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Re: Orchestra-90 CC

Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2015 5:09 pm
by pser1
no, unfortunately not!
I think, and I may be wrong, that Orchestra works with the hardware DOS registers $FF48,49,4A,4B without using DOS calls.
It seems logical because with an MPI installed, the RAM cell $FF7F contains the 'active software' slot and the
'active hardware' slot, one in each nibble.
It has in fact $xx03, being xx the slot where Orchestra is and forces the DOS to be in slot 3
That said, we see that any software call will be answered by the Orchestra ROM because it is the 'active software'
so they have used another approach, for sure.
Probably, all the input output could be done at low level putting/getting bytes into/from $FF4B and sending commands to $FF48

Keeping into account that Orchestra reacts at $FF7A and $FF7B to access the DACs, maybe just changing the DOS ports:
CoCo .......... Dragon
FF48 .......... FF40
FF49 .......... FF41
FF4A .......... FF42
FF4B .......... FF43
FF40 .......... FF48
it could work ... but then there is the disc size problem, and so the sector where the directory begins and they have different file formats ...
Too many enemies. It could be reallly painful to work with!

Anyway, if anyone has any advice it would be very wellcome!

cheers
pere

Re: Orchestra-90 CC

Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2015 5:38 pm
by robcfg
Could be an issue of how XRoar manages non standard disks?

Maybe you need to run it in CoCo mode instead of Dragon?

Re: Orchestra-90 CC

Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2015 5:48 pm
by pser1
Hi, Robert
there is no problem running XRoar emulating the Orchestra-90 CC but you just can load tape files if you have a Dragon emulation.
On my real CoCo3 it loads well from Audacity and then saves to disc flawlessly. Later those files can be retrieved and played
Of course, emulating a CoCo instead of a Dragon and using a CoCo disc system it will work well too in XRoar, or it should!

By now I have loaded three WAV files to my CoCo3 and saved them to disc.
Later I have loaded them back and listened to the three. Wonderful!

cheers
pere

Re: Orchestra-90 CC

Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2015 6:40 pm
by pser1
Hello,
while loading some long files to my CoCo, I have found a 'bad' one with the name IDTEACH
In fact trying to load it into XRoar gives immediately the ERR 1 just after having read the header
After the error, pressing E to edit, shows nothing at all, it seems that the program has not
acepted the first byte to be translated.
It is a very long file, 40,503 bytes in ASC format

cheers
pere

Re: Orchestra-90 CC

Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2015 9:12 pm
by pser1
robcfg wrote:Could be an issue of how XRoar manages non standard disks?

Maybe you need to run it in CoCo mode instead of Dragon?
Hi Robert,
great idea. I could, of course, load all of the CAS files into Orchestra in a CoCo Emulation with XRoar
and then save them to disc, very good!
I will copy the discs later on the card of my CoCo-SDC and so I could easily make backups to floppies
in order to use them with the real cartridge.

The way I start the DOS and the Orchestra is this one:

Code: Select all

xroar -machine cocous -bas bas14.rom -extbas extbas11.rom -machine-cart mpi -mpi-load-cart 3=rsdos -mpi-load-cart 0=orch90 -mpi-slot 3 -force-crc-match -tape-fast -joy-left 0,0:1:0 -kbd-translate -lp-file ..\XRoar\sortida.txt 
But as soon as it starts I must enter this command:
POKE &HFF7F,&H33
So that I could mount a disk file in drive0, then I enter:
POKE&HFF7F,&H03 to start the software at slot1
If it fais the first time, pressing Ctrl+R always starts the cartridge

From this moment I can load scores from tape and save them to disk

Re: Orchestra-90 CC

Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2015 11:14 pm
by tjewell
Hi Pere, I think you're right, the problem with IDTEACH.ASC is sheer size. It's 2,700 lines long, but if you cut the last 600 off, it loads okay. There's nothing odd in those last 600 lines, so I think it's simply become too big!

Re: Orchestra-90 CC

Posted: Sun Sep 27, 2015 10:17 am
by pser1
Hi Tony,
What you have done gives me a hint about the problem ...
Maybe a too long file shows a length word that is taken as a negative one!
Just have a look at the CAS converted file, this one has a length of $9381 bytes, you know what I mean ...
being greater than $7FFF it becomes a negative value and that's why it crashes immediately.
It doesn't try to load even a single byte out of it
So cutting it solves the problem at the price of losing a small part of the song
We need to practice with the Optimize command and the Append one, maybe using both we
could reduce the file length to a 'positive' value ... tests to be made
Just my two cents ...

cheers
pere

Re: Orchestra-90 CC

Posted: Sun Sep 27, 2015 12:14 pm
by pser1
Doesn't seem to be sign related but simply absolute length limited.
I have splitted it into two identical halves, then loaded the second to Optimize it
and when I have tried to Append the first half it has given the ERROR 1, so
it has detected that having half the score loaded, the other half doesn't fit in
the free space the program has to work with.
Even with just the half, when Scoring it asks for Overlapping the source score
so we'd have to accept that song but truncated!

cheers
pere