[Coco] Orchestra 90CC

[Willard Goosey]

After playing with the Orchestra-90 pak this afternoon, I have some
further observations to offer:

I was confused by Rogelio's explanation of the .ORC file format.  I
had always assumed they were plain ASCII, and that he was talking
about a compressed-for-transfer format, not what the Orchestra
software expects to run.  Well, you know what happens when you assume
things...  I had it backwards.

Still, I couldn't get the ORC files from the model 4 disk to play on
the CoCo.  Either 1) the disk files are buggy, 2)xtrs's extract
utility causes single-byte errors, or 3)Model III/4 and CoCo Orchestra
software in fact support different versions of the music language.

Someone who knows the Orchestra sofware should go to
http://www.discover-net.net/~dmkeil/trs80/trsorch.htm, download his
program disk, and see you can get the orc files in it to play.

Of the two Model III/4 emulators I have, one crashes when it tries to
run the disk's software, and the other is too old to recognize that
type of virtual disk.  My real Model 4P doesn't have an orchestra
board.

I don't know anything about music or music programming, but I think I
was close to getting gypsy/orc to play.  It has lots of RXX commands,
which ( I read in the manual means) repeat section XX.  CoCo Orchestra
objects to this when section XX hasn't been defined yet.  Ok, so it's
a single-pass translator.  

But then the thunderstorm started.  Computers don't like
thunderstorms. :-(

Willard
-- 
Willard Goosey  goosey at sdc.org
Socorro, New Mexico, USA
I search my heart and find Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.
  -- R.E. Howard