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Text File | 2003-02-06 | 17.8 KB | 302 lines

<head> <title="...forever..."> <font=monaco10.fnt> <font=newy36.fnt> <font=time24.fnt> <image=back.raw w=256 h=256 t=-1> <buf=4500> <bgcolor=-1> <background=0> <link_color=000> <module=console.mod> <pal=back.pal> colors: 251 - black </head> <body> <frame x=0 y=0 w=640 h=4500 b=-1 c=-1> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- F A C E T O F A C E W I T H F A M O U S S C E N E R S ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ::: ::::::: ::::::: :::::: ::::::: ::: ::: ::: :::::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::::::: ::::::: ::: ::: ::: :::::::: ::: : ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::: :::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::::: ::: ::: :::::: ::: :::::: ::: ::: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Y E R Z M Y E Y / H O O Y - P R O G R A M ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- one of the craziest and funniest blokes on the globe faithful to the dream-machine from the early 80's addicted to the sound chip called AY the twin brother of YM2149 one of the coolest Spectrum musicians from Poland! interviewed by Grey / Mystic Bytes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ENJOY A TOUR THROUGH THE STILL-LIVING LEGEND OF COMPUTING! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GREY: Ahoy, <link=g17.scr>Yerzmyey!</l> Welcome to the columns of an Atari disk-mag, dude :o) Open the bottle(s) of your favourite beer, relax and try to survive this torment! Don't worry, I will cover the costs of it if we meet someday ;o) YERZMYEY: Thanx for so many warm words, man, hehehe. ;-) Actually I prefer vodka to beer. Vodka with pickled cucumber is really fuckin' cool stuff. And talkin'bout our meeting - why not!! :-) Would be really good!!!! (Info to readers: don't pay attention to my crap English. Or kill me). GREY: Before we teleport to the scene-stuph, pleez squeeze some facts about your existence in this wasteland :o) How many birthdays you celebrated, what you do when not composing chippers on the Speccy? YERZMYEY: Except composing chippers on the Speccy I compose digital MODs on Speccy, hehehehe. :) But not very often actually, as I prefer the synthetic sound. Anyway, back to the question: in two months I'm 28, hehe - I know it's hard to believe. In fact I also don't believe it!!!!!!!!! I finished Jagiellonian University so I am a big boy now. ;-) I work in some shitty firm, I am a musician, I have published some records... And - what is the most important - I am a drunkard. GREY: When did you get your first Sinclair machine on your the desk and what kind it was? What was your first impression after you switched it on? :o) YERZMYEY: We made our first Speccy games with Mr Hangman in 80s. In that time I saw the ZX for the first time and I stated it's fucking cool design. :-) It was the 48k rubber-key version. Really nice-looking machine. And after I switched it on, I noticed a very user-friendly basic for example. :) Generally, I stated this was the computer for ME!!!!!!!! :-) I also noticed that it had one interesting feature distinguishing the ZX from other 8bit computers: it is able to display all its colours at once, in high resolution (which means: in standard mode). We also use some advanced graphic-modes, like mega-screen, which allows us to use more colours than the standard 15. GREY: Could you let us know about the strongest points of this computer which convinced you choose Speccy instead of other 8-bitters? YERZMYEY: A few I mentioned above. Others are nice sound (the same as in the Atari ST, ehheheh), quite fast CPU - 3,5 MHz... Good utils for game and demo-making..... And cool demos/games of coz. ;-) GREY: It seems that someone felt ashamed and got an idea to make an AY interface to "break the silence" in Speccy games. This "invention" surely let this machine become more serious. Finally someone let the Speccy have a voice... Who was it? And could you throw us some details about possibilities of this sound-chip? YERZMYEY: Actually it was Sir Clive himself. The first model with AY/YM was the ZX SPECTRUM+ 128K. Later, Amstrad produced Spectrums and these models had the AY too. And one day some clever man got an idea that it's possible to connect the AY to 48Kb models as well (in form of an interface). But I have to tell you that zx-games were not 'silent' before the AY. On the contrary: The Speccy has two ways of producing sound. The so-called 48K-sound has up to 5 channels and sounds really great. And it's possible to mix it with AY to offer more possibilities. I can send you some MP3 files one day if you are interested. :) GREY: What induced you to compose tunes on AY? It's not too comfortable using the original small keyboard I guess? YERZMYEY: Heh, I always wanted to make