[Coco] Orchestra 90CC

[Rogelio Perea]

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 5:46 AM, Willard Goosey wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 08:10:19PM -0500, Steve Ostrom wrote:
>> Does anyone know if these 13 Orchestra 90 disks for the Model I/III can be
>> used for the Coco's Orchestra 90CC Pak?
>
> Well?  Did anybody know?
>
> I thought they should be, but wasn't sure.  So I found a Model III
> virtual disk with some ORC files and downloaded it, with the intent of
> extracting the ORC files, moving them to the CoCo, and seeing if
> they'd play.
>
> Using xtrs (an old version), I couldn't get it to work.  The files
> look like straight-ASCII under LS-DOS, but when extracted with a tool
> in the emulator, they're full of bytes with the 8-bit set. The
> Orch90CC pukes on them.

Did some research to jolt dormant neurons... the Software Affair music
file encoding took a text file (with all the commands for the music
notation) using a *partial compression* of the last characters at the
end of each line by setting its high “bit” to one,  two bytes were
saved that otherwise would have been used for CR/LF control character
terminators. These *compressed* text files usually show up in music
libraries with the ORC extension; music libraries with raw text files
(suitable for printing and straight through e-tranfer) usually have
the ASC extension - these need to be converted before the compiler in
Orchestra can score them properly.

There was a RSDOS utility program available to do this - it may have
been written by Rick Adams IIRC. Tried finding it in RTSI to no avail,
and what's left of the Compuserve archives only has the Basic09
version of it:

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PROCEDURE o90cnv
 0000      DIM a$:STRING[80]; c$:STRING[200] \c$=""
 001E      DIM m,n:INTEGER; b$,d$,e$:STRING[100] \b$=""
 0043      e$="                    " \e$=e$+e$+e$+e$+e$
 0076      INPUT "File for conversion? ",a$
 0093      OPEN #n,a$ \ CREATE #m,a$+".cnv"
 00AE      WHILE NOT(EOF(#n)) DO
 00B9        READ #n,a$
 00C3        IF LEFT$(a$,1)=CHR$($0A) THEN
 00D4          a$=RIGHT$(a$,LEN(a$)-1)
 00E4        ENDIF
 00E6        PRINT a$
 00EB        a$=CHR$(LOR(ASC(LEFT$(a$,1)),$80))+RIGHT$(a$,LEN(a$)-1)
 0108        c$=c$+a$
 0114        IF LEN(c$)>100 THEN
 0121          b$=LEFT$(c$,100)
 012C          c$=RIGHT$(c$,LEN(c$)-100)
 013C          PUT #m,b$ \b$=""
 014D        ENDIF
 014F      ENDWHILE
 0153      d$=c$+LEFT$(e$,100-LEN(c$))
 0167      PUT #m,d$
 0171      CLOSE #m,#n
 017C      END

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The documentation packet for the Basic009 program (also straight from
the CIS Vintage Computing Forum):

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Paul Seniura has placed a Basic conversion program to change
Orchestra 90 text files into a form Orchestra 90 can "score"
which can be found in LIB 5 as O90CVN.BAS with a brief
explanation in O90CVN.DOC.  I have prepared a BASIC09 conversion
program for those of us who prefer to stay in OS9 for
communication and computation.  The change required of a
printable text file of Orch-90 music is to change the first
character in each line by setting its first bit (or "OR"ing the
ASCII character code with $80) and to strip the carriage returns
and line feeds (if any).  The modified file can be transferred to
an RSDOS disk by using Bob Santy's RSDOS program from LIB 9 in the
OS9 forum (RSDOS.AR).  The sequence of steps to use in getting
the Orch-90 selection playing is as follows:
     * Download the selected piece from CoCo Lib 5 into an OS9 file
     * Convert it with my program (OS9_ORCH.BAS) in CoCo Lib 5
     * Transfer it to an RSDOS disk with RSDOS:
          rsdos -put -a -f=1 /d0 orange orange.cnv
     * Edit the title block in Orch-90 if any lines are longer
          than 32
     * Score and Play

The value for me of this approach is that I need only one
communications package - I use WIZ - and I'd prefer not to have
to learn another package.  Using SmartCom at work and WIZ at home
causes enough confusion for me in remembering the right syntax.
Your comments are welcome.  Ches.

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That calls the use of the RSDOS OS9<->RSDOS transfer utility.

Back to the TRSDOS Orchestra files: Even if they already are stored in
compressed mode, moving them to the CoCo requires the file to end up
without an extension on the RSDOS disk, Orchestra CC doesn't like it -
all my Orch music disks have entries with only the filename to them,
no extension... I'll now have to play with the CoCo setup to confirm
this... later this evening after I get out of the office :-)

I am typing this functioning only on 1 hour sleep, so some "facts" may
be out of line, perhaps someone else pitch in correcting/adding to it.



-=[ Rogelio ]=-