Did you see the sticky post atop this forum? https://gamedev.net/forums/forum/18-music-and-sound-fx/​ It's called “15 good DAWs” and it lists things that are not FL plugins.

Just my opinion, but I use LMMS for writing 8-bit music. It's pretty straightforward in my experience – just open the app, download some chiptune soundfonts (.sf2 files), throw them in the piano roll and start writing your songs.

Depending on how serious you want to go:

- you could google various chiptune sample libraries like Super Audio Cart by Impact Soundworks or Chipsounds by Plogue.

- or you can do what's mentioned above and go with a trackr/mod method and pop in your own samples.

- You can also just load up some basic sound shapes (sawtooth, sine, square) and then do some bit crushing and EQ to emulate chip sounds.

Use Ableton or Cubase or Maschine (or FL Studio,) and then run the sound through a bit depth reducer? There are tons of VST plugins with 8 bit sounds, sample libraries (free or otherwise) with 8 bit sounds, and most of those systems come with a plugin that qantizes the sound wave itself to 8 bits (which I realize is different from the “bleepy” source sounds you may want, but help add grit.)

Also, FL Studio has a free trial and even the “pro” version is pretty affordable, so that might be worth it, too.

You can also emulate chip tune sounds with the right source waveforms and LFOs in almost any soft synth – Massive X, Serum, Vital (free!) and Operator can all do it. One trick is to set the LFO to 12 semitones, and run pretty fast (10 Hz or so) to get that “whirrr” sound.