Ever wanted to play native 1-bit music on a cheaply obtainable handheld device? Well, now you can - the Huby, Music Box, Music Studio, LSengine, and ZX10 have been ported to TI82.
UPDATE 2012/11/02 - Now also available for TI83 w/ Ion shell. See manual for details.
Here is how it works:
1) Get a TI82 graphic calculator. They are easily obtained from auction sites at around 10-30$ in the US. In Europe they are slightly more rare and expensive nowadays, though there should be lots of them gathering dust on school shelves...
2) Build a link cable from parts available for less than 5$ from any electronics store.
3) Download and install CrASH (the Crappy Assembler Shell) on your TI.
4) Make some 1-bit music with Music Box, Music Studio (Beepola), LSengine, ZX10 (1tracker), or Huby (1tracker/xm2huby).
5) Use these .asm templates together with CrASHSDK and TASM to compile the music data for TI82. For details, see included manual file.
6) Get/build an audio cable with a 2.5 mm stereo jack.
7) Play 1-bit music from your TI. Your calc may occasionally hang afterwards, removing the audio cable should fix this.
If you want to try things in an emulator first, install VTI (sadly, it's Windows only, but it's the only TI emulator that has sound output AND can run CrASH)
Here's a test recording of ZX10 playing on TI82. And here is a little music demo you can check out. The source code is a prime example of how to NOT do things, so I'll give it out on request only.
Things to come in the future (maybe)
- More engine ports
- Switch to another assembler because TASM sucks
- TI Client/Shell for Beeper songs
- [done] Support for TI82CS (ROM 19.006) and TI83
- A means of automatically translating Beepola/1tracker output
- Stereo support
- Maybe a native tracker, though I'd prefer someone who actually knows programming to do it.
Post your questions, suggestions, and bug reports in this thread, and I'll see what I can do about it.
edit: link fixed
Last edited by irrlichtproject (Nov 2, 2012 1:00 pm)