music. :) Actually I bought my ZX to make music with. :) I wanted to make such great 5chnls songs as Tim Follin on 48K sound. Sadly I found I am not good enuff. :-\ Anyway AY/YM on has Speccy much, much better trackers. For example: SoundTracker, Pro Tracker, Pro Sound Creator and many, many others. There are also many AY-trackers for playing digital sound with (but not in MOD files; AY digital songs have only 3 chnls). GREY: It looks like the AY and YM2149 chip are twin brothers? I am so scared to ask you about it, I feel some kind of resistance giving you this question... but... does Speccy community have any player able to play ST tunes? :o) YERZMYEY: Scared? Why, for God' sake? :) Well, not for ZX sadly. But yes - emulators of Speccy sound for PC can play Atari ST songs easily. AY and YM are exactly the same chips, but produced by different firms. Sound is a bit different. you can hear minimal difference listening to the same song on AY-EMUL (PC program) with AY or YM switched on. :) GREY: I guess that most die-hard ST users feel a strong heartbeat near to an attack when reading your answer. The speccy is the legend of computing, it's a great grandpa in comparison to the ST... It's few times smaller, older... There is quite big "technological abyss" between these machines and ST was created to compete with Amiga :o) And now they hear that both machines has the same sound-chip... YERZMYEY: Actually I can't see anything wrong with it, really. I will now tell you something more. Namely: Spectrum and Atari are quite strongly connected. you see, Sir Clive Sinclair was working on a machine named Super Spectrum (the second name: Spectrum Loki). The Loki was intended to be an Amiga-beater, with custom graphics and sound chips, a "huge" 512x256 resolution in up to 256 colours and a 128K memory. The machine would also have a fully-buffered expansion bus, RGB, composite and TV display outputs, a serial port, two joystick ports, a light pen (supplied), three different types of MIDI port, stereo sound in and out, a headphone socket, and a video recorder/video disc interface. On top of all of that, floppy disk, hard disk, compact disk, mouse and modem connectivity would also be available. Sinclair made a whole technology, but he didn't manage do make his plans into production, because Amstrad bought the Spectrum trade-mark. Sadly, Amstrad was too crap a firm to produce the Super Spectrum: they abandoned it. And here starts the story of two machine-brothers: new model of Atari: Jaguar, and the new model of Speccy: Sam Coupe. In the event, the machine appears to have got no further than the design phase and was abandoned by Amstrad. Interestingly, however, its concepts did come to fruition in a very different form. After the Amstrad takeover, two ex-Sinclair engineers, John Mathieson and Martin Brennan, set up their own company called Flare, drawing on the Loki designs to produce a new multiprocessor games console. Atari were drawn into the project and, seeking to challenge the Sega Genesis/Megadrive and Super Nintendo, brought the machine to market as the Atari Jaguar. According to Jaguar developer Andrew Whittaker, "Some of that ZX-Loki technology also found a home in a new Spectrum model, called the SAM Coupe, which was manufactured and produced in the UK by MGT technologies (Bruce Gordon and Alan Miles, both ex-Sinclair staff also). It shared many interesting features with the Jaguar in terms of its video chip, but the machine sold very badly in Europe and the company folded." GREY: Did you ever hear the "Anti-Atari" song composed by someone from the Amiga community poking fun at ST sound possibilities? This bastard was singing that ST has the same possibilities as the Spectrum has. He surely meant about the YM2149 sound chip... But the world is so wicked a place, nowadays, Atarians are playing this "anti-atari" song and dance to it at various parties using... 8-bit Atari ;o) They are poking fun at the author of this module now... :o) Do you have similar experiences from the Speccy history? YERZMYEY: Actually Speccy maniax don't think about such situations. Nobody bothers us with such malicious behaviour. And the mentioned song is annoying indeed. For Atari ppl and for us. But we fuck it, heh. GREY: I am sure that you know the possibilities of such sound-chips as the POKEY in the Atari XL/XE or the SID in C-64. How high would you place AY or YM in comparison to them? YERZMYEY: The most I like Speccy 48K sound. (I listen to it even NOW!! :) Tim Follin RULEZZZZZZZ!!!) Then I like POKEY sound. Then - AY/YM. What is funny is that the C64 is on the end of this list. Don't know why, really. Personal preferences. :) That's all. GREY: Okay, let me nose deeper into the Speccy world! I am sure it's very interesting this scene for most of our readers! How many members strong is the Speccy scene these days? (I