Oh blimey, well found Tormod! None of us had spotted that - it looks like we've partially reinvented the wheel! Still, if it occurred to us to separate the software from the cartridge in 2015, it shouldn't surprise us it occurred to someone in 1985 too!
However, that software does come with a different problem - reliance on either Coco-DOS or Compuserve(!) to load files, so us Dragon users are stuck when it actually comes to loading files (as far as I can currently tell). But equally, it has the advantage of being able to run on a Dragon 32 (our hacked ROM requires a 64) - so off to see if the two can combined into a player supported by all platforms, and supporting both tape and disks (including drivewire). Please forgive us if we don't rush to get the Compuserve code working!
Cheers, Tony
Orchestra-90 CC - now running without the cartridge!
Re: Orchestra-90 CC - now running without the cartridge!
Presumably the scored output is something that could be dumped and prefixed with a small standalone player binary, a-la Dragon Composer? Almost certainly automatable.
Re: Orchestra-90 CC - now running without the cartridge!
Well, for anything music on CoCo/Dragon it is worth checking out Bill Pierce's stuff... 
The ORCH.BIN code being outside the cartridge area should make it easier to combine with a real DOS. It would be very nice if it used disk access routine vectors instead of poking the disk controller.
Actually the Compuserve support can be another way of interfacing various loading mechanisms. Compuserve emulation over the DriveWire interface, anyone?
sixxie, probably, however I suspect the scored output to be much larger than the original orch-90 files, so that small player would need large data files. Anyway it could give some interesting possibilities and be easier to embed in other software.
The ORCH.BIN code being outside the cartridge area should make it easier to combine with a real DOS. It would be very nice if it used disk access routine vectors instead of poking the disk controller.
Actually the Compuserve support can be another way of interfacing various loading mechanisms. Compuserve emulation over the DriveWire interface, anyone?
sixxie, probably, however I suspect the scored output to be much larger than the original orch-90 files, so that small player would need large data files. Anyway it could give some interesting possibilities and be easier to embed in other software.
Re: Orchestra-90 CC - now running without the cartridge!
Ha, it's funny, I'd looked at Bill's site, but had been distracted by all those .dsk images and hadn't spotted that program disk! There's also some interesting midi stuff there that's trying to entice me to start a new project ... in a far off day when I have enough spare time.
You're right, hooking into DOS at a higher level, rather than hitting the disk at a low level seems like a much better approach - although the idea of Compuserve emulation over Drivewire does make me smile!
You're right, hooking into DOS at a higher level, rather than hitting the disk at a low level seems like a much better approach - although the idea of Compuserve emulation over Drivewire does make me smile!
Re: Orchestra-90 CC - now running without the cartridge!
Yes, well spotted Tormod! I shall be having a look later.
I like that idea. It could work out quite well because nearly everything required is already in RAM: Music data, wave tables, frequency lookup tables. Even the player core is RAM resident during playback because it uses self-modifying code. If the resulting files do turn out to be relatively large I bet they compress well.sixxie wrote:Presumably the scored output is something that could be dumped and prefixed with a small standalone player binary, a-la Dragon Composer? Almost certainly automatable.
Stew
Re: Orchestra-90 CC - now running without the cartridge!
NICE !
so, how many voices do we have....
HOW are we emulating 2*8 BIT DAC's out of 1*6 BIT DAC ?
i'm supposing this eats pretty much all cpu time too ??
/Simon
so, how many voices do we have....
HOW are we emulating 2*8 BIT DAC's out of 1*6 BIT DAC ?
i'm supposing this eats pretty much all cpu time too ??
/Simon
Re: Orchestra-90 CC - now running without the cartridge!
Hey Simon,
Changing the DAC output was a fairly easy hack once we found where things are in memory...
The ROM copies a 4 voice or 5 voice self-mod player to RAM depending on what's required. Normally some channels go to the left DAC and some go to the right DAC. I just added the L&R channels together to go into one DAC. Because that makes a 9 bit number a routine was added to divide all the samples in the wave tables by 2.
6 bits is not as good as 9 so there is more noise. As the waves are pretty loud anyway, it's not that noticeable so we get away with it
And yes, it does require 100% CPU and checks the keyboard between notes.
Changing the DAC output was a fairly easy hack once we found where things are in memory...
The ROM copies a 4 voice or 5 voice self-mod player to RAM depending on what's required. Normally some channels go to the left DAC and some go to the right DAC. I just added the L&R channels together to go into one DAC. Because that makes a 9 bit number a routine was added to divide all the samples in the wave tables by 2.
6 bits is not as good as 9 so there is more noise. As the waves are pretty loud anyway, it's not that noticeable so we get away with it
And yes, it does require 100% CPU and checks the keyboard between notes.
Stew
Re: Orchestra-90 CC - now running without the cartridge!
Great work!
The Dragon community seems to be buzzing at the moment.
Well done everyone involved.
The Dragon community seems to be buzzing at the moment.
Well done everyone involved.
Re: Orchestra-90 CC - now running without the cartridge!
Hi all,
we have converted all of the CAS files into binary files .ORC and now they are
saved on 720k discs using Rolf's DragonDos utility
I attach here the 16 file volumes that contain the 2486 scores.
These have been created to be used with a new program version that will be able to
work with floppies without using the DOS ROM, it will issue the commands right to
the WD2797 controller using low level access.
cheers
pere
we have converted all of the CAS files into binary files .ORC and now they are
saved on 720k discs using Rolf's DragonDos utility
I attach here the 16 file volumes that contain the 2486 scores.
These have been created to be used with a new program version that will be able to
work with floppies without using the DOS ROM, it will issue the commands right to
the WD2797 controller using low level access.
cheers
pere
- Attachments
-
- Packs.zip
- This contains the 16 disks 720k colection
- (2.88 MiB) Downloaded 190 times