ZX Spectrum Memories - homemade digital camera from RAM chip

We listen to tracker and 8-bit music with a friend, podcasts with music from Spectrum times, reflections on the historical patterns of the development of the demoscene. The fact is that on the modest hardware zx spectrum you can now create complex special effects, windows like interfaces, but this does not mean that it was possible then. It was necessary to develop to the current technology and with the help of "downshifting" to adapt them for a limited iron. Now, with the support of a modern PC, it has become much easier to create something under the zx spectrum.

Here for example, if we talk about such a thing now available as a digital photo.
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The fact is that now, if there is a desire to write a demo or a game, then to obtain images we will do the following:
- photograph the objects of the real world, cut, compress, surpass in the Spectrum;
- draw on paper, scan or take a photo, compress, distill into a spectrum;
- draw in a modern graphic editor with a mouse or even a pen, squeeze, distill in Spectrum

And how was it when there were no big cars? How was it when you wrote a Spectrum on the Spectrum?

And then came the understanding that now we all have at least a soap box or even a DSLR. But even if not,
then every phone has a camera of satisfactory quality. And then it was nothing! Some 5-6 years ago even digital soap dishes were in units. The generation of the spectrum, even in dreams, was not like this, it was necessary to sit in an art studio and try to draw something on the buttons and it turns out nonsense. A digital photo or scan could help and simplify the artist's life ...

Suddenly, an image came to my mind. A sad image from the past, flooded with white light from the bright sun, I am standing in the middle of a cold winter and the snowflakes shimmering in the bright sun blinded my eyes. And I stand at the bus stop and think about the fact that I absolutely can’t find the RP chip in the ceramic package in our town ... So, stop! Why? What for?

At this moment, iron ghosts of the past begin to emerge from the closet in the form of monstrous technical ideas that even today can never come to mind. It turns out that you can cut the body of the RAM chip and project the image on the crystal. First write there edinichki. Then, under the influence of light, these ones break down. At this point, you can read the picture. Single bit! But in Google something I didn’t find anything about it. I rummaged through my archives from FIDO from 2002 ... I did not find it either. But thanks alone with zx.pk.ru for the hint.

This is exactly the picture that remained in my memory.


Information on the project in Russian:
exos.org.ru/researchesDRAM.html
radionet.com.ru/shem/shem476.html

It looks like the original article:
www.kurzschluss.com/kuckuck/kuckuck.html

There is also an archive with "movies". Gathered them in animated gif.



And now everything is possible, even video streaming on the zx spectrum. In those days, of course, it was not possible.
spectrum.alioth.net/doc/index.php/Main_Page