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Silicon Times Report Issue 0013
_______________________________________
ST-REPORT 13 December 5, 1987
_______________________________________
Publisher/Editor: Ron Kovacs
Assistant Publisher: Susan Perry
_______________________________________
ST INDEX 13
_______________________________________
<*> Hooking up 2cd Disk Drive on your ST..........................Mike Miller
<*> The Abaq......................................................Perihelion
<*> Technical Help................................................Mr. Goodprobe
<*> Garbage On The Line...........................................Calamity Jane
<*> IBM Emulator Update...................................David and Sandy Small
<*> MIDI Update and Information...................................Mike GIllie
<*> ZMagazine Index Issues 31-71.................................Ron Kovacs
_______________________________________
HOOK UP ANOTHER DRIVE
_______________________________________
Mesg:0008
To:ALL 11/25/87
From:MIKE MILLER
Subj:SECOND DRIVE
14 Pin Signal 43 Pin
Connector......Name......Connector
1.........Read Data...........30
2.........Side 0 Select.......32
3.........Logic Ground........15
4.........Index Pulse..........8
5.........Drive 0 Select......10
6.........Drive 1 Delect......12
7.........Logic Ground........17
8.........Motor On............16
9.........Direction In........18
10.........Step................20
11.........Write Data..........22
12.........Write Gate..........24
13.........Track 00............26
14.........Write Protect.......28
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Many of you have asked how to hook up a second disk drive to your ST. The above
information should be all you'll need.
I've used both a 5 1/4" 720K Teac disk drive and a 3 1/2" 720K Toshiba disk
drive as drive 'B' on my new ST.
-MIKE MILLER
_______________________________________
THE ABAQ
_______________________________________
written by Perihelion, Ltd.
Hardware Specification
The base machine outline specification is as follows:
T800-20 Transputer 10MIPS, 1.5 Mflop
Three 20Mhz links, buffered 4Mbyte DRAM
1 Mbyte dual-port video RAM Colour blitter
True DMA SCSI port for 40M (minimum) hard disc
Three internal expansion slots
68000 Mega ST as I/O processor (plug in card connects fourth 20Mhz link)
Screen Resolution and Use
The table below lists the screen resolutions and their probable typical use.
All the following are at 60Hz with portrait orientation.
Mode Resolution Width Description
0 1280 x 960 4 bits/pixel 4 bits/colour or monochrome
(Desk Top Publishing, engineering drawings)
1 1024 x 768 8 bits/pixel 8 bits/colour
(CAD, colour pictures, graphs)
2 640 x 480 8 bits/pixel 8 bits/colour 2 screens
(Animation)
3 512 x 480 32 bits/pixel 24 bits colour, 1 overlay bit, 7 tag bits
(True colour, smooth shading, 3D modelling)
The Blitter
The Perihelion blitter is based on work done by Dr Phil Willis of the
University of Bath. It provides meaningful operations with colour and colour
look-up tables (CLUTs) and implements very fast 2-D raster graphics operations,
such as fast font drawing. It also provides a 32-bit wide pipeline (with four
tests on each of eight pixels concurrently), and is synchronised with blanking.
Using the blitter, square area fill takes 128 megapixels per second, arbitrary
two colour character drawing takes up to 64 megapixels per second, and full 2-D
block copy takes 16 megapixels per second.
Expansion Capability
The Perihelion design provides for three expansion cards within the box. These
can be memory cards, providing a maximum of 64Mbytes using 4M parts, or various
versions of alternative graphics cards. The full transputer bus is brought out
so any type of peripheral may be connected.
The expansion sockets also bring out the transputer links and control signals.
This means that cards containing extra transputers can be added, and the size
of the cards allows for four transputers with up to 1Mbyte of RAM each on a
single card. One workstation can therefore contain 13 processors. Other link
connections can be made outside the box to parallel processor farms of multiple
processors. The link connections can also be made to fast peripherals such as a
laser printer or disc server.
The Transputer
The T414 is a 32-bit processor that consists of a RISC style CPU, 2K of fast
on-chip RAM, an external memory interface and four serial links which may run
at 5, 10 or 20 Mbits/second. The T800 is similar except that it also contains a
floating point processor and 4K of RAM.
The programmer's model consists of a three register evaluation stack, a
workspace pointer and an instruction pointer. A small number of instructions
exist for loading and storing values on the stack and for altering the flow of
control, the remainder operate on operands on the stack.
