It’s starting to look like old 8-bit computers are the new Roland TB-303.

Petsynth is a free, open source application described as “the only program for rocking the Commodore PET that the cool kids use”:

Petsynth features a two-octave keyboard layout, selectable note length, many selectable octaves, selectable pulse-width, vibrato, distortion, and noise or “drum mode” depending on how you use it.

All this without adding or hacking the Commodore PET in any way. Plus, it’s compiling from C, so it’s FAST – with very low latency.

The drum sounds are also crazy weird. You can also set the vibrato so high it sounds more like a laser gun or alien telephone.

Here’s one, slighty distorted, demo of Petsynth in action:

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via RetroThing