Re: New "Grand Piano"...

[ug0a@rzstud1.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Alexander Siegfried)]

Mitchel Spector wrote:

 >I see only two ways to bring the Apple IIgs up to par with
 >current PC wavetable sound boards. Either use what hardware is
 >available and find some way to make use of standard GS memory as
 >DOC-RAM (swap between 64Kb and system memory when playing MIDI
 >files). This should be possible with a very high-speed accelerator
 >and the GS doing nothing else but playing music, but programming
 >it would be quite a task. I'm not even sure if this is doable.

Mitch, the technique you describe has been already implemented on
the GS for *a couple of years*. What do you think are programs like
Shellplay, MODZap or Beatbox doing to play those huge MOD files?

You don't even need an accelerator for the sample swapping, yet it
eats over 50% of processor time...

Well, well, the 64k limitation: Another design flaw of the GS - blame
Woz for it ;)  Why didn't they just do it the way the Amiga handles/
handled it? The standard RAM can be used as DMA (!) sound RAM. That
would have been the way to go... Oh, well... The GS - still a great
machine... :)

-- Clue / Ninjaforce