Оля Зимой

written and performed by Dragan Espenschied

on an ATARI 1040 STE using maxYMiser

Оля Зимой exists in honor to Olia Lialina ♥.

Replay instructions:

1.    Get a working computer from the ATARI 16/32 bit series. Valid models include ST, STE, Mega ST, Mega STE, TT, Falcon030. I recommend a Falcon or TT because you can connect VGA monitors to them. Don't get an ATARI monochrome screen, they are useless for this case. Ebay is the place to search.

2.    Download gwEm’s maxYMiser.

3.    Put that software and the provided OLZIMOI.SND on a FAT formatted 3.5" floppy disk. Be careful, many ST models can not read HD diskettes, so you might have to use DD disks! Format the disk on the ATARI so you can be sure it can be read again. You can use an USB floppy drive to transfer the files from the internet to the floppy disk.

If you are unable to obtain a working ATARI computer, you might want to use an emulator like hatari or Steem. Actually gwEm himself runs maxYMiser on an emulator, as he told me in person. At first I was shocked, but he replied: “I wrote my own music software. I don’t need to prove anything to anybody anymore.” -- PIMP!!

I originally produced this tune for the ZX Spectrum home computing platform, in time to take part in the 8 Bit Music Competition of Chaos Constructions 2004 in St.Petersburg. The ZX Spectrum uses a AY-3-8910 sound chip. A slightly altered chip is built into my favorite platform, the Atari ST range of computers. (The difference between the two versions is mainly that the AY has a linear volume scale and the YM uses a logarithmic one.) -- Anyway, I was writing the tune on a Spectrum emulator ... thinking that once I will easily pick up a Spectrum and record it from the real machine. Still didn’t happen, and I still seem to lack gwEm’s confidence regarding emulators. Also I was unhappy with the slightly too fast tempo of the melody. The timing of the whole system can not be changed in very fine steps: i was locked to a 50Hz tick resolution. The Atari, using maxYMizer, can do super-tight timing with 200Hz ticks. I chose 51Hz resolution and was happy with the tempo options. Adapting the Spectrum’s linear volume scale to the logarithmic volume scale of the Atari took a long time. In the end, the tune became a bit more expressive in its 2010 incarnation.

If you are interested in the “original” Spectrum version, try loading OLZIMOI.PT3 into Sergey Bulba’s Vortex Tracker.

Enjoy!