Re: As a BBC owner...
There was nothing particularly cheap about the modulator (well, actually it was probably the cheapest Sinclair could source, but it was the same as fitted in any number of other home computers), but it was not unusual for audio crosstalk in any of the machines of this generation, especially when displaying 'busy' pictures on cheap black and white televisions.
I bought an add-on (effectively a second modulator) which remodulated the signal to include sound, which I fed from a Quicksilver sound board (it has an AY-3-8910), controlled by a number of memory-mapped locations. I used it, along with a programmable character set mod (remember what I said about the I register) to get mine to display and play music. Unfortunately, in slow mode, ZX Basic was more than a bit slow, so there was an appreciable delay in displaying the notes and them playing. But it kept me occupied on dark nights back in 1981 while I waited for my BBC Micro to arrive.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
