Using a modern web to recreate 1980S horribly slow and loud loading screens
summary
A browser demo recreates ZX Spectrum tape loading: website bytes are fetched, converted into pulse-accurate audio (855 T‑state pulses → ~11/22 samples) with the Web Audio API and an AudioBuffer, processed live with ScriptProcessorNode (AudioWorklet unsupported), parsed into bits, and painted to canvas. Performance bottlenecks disappear after switching to typed arrays (Int8ClampedArray used for images). Images are dithered with Atkinson dither, phone audio fed into a real Spectrum sometimes successfully produces a visible image.
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chapters (6)
- 0:00Introduction to slow web
- 10:18Recreating 80s tape loading sounds
- 17:08Visual loading bars from audio
- 23:34Rendering old image formats
- 32:02Live demo with phone and Spectrum
- 39:21Project journey and reflections
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