Behold: The Power Of Cheese...

A comment in the last post got me wondering about using my ZX81 (and of course I have one; that really goes without saying) for musical endeavors, something I thought more or less impossible. And research shows that other than the Music Percussion Computer (which uses a ZX81 for sequencing) and a couple home-brew programs that use the cassette port for beeping away little classical tunes, it is a quixotic endeavor.

However, the Spectrum series is another matter entirely. There is, according to my count, One Cool Thing for the Spectrum, and that’s the Cheetah Specdrum (pictured above.) Now, the Spectrum computers didn’t really have any following in America, unlike the ZX81 and TS1000. There are basically none here. So it’s no surprise that I missed out on this little gem. My research shows that it is basically a D/A convertor, nothing more. The program had a simple x0x-style sequencer, and it threw 8-bit samples of, like, drums, I guess, out the sound hole. A gold star for the user that finds the samples on the Interwebs first!