Re: Music Composer v4.00

[sbehrens@contech.demon.co.uk (Soenke Behrens)]

AJMCD4@cfs02.cc.monash.edu.au (Andrew Mc. Donald) wrote:

>In article <3uc2q9$1a7@nnrp1.primenet.com> clay1@primenet.com (Clayburn Juniel/Effective Software Solutions) writes:
>>From: clay1@primenet.com (Clayburn Juniel/Effective Software Solutions)
>>Subject: Music Composer v4.00
>>Date: 16 Jul 1995 22:11:21 GMT

>>Version 4.00 of Music Composer also includes a sheet music interface.  You can
>>enter notes using standard sheet music notation.

>Yes yes yes!!!  I'd be very interested....  now a wild suggestion :   Would it 
>be possible for Music Composer to do the old breaking of the 64k instrument 
>sound limit???  I realise that due to speed problems this is pretty unlikely, 
>but it would make Music Composer THE ultimate GS music program...

I've actually kicked a simple and speedy way of doing this around for a
while ... it wouldn't be much, but it would be something. Goes something
like this: Take two more DRAM chips, a little glue logic (probably in a
GAL), and one annunciator. The Ensoniq can bank-switch, all you need is, as
I said, two DRAMs plus a bit of logic that takes a command to switch the
bank (from the annunciator) and lets the Ensoniq "know" about it.

Now, the drawbacks are:

- Software has to be written to support the extra 64k. W/o software
support, those extra 64k are just so much silicon (useless).
- It's only an extra 64k. So you have 128k now. So big deal.
- It requires you to solder around in your beloved GS. Yuck.
- It takes an annunciator. Couldn't think of any other good way of getting
a signal from the GS, other than a slot card (which would be something of
an overkill)

Would anyone be interested in this? If so, I could try and solder around in
my GS (if someone else supplies the software to test the thing :), and then
release instructions to the PD.

Cheers
Soenke "Vaporware" Behrens

--
I don't know what it is he's doing, it must be art