[Coco] [Color Computer] Orchestra 90 - S/S Pak

[James Diffendaffer]

The Orchestra 90 is just a simple stereo D/A converter.  It sounds
better than the internal 6 bit D/A converter but it still requires a
lot of CPU time to drive it.  Now, if someone were to add hardware to
drive the D/A converters with DMA like on the Amiga... then it would
be pretty cool.  I looked at adding that through a cart but as someone
has already pointed out, it needs access to some signals that aren't
on the connector.  Isn't Archanoid about the only game that used the
O-90?  The only other stuff I know of that uses it are music programs.

The S/SP isn't as good for playing back audio samples (though
possible) but it doesn't need as much attention from the
CPU for simple music and sound effects.  Even though there were a
couple games like Varoc that supported it I wouldn't say they really
took advantage of it's capabilities.  Look for music files for the GI
sound chip and you'll find stuff that sounds almost like the C64's SID
chip.  It's too bad it didn't see the level of support that machines
with a built in chip had.
BTW, does anyone have a dump of the ROM from the S/SP?

>That's great news.  A CoCo with the O90 and the S/SP has the potential 
>for great sound quality, but almost no software uses or supports them.
>Just imagine PC games that will only support PC speaker instead of 
>Soundblaster.
>While at this, what software do you guys know that uses either the O-90 
>or the S/SP?
>
>Diego





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