset videos from Stella (Atari 2600 emulator). Stella is available at http://stella.sourceforge.net/ and MEncoder is available at: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/
- All audio postprocessing (mixing, mainly) was done with Audacity, which is free software and available at: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
- The Debian GNU/Linux desktop shown in the beginning has IceWM with my custom theme. You can also see the theme in my development screenshots for Tales of Phantasia translation at: http://bisqbot.stc.cx/img/top/indexold.php However, this particular desktop was a mock-up 640x480 desktop for purposes of recording.
- The desktop background image is a screenshot from the Hikaru no Go anime, cropped, scaled into 320x240, quantized and dithered using animmerger, and then upscaled into 640x480. Animmerger is one of my creations and is available at: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/source/animmerger.html
- The syntax highlighting program that I use in DOSBox for GW-BASIC is created by me and is available at: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/source/synhili.html

This GW-BASIC program plays the Mega Man 2 theme music from the Wily stages. The other prominent background music is from Betrayal of Krondor, played using my OPL3 MIDI player which is available at: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/source/adlmidi.html
The GW-BASIC source code that I wrote in this video can be read and downloaded here: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/jutut/kuvat/programming_examples/noise.html . Aside from added newlines and a warning message for QBasic users, it is the very same file as shown saved in the video.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• gwbasic
• tandy 1000
• square wave
• pc speaker
• mega man 2
• rockman 2
• electronic
• music
• noise
• synthesis
• computers
• nintendo
• software

[WockesZero]

Every time I hear Finnish I get really sleepy

[Bisqwit]

@WockesZero Finnish in general, or just me?

[JosephCollins]

Ah, if only the IBM-Clone hardware had a 3-channel PC speaker and noise channel... The awesomeness that could have been done! Then again, a lot of the PC Speaker music I've heard from really old games -- Moraff's Revenge, DuckTales: The Search for Gold, Might and Magic I and II, to name a few -- were pretty darn good even with the limitation of a single channel to work with.

[Bisqwit]

@JosephCollins The PC speaker "PCM" music hack (PWM to be exact) still fascinates me. But as for true PC speaker music the kind of what you mentioned, I would be interested to hear some samples.

[Bisqwit]

@chieffrankus Yeah, I considered the music as well. Though in my opinion it's mildly uplifting: In a way, I would rather describe it as "pleasant morning wake-up" music than "settling down and going sleeping" type music. For me, it is inspiring music. Though it originally comes from a bar scene in a game, which (without having played the game) I presume is more like evening business rather than morning business.

[thevisualboy37]

"Happify"? Never heard THAT one! Congratulations, you invented an awesome new word!

[WockesZero]

@Bisqwit Both I guess :P

[AndrewC437]

That was epic Joel!! Great work!

[MobyGamer]

You have succeeded in happifying me!

[Lauri3000]

A BASIC interpreter is one of the most pragmatic IDEs. Nice.