The processor has microcoded support for processes at two priority levels. High
priority processes may preempt low priority processes after any instruction and
run until they give up the processor. High priority processes are essentially
equivalent to interrupt routines on conventional processors. Low priority
processes are round-robin scheduled on a timesliced basis. Timeslicing only
occurs on particular instructions which are defined so that the minimum of
state need be saved; process switching is therefore very fast.
The transputer achieves inter-process communication through channels, which are
single words of memory. Two processes that wish to communicate rendezvous at a
channel and exchange data by copying from one buffer to another. As this is
implemented by the microcode, the cost of copying lies only in the memory
accesses for the data and not in instruction fetches. Communication is strictly
one-to-one and channels may not be shared by more than one sender or receiver.
The inter-processor links are designed to behave exactly like channels, and are
used with the same instructions.
Parallel Programming
The unique aspect of the Atari/Perihelion design is that is provides multiple
proessors within a single workstation. The use of multiple processors means
that is is possible to write application programs which make use of the
possible parallelism inherent in such systems.
Application programs can run under Helios using three programming philosophies.
The first of these is the traditional programming model. A program can be taken
from another environment, such as Unix or a PC, and with little or no change
converted to run under Helios. C and the Unix C library is provided, and such
programs will run as a single process in the machine.
Other programs, again probably from Unix, will run in several sections all of
which may be run in different processes and connected by pipes. Helios
encourages the use of many small programs which work together to create a final
product. A common example is a pre-processor, a compiler front end, a compiler
back end, an assembler and a linker. These can all be run together with
intermediate connections made by pipes. Under other operating systems the
different processes are timesliced on the one single processor. Under Helios
these different processes can be allocated to different processors, so that the
individual parts actually run at the same time.
This type of "per-process" parallelism is easily understood, and many
applications are already in this form. Examples include a word processor with
background spooling and spelling checking or background jobs such as message
systems or archiving. If an application is being altered then the use of extra
processes should be kept in mind.
The final way in which parallelism may be exploited is by the use of parallel
algorithms. These tend to be hard to find for programmers used to the
equential nature of normal computers, but a look at the real world shows, of
course, everything running in parallel. Applications using parallel algorithms
will normally be written from scratch with such ideas in mind. The benefit is
that such programs will run much faster when the user provides more power in
the form of more processors. Many examples of parallel algorithms exist, such
as ray tracing, spreadsheet calculations, even compImplementation
Helios presents a low level interface that should be familiar to programmers
who have worked on Unix. Each user runs a number of tasks which can communicate
between themselves using a simple message passing protocol. A message may be
transferred between two tasks in the same machine or between tasks in different
processors; in each case the call is identical and the message is copied rather
than passed by reference.
Each task is constructed from a number of interconnected transputer processes
which can communicate either by message passing or by sharing data. Different
tasks may be written in different languages as all communication at this level
is by message passing.
The design of Helios is based on the client-server model, where application
tasks request services from system provided server tasks. These server tasks
may be present in any or all of the processors available, although each
processor must run the bare minimum of the name server which identifies the
location of other services. Other servers include file handlers, window
managers, date servers, spoolers and so on. All servers respond to a general
server protocol which is designed so that servers may be stateless and hence
unaffected by crashes and communication losses. This mechanism allows a wide
choice in the way in which servers are implemented; for example, floppy discs
will be written using the MS-DOS format while winchester discs will use a
format similar to Unix.
As noted above, the transputer does not contain any memory management unit and
none may be added externally. Helios assumes that each processor is allocated
to a single user, and protects processors by a capability mechanism. An access
matrix is used to implement a filing system control scheme.
----------
System Tools
Helios is written in a mixture of transputer assembler and C. System tools
include a macro preprocessor, a C compiler, an assembler and a linker. In fact
these last two items are the same program as the transputer has a variable
length instruction set that requires a 'code growing' algorithm to ensure
optimal code lengths sequences. This must be performed in the linker once all
external references have been satisfied.
A debugger that allows one transputer to investigate another will also be
included in the package (although not in Version 1.0). Third party software
developers are providing Pascal, Fortran, Lisp and BCPL as well as the
traditional transputer language occam.
----------
User Interface
The user interface consists of two parts: a command line interface similar to
the Unix C-shell which provides the usual commands such as grep, ls, more, and
so on; this will be coupled to an implementation of Xwindows V11 to provide the
now familiar windowing mechanism.