refer to the Polish one and also the golbal scene). YERZMYEY: I think it's exotic for the rest of the scene, as we split into 2 parts. The Western scene (Polish, English, Czech, Slovakian, German etc...) and the Eastern scene (Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Estonian etc...) I am also a spreader in my group. I have about 300 contacts around the world. A few even in Africa. There's about 70 Poles in this number. But the Eastern zx-scene gathers many more ppl for sure. Sadly, some Russians have no Internet connection. They use a BBS connection (the ZX_NET) using their Spectrums with modems to connect ZX_NET. And ZX_NET has one gate to Internet. Or something like that. GREY: What kind of effects we can find in todays Speccy demos? Could you make a short overview of 3 the most "technologically advanced" demos for this computer? YERZMYEY: Effects are split in two kinds. One is original Speccy-effects, like multicolour for instance. The second kind of effect is stuff coming from Amiga/PC, namely: bumplightin', toruses, 3D-environments, landscapes etc... Of coz you can merge them: for example, landscape in multicolour looks fucking cool. :) GREY: I heard there was a Speccy release shown at the latest edition of the famous "Assembly" party. Have you seen it yet? And was it worth showing to the public at large? YERZMYEY: Hehe, yeah - I have seen it as it was a demo from my group, HOOY-PROGRAM. :-) It is an author-production of Gasman/H-PRG. A really nice demo, in my opinion. :-) But more poetic than 'tek' style. GREY: Are there any scene-gatherings dedicated to the Speccy? How many people arrive at such parties? And does it bare any fruits in the form of releases? YERZMYEY: There are many zx-parties and they bring many productions. The Russian CAFE, CHAOS CONSTRUCTIONS, PARADOX, DI:HALT and others, Slovakian FOREVER, Polish ZX-PARTY (it was organized by me and WILL). Even just a few weeks ago I organized a stupid Speccy party named INTERNATIONAL VODKA PARTY 2002. :-) We made a compo for the most stupid demo. :-) Western parties have around 20-50 persons. To Eastern - hundreds. GREY: What's the "new standard" for Speccy config? How much RAM, what extensions, additional hardware etc do the scene community use to create demos? YERZMYEY: In this matter we are a bit similar to C64 fans: orthodox... Typical configuration for demos is Speccy 128Kb. But normally people use various machines. 1Mb - 4Mb of RAM. Hard disks... Sound cards such as GENERAL SOUND (which is able to play MOD files up to 512Kb)... Some people use graphic cards for gigascreen mode, there is a turbo mode for CPU (about 7Mhz)... The fastest Speccy contemporary is SPRINTER - 21Mhz. But this is a new generation of zx-machines. Graphic possibilities of this machine are very good, this is great for daily use, not for old-school maniax. ;-) GREY: Is it true that there is quite a strong Speccy scene in Russia where new clones of Sinclair's babes are still being released? As well as a paper-magazine? Could you give us some details? YERZMYEY: Paper zx-magazines are not only in Russia. They exists also in England, Germany and other countries. Mostly in 'zine' form, but still... And yes - that's true: there are many new models of Spectrum in Russia. The SPRINTER is Russian too. And they have other models, like Profi, Scorpion, ZX-Kay, Pentagon and more. Usually they are a bit better than Western models. Only Sprinter is MUCH better. GREY: The community of the Speccy world is the best proof that every machine can survive, it doesn't matter how old and forgotten it gets! Can you explain this phenomenon? :o) This faith into the old machine? YERZMYEY: I don't know if the Spectrum is a good example, as actually it wasn't forgotten. The scene was alive continuously, more or less. I am more surprised with stuff like Vic20, Amstrad, Oric or other comps. There are still people who use it!! :-) And if you would ask me: "why?" - I would answer: "Because of nostalgia, because of a wish to prove that the impossible is possible...?" GREY: And the final question to cut off this moaning! I know that apart from Speccy, you are also an ST user. So is there any chance to listen to your ST tunes someday? :o))) YERZMYEY: Would be cool; I've got even some trackers for ST, but I have no sound on my fucking TV... Anyway I will be tryin' to solve this problem. GREY: May your "bird" prosper as long as the Speccy scene! Thanx for your answers, I hope you haven't got a moral hangover after this torment... LONG LIVE YM AND AY CHIPPERS! YERZMYEY: Hehe. :-) Greetingzzzzzz to all Atari users!!!!!!!!! -- --- --- --- -- --- --------------------------------------------------------- CHOSNECK magazine contact us: we're listenin' 2 da voice of da scene! greymsb@poczta.fm ------------------------------------------------------- ---- ----- ------- ---- </frame> </body>