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+--- Thread: BEETHOVEN - A Hidden Feature (/thread-250.html)
BEETHOVEN - A Hidden Feature - someone - 17-12-2020
The BEETHOVEN uses a General Instruments AY-3-8510 Programmable Sound Generator.
This IC contains two 8 bit I/O ports of whose pins are not presented to the consumer in its casing.
Only the top 5 bits of these I/O ports are useable. The other 3 bits are used for Microbee to BEETHOVEN interface.
The original idea was that two 4 way joysticks with a fire button could be connected to it.
That didn't happen thus you can't play a game using joysticks and the BEETHOVEN simultaneously from the user port
The standard driver as described in the manual supports only writes but it can be adapted to perform both reads and writes.
Like the Starnet, there was a dongle developed to connect the user port to two standard DB9 Atari type joysticks but it was not released in favour of having DB9 Atari type joysticks having their connectors cut off and replaced with pull up resistors and a DB15 plug and being sold as the "microbee" joystick.
RE: BEETHOVEN - A Hidden Feature - ChickenMan - 19-12-2020
Thats exactly what I did, cut off the D9 plug and used an extra long D15 shell to fit the resistors in, works well. Pics etc here Microbee Joystick (microbeetechnology.com.au)
RE: BEETHOVEN - A Hidden Feature - someone - 19-12-2020
(19-12-2020, 09:22 AM)ChickenMan Wrote: Thats exactly what I did, cut off the D9 plug and used an extra long D15 shell to fit the resistors in, works well. Pics etc here Microbee Joystick (microbeetechnology.com.au)
Ah, but can you also plug in and use a beethoven at the same time?
RE: BEETHOVEN - A Hidden Feature - ChickenMan - 20-12-2020
Well definitely no as I dont own a Beethoven
but no sure why anyone would want to in the first place.
RE: BEETHOVEN - A Hidden Feature - someone - 22-12-2020
(20-12-2020, 04:25 PM)ChickenMan Wrote: Well definitely no as I dont own a BeethovenIt provides 3 channels of modulated square waves and noise to pre Alpha plus microbees!
(And chews up your user port so you have to disconnect your printer, joystick, beenet or starnet dongle.)
With it you can use it to add background music to your games to drive everyone insane!!
Yes, someone did. Square wave music is at best horrible!
A review of the Microbee Hackers Guide has a review of the Beethoven confirming that it was developed external to microbee by Robotron P/L and originally released with 2 joystick ports. The Microbee version of the Beethoven and its manual were altered to omit its joystick port capability.
There was tonnes of software written for it - only BeeComposer comes to mind and it came on tape.