How to make Arduino sing like ZX Spectrum. Part 1: historical background

ZX Spectrum 128 and its numerous clones had a built-in sound generator AY-3-8912, thanks to which both foreign musicians and our compatriots managed to write a huge amount of music for this computer.

In two parts of this article, spiced with a pinch of nostalgia, we will recall the main methods of sound production on the ZX Spectrum 128, designate the characteristics of the AY-3-8912 “music coprocessor”, list the most famous music editors, disassemble the music module from the popular game Dizzy IV and recreate it on Arduino. We invite under the cut all lovers of computer music, DIY, as well as those who are interested in why we put the phrase “musical coprocessor” in quotation marks.

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