Recent posts

#1

General Discussion - Introductions / Re: Why did you choose the CPC...

Last post by The Electric Monk - Today at 18:53

They were our school's official "computer class" computers, which meant there was a steady stream of games available for swapping We also used them to produce our student magazine. When a classmate of my brother sold his 6128, I begged my dad to get it for me, and he relented.

A few years later the school got IBM PCs and let the CPCs go for a song, so I picked up two more for around 10 DM (5€) each.
The terrible thing is, I only have one of the school CPCs left in my possession, and I have literally no idea what happened to the other two.

#2

General Discussion - Introductions / Re: Why did you choose the CPC...

Last post by Targhan - Today at 18:18

I didn't choose the CPC. It chose me.

#3

General Discussion - Introductions / Re: Why did you choose the CPC...

Last post by ZorrO - Today at 18:03

43% it's not everybody.

#4

A

Programming / Re: Playing music with BASIC

Last post by andycadley - Today at 16:08

Seuquenciality of the music is not the main issue I see to the usage of DATA statements. There are workarounds to that.
The biggest problem would be if the main program get interurpted by the player while reading DATA itself, I think.

BASIC will do all of that for you, generating a call into the relevant ON SQ for you as required to fill queues up. The tricky bit is you don't really know when each will occur, which is why the DATA being sequential can be awkward (unless you read them all into arrays initially anyway).

#5

Programming / Re: Playing music with BASIC

Last post by Deevee - Today at 16:05

I'm trying to put together something via Arkos RAW format. Idk how much time it wil take (probably a couple of days).

A BASIC interrupt driven music player (using ON SQ) shouldn't actually have that much impact since it queues up notes and handles then in assembly anyway (so doesn't need to respond too precisely). Structuring data to be read is probably the trickier part, DATA statements aren't great since you can only READ them sequentially and that doesn't fit well with music structure. Probably would need to be a bunch of arrays.

Sequenciality of the music is not the main issue I see to the usage of DATA statements. There are workarounds to that.
The biggest problem would be if the main program get interurpted by the player while reading DATA itself, I think.

#6

Technical support - Hardware related / Re: EME-157 drive hooked up to...

Last post by McArti0 - Today at 15:51

For many years I had a 3inch drive as drive A in my PC. 3" floppy system disk formatted in DOS 5.0. 

#7

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Programming / Re: Playing music with BASIC

Last post by andycadley - Today at 15:35

That's something I don't really need any more, but that can be fun to work on nevertheless. Do you have a song already you want to play ?

No, I guess the song will be done depending on the limitations of the player. I don't expect to have the full flexibility of the usual tools, especially if I want some other things to also be working (my main effect does not need a lot of computing, but it needs to run every frame or maybe every 2 frames to do some CRTC register tricks).

A BASIC interrupt driven music player (using ON SQ) shouldn't actually have that much impact since it queues up notes and handles then in assembly anyway (so doesn't need to respond too precisely). Structuring data to be read is probably the trickier part, DATA statements aren't great since you can only READ them sequentially and that doesn't fit well with music structure. Probably would need to be a bunch of arrays.

#8

Programming / Re: Playing music with BASIC

Last post by PulkoMandy - Today at 15:07

That's something I don't really need any more, but that can be fun to work on nevertheless. Do you have a song already you want to play ?

No, I guess the song will be done depending on the limitations of the player. I don't expect to have the full flexibility of the usual tools, especially if I want some other things to also be working (my main effect does not need a lot of computing, but it needs to run every frame or maybe every 2 frames to do some CRTC register tricks). 

#9

Programming / Re: Playing music with BASIC

Last post by mr_lou - Today at 14:51

Have a look at an old abandoned BASIC project of mine:
https://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/programming/abandoned-basic-game-project

I vaguely recall putting something "clever" in there, instead of "endless DATA lines".
But you'll have to grasp what I'm doing before you see how clever it is.
Basically, I'm using a "keyboard" string (QWERTYUI) for tones instead of inputting frequencies.

#10

Programming / Re: Playing music with BASIC

Last post by Deevee - Today at 14:46

That's something I don't really need any more, but that can be fun to work on nevertheless. Do you have a song already you want to play ?