The system will appear similar to a more conventional machine, except that when
the commands are piped together the operating system may make use of more than
one processor to run the commands concurrently rather than timesliced as in a
single processor environment.
The programmer's interface will be complemented by a 'point and push' graphical
interface for the less experienced user. This will use a mouse and pull-down
menus and will be implemented on top of Xwindows.
_______________________________________
SPECTRUM 512 Picture File Format
_______________________________________
There're two kinds of Spectrum files: uncompressed (.SPU) and compressed
(.SPC).
The .SPU file is always 51104 bytes long and consists of two parts: first the
bit map (32000 bytes) and then the color map (19104 bytes). Because SPECTRUM
512 cannot display the topmost raster line, you have 199 lines instead of 200.
For that reason, the top line in the bit map (the first 160 bytes of the file)
contains no useful information and you should simply ignore it (SPECTRUM 512
fills it with zeros). Otherwise the bit map has the usual meaning -- low res, 4
planes, 160 bytes per raster line, giving each pixel a certain color number
from 0 to 15. When you want to determine the color of any particular pixel in
the .SPU file, you should first find it's color number (using Get Pixel $A002
rom A-line, for example; or your own routine).
To find the actual color of the pixel, look at the color map portion of the
file. It consists of 199 blocks, one 96-byte block per raster line (no dummy
top line here!). Each block contains 48 word color values in the usual ST
format (00000rrr0ggg0bbb, r=red, g=green, b=blue). You will find the block you
need for your particular pixel at the address (Y-1)*96 from the start of the
color map, where Y is the Y coordinate of your pixel, 1<=Y<=199.
Finding which of the 48 colors in the block is the color of your pixel is a
little trickier. To do that you'll need the color number that you found from
the bit map and the X coordinate of your pixel. First, multiply the color
number by 10. If the color number is even, add 1 to the result; if it's odd,
subtract 5. Let's call the resulting number X1. Now, if X is less then X1,
leave the color number as it is; if X is more or equal X1 but less then X1+160,
add 16 to the color number; and if X is more or equal X1+160, then add 32 to
the color number. This adjusted color number (it could be anything from 0 to
47) is the solution to our problem! It shows which of the 48 color values in
the block corresponds to your particular pixel.
An example:
X=139 and the color number is 3.
Multiply by 10: 3*10=30.
Subtract 5 (because 3 is odd): X1=30-5=25.
Okay, 139 is more than 25, but less than 185 (25+160). So, we add 16 to the
color number and the result is 19. That pixel's color will be found in the
word number 19 of the block (word count starts at 0).
.SPC files consist of 3 parts: 12-byte header, compressed bit map and
compressed color map. Here's the header layout:
word $5350 ("SP")
word 0 for future enhancements
<>0 means there're additional
records in the file, following
the compressed color map
long length of the bit map
long length of the color map
Bit map compression is a slightly modified RLE. Each record consists of a
header byte followed by one or more data bytes. A positive header ( 0<=n<=127 )
means copy the next n+1 bytes literally, a negative ( -128<=n<=-1 ) - copy the
next byte -n+2 times (minimum 3; the encoder does not compress if there're just
2 equal bytes in a row). First goes bit plane #0, all scan lines from 1 (not
0!) to 199, without breaks at the ends of scan lines (only at the end of the
last line), then bit planes #1,2 and 3. Terminate decompression when the number
of bytes extracted reaches 31840 (4 bit planes x 199 lines x 40 bytes per
line). The length of the compressed bit map is always even, so there might be
one filler byte at the end of it. If you convertan .SPC file to .SPU to display
it on the 512-color screen, fill scan line #0 with zeros (first 160 bytes of
the .SPU file) to give it the same color as the top screen margin.
In the color map each short 16-word block is compressed separately (there're 3
of them in each scan line, 597 altogether). The compressed record for each
short block starts with the bit vector (1 word) indicating which of the 16
color slots are used, followed by the color values themselves (each is a word).
For instance, $000A,$0707,$0777 should be expanded into 0,$0707,0,$0777, twelve
zeros ($000A =%0000000000001010, meaning only colors #1 and 3 are used). Unused
color slots should always be filled with zeros. Color #15 is never used in a
finished Spectrum picture, so bit #15 of the bit vector must always be 0. Color
#0 is always used (as a background) and it's always black. Since it makes no
sense to have this extra 0 in every compressed record, bit #0 of the bit vector
is always cleared, indicating to the decoder to fill slot #0 with 0. The number
of color values following the bit vector in the compressed record is equal to
the number of 1's in the bit vector.
