[Coco] How did Musica ][ work? (half-text, half-PMODE4)?

[David Ladd]

Really? Hmmmm I would love to see how he did the split screen code :D

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|David Ladd|
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On Tue, May 3, 2016 at 5:30 PM, Bill Pierce via Coco <coco at maltedmedia.com>
wrote:

> I have the sources of Lester Hand's last version of Musica ][ (1.8). I was
> in contact with him for about a year. In fact, I had him "almost" back into
> the Coco Community three years ago, as he even bought a new Coco 3 from
> Cloud 9 and was writing a new MIDI program, but he seemed to lose interest.
> He sent me several of his sources (Lyra, Musica, CocoMIDI Pro, etc) before
> he decided he didn't have the time to do Coco programming and run his
> practice as well (M.D.).
>
> Lester uses several tricks in Musica ][. Along with the split screen, he
> uses the area under the disk rom for data storage (switching roms in/out as
> needed), and also has embedded BASIC code (disk access stuff) that is moved
> into the BASIC area on startup.
>
> He never did write a Coco 3 version, though his last version would run on
> a Coco 3, but didn't use any of it's features.
> Musica ][ will not run on Vcc due to Vcc's lack of support for the video
> mode used (hopefully to be corrected), but will run on Mess.
>
>  He also had "Jukebox" programs for both Lyra and Musica for playing
> continuous music (no graphics).
> In the Coco 2 days, Lester had the market on Coco music programs with
> Lyra, Musica, CocoMIDI 2, 3, & Pro. Then along came the Coco 3, OS9 L2, and
> Mike Knudsen's "Ultimuse3" which blew Lyra out the water with Umuse's 7
> staves, 16 parts VS Lyra's 2 staves, 8 parts. Lester tried to move Lyra to
> Os9, but never quite grasped the OS9 programming so he then moved to
> MSDOS/Windows, but never got far with that. He saw a much larger MIDI
> market there with Cakewalk and Cubase just getting started, so he gave it
> up. He should have stayed with the Coco... we needed the support about
> then...
>
>
>
>
> Bill Pierce
> "Charlie stole the handle, and the train it won't stop going, no way to
> slow down!" - Ian Anderson - Jethro Tull
>
>
>
> My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
> https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
> Co-Contributor, Co-Editor for CocoPedia
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> http://www.tandycoco.com/forum/
>
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>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Devries <devries.bob at gmail.com>
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Tue, May 3, 2016 5:08 pm
> Subject: Re: [Coco] How did Musica ][ work? (half-text, half-PMODE4)?
>
> On 2016-05-04 5:55 AM, Arthur Flexser wrote:> I'm guessing it used the
> vertical and horizontal interrupts to switch> graphics modes on each screen
> frame when the scanning reached a certain> line.>> Art>Yes, and this caused
> some problems on the PAL coco. I spent some time disassembling the
> programme, to find where the switch happened, and "ädjust" the line count
> for PAL.Regards, Bob DevriesDalby, QLD, Australia-- Coco mailing listCoco
> @maltedmedia.comhttps://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>
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