[Coco] Format Issues with ORC-90 Fwd: ORC-90

[eric at canales.me]

Thanks bill! I also had time this morning to look over the orc90 manual and confirmed there is no special way to save or load files. I must have invented that! The orc90 only saves files out as Bill wrote.


-----Original Message-----
From: Coco <coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com> On Behalf Of Bill Pierce via Coco
Sent: Monday, March 7, 2022 8:27 AM
To: coco at maltedmedia.com
Cc: Bill Pierce <ooogalapasooo at aol.com>
Subject: Re: [Coco] Format Issues with ORC-90 Fwd: ORC-90

First, Coco Orch90 files are not completely ASCII. The first byte of each line has the value $80 added to it, with no CR at the end of the line. When Orc90 finds a character with a value higher than 128, it subtracts 128 and starts a new line with that character. I think Orch90 will load straight ASCII files, but only under special conditions.

2nd, the files found under the main section "Orchestra90", in the archives were from the Compuserve Model 1-3 Orch90 archive and actually contains files for the "Orchestra Master" (converted by someone) and the Tandy Model 1-3 versions of Orch90. The files with the extension "*.ORC" are for Orchestra Master (I think), and the files with the extension "*.ASC" are for the Model 1-3. Coco Orch90 files have NO extension. There is a text file in this folder explaining this, but it is wrong in stating that the last char in each line is "ORed" with $80 as it is the first char in each line.

3rd, there are more images in the archives under "DISKS/MUSIC" in zip files containing disk images of (I think) converted files that will load into the Coco Orch90 correctly.

4th, Orch90 does use standard RSDOS formatted disks, but uses a slightly different directory track method. Orch90 has it's own disk routines and does NOT use the RSDOS ROMs. Disks for Orch90 should only be used for Orch90 files and not mixing BASIC/ML programs on them. I think the "Orchestra Master" player/editor uses straight ASCII files stored RSDOS style.

At one time (a long time ago), I was going to convert all those files to the proper format, but got sidetracked. I was also told by Guillimue (CoCo Archive Admin), that he had already done this, resulting in the alternate zip files found under "DISKS/MUSIC", so I dropped the project.

Read the text file under "ROOT/ORCHESTRA90" for more info.
I hope this helps...
Bill P.