ABC (was Re: [Coco] Re: [Color Computer] PC Lyra)

[Richard E. Crislip]

Hello LM

I apologize for butting in here, but do read this right?? You are using a
cassette recorder on your PC? Or did you mean a tape streamer such as my
Connor 8mm SCSI drive? If you're using the RS cassette recorder, I'd love
to hear how you're doing it. TIA

On 12/05/03, LM wrote:
> Mike Knudsen wrote:
>> Wow, BNF specs!  I remember those from CS grad school.
> 
> Have been working with BNF a lot lately.  Just finished programming a 
> Pascal interpreter that uses an augmented transition network parser for a 
> compiler course for my Masters.  Am hoping I can reuse the ATN parser for 
> some other projects.
> 
>> What are these OPL-2/3 chips?  Sound generators, or programmable 
>> controllers like the STAMP series?
> 
> Yamaha FM synthesis chip used in the earlier Sound Blasters. 
> You could program them to play notes.  I still have a table of 
> settings using FM synthesis to emulate some of the MIDI instruments, 
> probably pretty useless now since the modern sound cards appear to be
> using instrument samples over FM synthesis.  There was some interesting 
> information on programming sound cards on a PC in the mx directories at:
> ftp://x2ftp.oulu.fi/pub/msdos/programming/
> but most of it's probably very outdated with all the newer sound cards 
> on the market now.
> 
>> Trouble is, it's VERY hard to get such programs into my PC for
>> sharing, since my "new" PC doesn't have a 5" drive,
> 
> That was one of the reasons I decided to put my own system together the 
> last time I upgraded my PC machine.  There were things I just had to have
> in my computer that they're not selling in the prebuilt systems.  When my
> last 5 and 1/4 went out, someone gave me three other old ones, so I have
> some replacements for now.  Eventually hoping to get everything moved to
> CD, but that's going to take a long time.  Was very surprised tape works
> so well on the PC.  It was really slow to store files that way on the
> CoCo, but it looks like a very reliable method to move files between the
> CoCo and a PC (although still slow).
> 
> If you ever do dig up the music program, I'd love to see it.
> 
>> Laura, if you have OS-9 or Linux, you could try my UltiMusE program,
>> whereby you use the mouse to draw sheet music on the screen, then play
>> it.
> 
> I'm currently working on trying to get Linux or FreeBSD up and running on
> my machine (using the Antec Dataswap to swap out hard drives). Every time
> I've tried to get Linux or FreeBSD working, I've always run into hardware
> issues. Just brought the whole machine to a local Linux users group to see
> if they'd have better luck. They installed Red Hat 9 and things like my
> mouse and my ISA Hayes modem aren't working. If I ever get the kinks out,
> I'll be sure to check your program out. Right now, to compose and print
> sheet music, I've been typing it into a text editor using ABC and and
> using abcm2ps and ghostscript to view or print it to a laser printer.
> (Think an ABC to UltiMusE converter program would be a great idea.) Have
> been doing a lot of searching for public domain music lately to convert to
> midi music (which is one of the reasons I started the pdsongs mailing list
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pdsongs). Have some interesting Karaoke midi
> files I'm working on based on pd music sources. Hoping to get some more
> and some day create my own music CD for fun (using midi to play
> instruments and I'm doing the vocals).
> 
> Best wishes.
> 
> Laura
> http://www.distasis.com/recipes/music.htm
> 
> 
> 
Regards
-- 
Cruisen                                                         _|_
              on AutoPilot with an Amiga   ---o-( )-o---   and a CoCo
 
                                             Richard