BARE! 1.0 beta

The first release of BARE!: a synthesizer that is the whole computer. It starts from a USB stick straight into the instrument, with no operating system underneath, on PCs from the late 1990s to now.

It is a beta. It has been played on a ThinkPad X250 and an ASUS VivoBook (Intel 12th gen), BIOS and UEFI, and it boots on 90 emulated PCs, from a Pentium II with 32 MB to 4K screens. Not tried on real hardware yet: AC'97, the Sound Blaster 16, SATA and NVMe disks, the installer, Ethernet and the floppy. Tried it? Say how it went.

Put it on a stick

You need a USB stick of 256 MB or more (everything on it is replaced) and a PC that can start from USB.

1. Download bare-1.0-beta.img.zip (Windows, macOS) or bare-1.0-beta.img.xz (Linux).
2. Write it with balenaEtcher, Rufus or Raspberry Pi Imager (Use custom), which take the .zip as it is. On Linux one line downloads and writes it (lsblk shows which /dev/sdX is the stick; whatever you name there is overwritten):

   curl -L https://github.com/willbearfruits/bare/releases/download/v1.0-beta/bare-1.0-beta.img.xz | xz -dc | sudo dd of=/dev/sdX bs=4M conv=fsync
   

3. Turn Secure Boot off and start the PC from the stick (the boot menu is usually F12, F9, F8 or Esc at power-on).
4. When the splash plays, press any key. Hold 6 and run a finger along the keys from Z to /: a C major chord, strummed. Shift+? shows every key.

The files

bare-1.0-beta.img.zip, bare-1.0-beta.img.xz	the USB stick image: the instrument, and a partition that keeps your projects
bare-1.0-beta-floppy.img	a 3.5" 1.44 MB diskette for a BIOS PC with a floppy drive (sudo dd if=bare-1.0-beta-floppy.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=18k, or RawWrite for Windows); it plays, but can't save
bare-1.0-beta.iso	for a CD or a virtual machine; it can't save either
BARE.UPD	updates a BARE! stick: put it in the root of any FAT drive the instrument can see and start from the stick
bare-manual-1.0-beta.pdf	the manual, 38 A4 pages, made to be printed
grub-2.14.tar.xz (and .sig, GNU's signature)	the source of GRUB 2.14, which boots the floppy (GPL-3.0-or-later); the floppy's GRUB comes from Arch Linux's grub 2:2.14-1 package, built as its packaging (tag 2-2.14-1) says
SHA256SUMS	checksums of all of these

What's in it

• PLAY (F1): an omnichord after Suzuki's OM-108 — its three rows of chord buttons on the letter rows, a 13-string strumplate on the touchpad, ten voices, ten rhythms, AUTO chords and bass, keyboard mode with drums, MIDI out on its channels — and instruments written as text files (five come with it, SHRUTI's bellows among them).
• SEQ a tracker, WAVE drawn waves and a sampler after the Fairlight, STRETCH a freezer, OPERATOR four-operator FM, TAPE eight tracks, FILE projects, songs, MIDI and the keys, MIX with echo, reverb and master effects, TOUCH a crackle box after Michel Waisvisz's, FX effects to play live.
• LINEAGE (F11): homages to play, each with a short history — Xenakis (Metastaseis's glissandi as ruled surfaces, clouds, sieves, UPIC and GENDY; F12 goes straight there), Murzin's ANS and Coil, Steve Reich's phasing, Wendy Carlos's scales, Éliane Radigue's drones, Merzbow's noise.
• Keys follow the chord (Shift+K), the F keys set up as you like, ten colour schemes, undo, MIDI in and out over serial ports and USB, Ableton Link, songs in and out as WAV — and Doom (iddqd), with the WAD you put on the stick, whose first level's music SEQ turns into breakcore (Shift+4).

The page: https://willbearfruits.github.io/bare/ · the manual in the repository: MANUAL.md · how it got here: CHANGES.md

BARE! is free software, GPL-3.0-or-later. It comes with no game data: Doom plays the WAD you put on the stick, your own or Freedoom's. Doom is a trademark of id Software, not involved with BARE!.