Monday, March 31, 2014

Daily Dosis: Saigon Soundtrack by ilmarque^trilobit

So, let's get started with the promised TIA/Atari VCS week! I'll throw in a few demos, too, because there's some with really kickass music.



Sunday, March 30, 2014

ModArchive Is Down

ModArchive, one of the biggest and oldest collections of tracked music, has been hit by a double hard drive failure. No files have been lost, but the maintainers have announced they will take a week or so to get the site up and running again.

Update 14/04/02: The site is up and running again. There's still some maintenance work going on, so not all functions might be available as of now.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

[DF009] VA - Funky Freaky Freestyle


Do you like lo-fi funk? Then you shouldn't miss this new smoking hot release from Datafruits. Contains tracks by McFiredrill, ovenrake, Goto80, and many more. Check it out, yo.

MS-DOS 1.1 and 2.0 Source Published

In a surprise move, Microsoft has donated the source code of MS-DOS 1.1 and 2.0 (including IBM's PC-DOS) to the Computer History Museum in California, who have in turn published it on their website.

At the moment, their site seems a bit overrun, so if you can't get through, check back in a few days.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Commodore Free #78 Released


I always forget to announce this... well, not this time. A new issue of the "Commodore Free" magazine has been released.

The magazine, which covers news, game reviews and programming tips and tricks for all Commodore machines (with a focus on the 8-bitters), has been around for a long time. I'm amazed Nigel Parker still continues to release new issues regularly after so many years, especially considering that he writes most of the content himself. A big round of applause for that!

Anyway, chances are that if you're a Commodorian, you've already got the new issue. If not, then head over to commodorefree.com to grab your pdf/txt/d64/whatever download or read it online here.

Daily Dosis: Asterix & Cleopatra OST - Inside the Pyramid by Alberto González



It was about time I post something of the great McAlby here.

Monday, March 24, 2014

Massive SID-Wizard Guide Found


I recently stumbled across "Creating Chiptunes with SID-Wizard, 2nd edition", a massive, 75 page guide to creating music on the C64 using Hermit's SID-Wizard tracker.

Written by Mikael Norrgård aka WitchMaster and Hermit himself, the book covers not only every possible aspect of the tracker itself, but includes also tons of useful information the SID chip in general. A must-read for any aspiring C64 musician.

As a supplement, there is also "Charts and Tables for SID-Wizard", by the same authors.

Daily Dosis: Influence by Warlord



Every once in a while, you just need that oldschool feel ;)

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Daily Dosis: Side by Jellica


Saturday, March 22, 2014

Daily Dosis: WTB prosound VIC by Chip Champion


I still don't get why this kickass track didn't score higher at BotB Winter Chip IX.

Friday, March 21, 2014

Daily Dosis: mister sampler by granatco


Something new for a change. Seems granatco (aka Project.GAMA) has dug out his old self-made sound board for ZX Spectrum/Didaktik Gama again... <3

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Daily Dosis: Foreboding Fortress by jredd



Damn, so many great FM tracks appearing lately. I should do an FM special sometime.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Lowtoy Netlabel Is Back

Good news for all fans of hardstyle chiptune: Barcelona-based netlabel Lowtoy is back online after a prolonged hiatus. Check out their brand-new releases at lowtoy.com!

Daily Dosis: Bit Bet Beat by Jakob Husak


We'll have some new stuff for Daily Dosis this week. Starting off with the winning track from the recent Atari GTIA Tritone compo.

Monday, March 17, 2014

Nerdsynth: A Hardware Tracker


So Jan Trompper (aka Pornologic/Jan Solo) and Thomas Margolf (aka firestARTer/Frau Holle) are joining efforts to build a hardware tracker called the Nerdsynth. Now that's pretty nerdy indeed.

It seems the synth will have an Atmegatron at it's core. Which, in my opinion, is a somewhat questionable choice, as that device is rather expensive. But nevertheless I'm looking forward to further updates on the project.

Check out the details at nerdsynth.com.

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Raising The Bar: Irreality Intro by Serzhsoft



There are good demos, outstanding demos, and then there are those that simply blow your mind. For me, this 1K intro for the ZX Spectrum falls into the latter category. If 11 effects in a mere 1024 bytes isn't taking things to a whole new level, then I don't know what is. Congratulation Serzhsoft for the well-deserved first place in the 1K compo at Forever 2014.

Download the prod here.

Daily Dosis: 0ne Thing by flashbob

Saturday, March 15, 2014

BotB Winter Chip IX: The Compilation


The mandatory tribute compilation of this year's Winter Chip challenge at Battle of the Bits has been released, containing a massive 74 tracks. Head over to Bandcamp to grab your pay-what-you-want download and donate a few bucks to the almighty BotB!

Daily Dosis: Six Silver Statues by fluidvolt

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Audio from Short C Algorithms Explained

Here's a presentation for everybody who, like myself, has been drooling over the short music algorithm works by viznut and others without quite understanding what's going on.

This talk, held by erlehmann at last year's SIGINT meeting, gives an in-depth outlook on the theory behind these algorithms, and also shows how to put that knowledge to use.

It also briefly dips into security issues in conjunction with this approach, which have been somewhat overlooked so far.

Saturday, March 8, 2014

GB Emulator for Virtual Boy

Bet you didn't see this one coming. Someone actually made a Gameboy emulator for the Virtual Boy. To spell it out for you, it's an emulator of Nintendo's most successful console to date, running on what was arguably their biggest flop ever. Mind=blown!


The project by German mystery coder M.K. is still in an early stage, but basically it does work. So, if you're (un)lucky enough to own a Virtual Boy, grab the download here. Updates will most likely be announced over at Planet Virtual Boy.

You can also give the emulator a try in mednafen. Yo dawg, I need an emulator to emulate your emulator ;)

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Blowfish Musicdisk by Planet Earth

Holy cow, totally forgot to mention this great musicdisk release for SEGA Genesis/Megadrive, which was released at Datastorm, too. Well, welcome to Ancient Wonderworld, where everything is a little, umm... slower.

Anyway, prepare yourselves for some kickass music from the FM funk master Jredd. Grab the binary here or simply watch the vid. In any case, enjoy!



Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Daily Dosis: Thanks for Listening by arlen

Musik Run/Stop by Mahoney

As promised, here goes another demo from this year's Datastorm. This prod, done by Pex "Mahoney" Tufvesson and friends, took fourth place in the C64 compo. It showcases a new digi sound mode, which supposedly works equally well on all revisions of the SID chip. Quite impressive, though I wish they'd left out the cover tune that can be heard at the 6'30" mark...

Anyway, head over to CSDb to download this prod. Beware though that currently no emulator supports the new digi wizardry.


Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Daily Dosis: 4tk32 by Caruso


The best POKEY tune of all times.

Retro Games Battle 2014: Voting Period

The Retro Games Battle 2014 is currently showcasing eight recently released games for the ZX Spectrum. Among them are some very impressive titles, such as Dreamwalker: AlterEgo 2, the sequel to the critically acclaimed AlterEgo puzzle platformer.

Voting ends March 7th, 18:00 CET, so hurry up and get your votes on!