[Coco] My introduction - a newbie

[Joel Ewy]

As Torsten mentions, the CoCo's built-in sound is not the computer's
strong point.  However, even with its limited hardware, there are some
games that make pretty good use of it.  I've always found the explosion
sounds in Polaris to be quite satisfying.  And Mega Bug (Pac-Man-like)
says "We Gotcha" when you lose.  Dungeons of Daggorath makes a heartbeat
sound that speeds up as your health declines and slows down as you
rest.  Recent discussions on this list have re-ignited my interest in
the Orchestra 90CC.  I may get it out again and plug it in.

JCE

Torsten Dittel wrote:
>> One thing I haven't had the chance to check is CoCo 3's sound quality.
>> Could you please tell me more about it? My favorite 8 bit sound is
>> Commodore 64's.
>>     
>
> Yeah, the SID is great. The CoCo1/2/3s don't have a soundchip at all.
> Sound output is mainly done with a mono 6-bit-DAC. It needs a lot of CPU
> cycles to frequently output the samples, so you'll hardly find fast
> games with multivoice background music like on the C=64. However, there
> were some expansion Paks out there, the Orchestra 90 CC adding a second
> channel and expanding the sound (samples) to 8-bit and the
> Speech-Sound-Cartridge (SSC) adding a voice synthesizer and a Yamaha
> sound chip like the one used in the ATARI ST. It's possible to root the
> cartidges sound to the CoCo's sound outputs. A few games really used it.
>
> Regards,
> Torsten
>
> PS: Try to find me in the http://coco3.com chatroom or here:
> ICQ: 192164083
> Yahoo! ID: torstencito
> E-mail: OS-9<at>TRS-80.CC (replace <at> with @)
>
>
>