archive.worldofdragon.org

Sorry to be a bit off topic but seeing as how this is about the only place I've found cas downloads for this generation of pc's I thought I'd take a chance and see if anyone can point me to a Coco compatible version of Synther 7? I've tried a Dragon version but no dice.

Any help or direction is appreciated!!

Doesn't look promising - a google for "synther-7 coco" just turns up others with your problem, and even checking the supposedly CoCo-biased rtsi archive (ftp://os9archive.rtsi.com/), you can find a CAS file, but it too only loads on the Dragon. Was it definitely out on CoCo?

Edit: of course, it probably wouldn't be too hard to get it working...

Here's a link to a magazine article that claims is was (article "Graphics and Music for the Color Computer"):

http://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/ ... for_th.php

...and I had a link with screenshots but I seem to have lost it

...where could I learn about the not too hard method to get it working?

I wrote this for someone else a while back: http://www.6809.org.uk/tmp/da/tapehack.txt - how easy it is kinda depends on how much you like poking around in hex dumps and disassemblies...

Most of why Synther-7 doesn't load will be due to the autorun method I suspect, though it might make lots of ROM calls that would need patching. And if it polls the keyboard, the different matrix would need accounting for.

Woah. OK, time to get learnin'. Thanks for sharing! That's actually very interesting for me since I would love to be able to edit the wave tables that must be lurking in there somewhere.

Well, this is way over my head at the moment.

If you (or anyone) wouldn't mind spoonfeeding me some additional info or helping out let me know at holder"dot"arnie"at"gmail"dot"com

Thanks (whether you feel like pursuing this or not)!!

A quick bash to get it loading here:

http://www.6809.org.uk/tmp/da/synther7_coco_step1.cas

It's heavily keyboard-based though, so getting the scanning right will be a pig unless it turns out to be using some sort of lookup table. I'll see if anything falls out of a trace of execution if I get a moment over the weekend.

Ok I had some time before leaving for work this morning so...

It looks very like the Dragon version was just patched from an original CoCo one: after detecting a keypress, it calculates a "scan code" then JSRs to a routine that just adjusts this scan code back to what it would have been on a CoCo. NOP out that JSR in the CAS file, update block checksums and badaboom badabing:

http://www.6809.org.uk/tmp/da/synther7_coco.cas

Also I saw someone find the original CoCo one for you on coco3.com, and as I'd already started...

I really appreciate your help! And yeah, I've been trying to get the one from coco3.com to work but I may have a sound level issue or something. I'm determined to get one of these versions working by Sunday evening!! Thanks again!!

PS: I'm assuming I should still be using CLOADM and expecting the program to self-start? So far the "S" pops up in the upper left (not inverted) and the machine stays locked up till I reset it (with the version from coco3.com, I won't be able to try yours until Sunday)...