If the above compression rules are observed the length of the compressed bit
map will never be greater than 32092 bytes, and the length of the compressed
color map will never be greater than 17910 bytes. Spectrum rejects SPC files
that exceed these size limits.
______________________________________
TECHNICAL HELP
_______________________________________
And now a better way!!!
by Mr. Goodprobe
It appears that for every good and needed idea mankind has come up with,
someone has added some extra features and labor saving additions that make that
device the "thing you can't live without!" Such an item is this little null
modem that will allow you to transfer files from your St to your 8 bit Atari,
and to other computers as well. Now I fully well realize that Antic published
and excellent article on this very topic a while ago, but their procedure
forced the user to have in his possession an interface of some sort for his 8
bit Atari, whether it be a PR Connection, 850 or the like, nonetheless, you had
to have this item in your possession or the transfer of data between both
computers was impossible. But now I will in a few short paragraphs show you how
to accomplish the very same feat without an interface.
What we will be assembling is a skimpy at best data transfer setup that is easy
on the olewallet. First you will need:
1.) A joystick cable such as used on your favorite alien blaster! This must be
complete with the plug on one end.
2.) A 25 pin connector to plug in the modem port in the rear of your ST.
3.) One 3.9k to 4.7k 1/2 watt resistor 10% tolerance
4.) A short run of 3 conductor wire
5.) A diode (such as ECG 109 or any small switching signal diode).
+--------------------+
| |
| ________________| ________
| \ | /
| \ +5 +4 +3 *2 *1 /
| \ | | /
\ \ +9 *8 +7 | +6|/
< \____|_______|____|
<4.7k | | |
< | \ | | |
< +--|>|--+ |
/ | / | |
| | |
| | |
| - |
| _________/ \___________|
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
Color| |Color |Ground
#1| | #2 |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
\ \ \
__\__\_________\___________________
\+1*2 *3 +4+5+6 *7 + + + + + +/
\ /
\ + + + + + + + + + + + +/
\___________________________/
As you can see, we are merely connecting the recieve data line to the transmit
data line on the ST, while at the very same time connecting the transmit data
line of the 8 bit Atari to the recieve data line of the ST. You will then need
to use a term program on the 8 bit that addresses the joystick port, such
critters are MPP term, and also the term which came with the Supra series of
1200 baud modems. You can go as fast as the 8 bit program allows, with a
ceiling of 9600 baud if someone were to implement faster transfer routines in
the aforementioned programs. I have been using this type of setup for several
months now...and its a dream!!!
This same basic setup can be used to connect the 8 bit Atari to most any
computer out there on the market today, with no difficulties whatsoever.
By the way, you might find it amazing that this entire article this week has
been typed, edited, spell-checked and saved to disk..while downloading a 500+ K
disk of Music Studio files!! "Sounds like multi-tasking to me" you might
comment, and guess what? You are right! I am using a new file protocol .TXF for
Interlink called MultiXY, it allows you to download/upload in the background
while running your favorite program and doing other more useful things! I
started the transfer, and then went to my file menu on Interlink, pulled it
down, and clicked on "Execute". I then chose my Word Writer program and loaded
it from there, and thats were we are at this very moment! I am able to check
the progress of my xmodem or ymodem file transfer by going up to the accessory
area of my screen, and viewing the small display located there. It tells me how
many blocks have been transfered, and with how many errors. If you show a file,
and save to the disk, you get an error, but of course your BBS system will
resend that block...Amazin what they are doing now eh? This accessory only
works with Interlink 1.71 and up, so unfortunately owners of other programs
cannot enjoy this great time saving feature...
I will be doing a much more thorough review of this handy little file transfer
protocol in the next issue or two of Zmag.
Keep those Atari's hummin!
Mr.Goodprobe
(on lend from) Midtown TV
Atari 8/16 Sales/Repair
Please keep those project ideas coming, many interesting items shall appear in
futre issues due to the gracious response of our readers! Good job!
______________________________________
GARBAGE ON THE LINE
______________________________________
by Calamity Jane -=-CJ-=-
...Life On The Frontier...
or
--Roughing-It-Easy--
I am Calamity Jane, OpSys of The Prairie Chip BBS in Wyoming. All of that is
just a coincidence... really!! Do you think I planned that? That my life is
THAT organized... hardly. Ever heard of Wyoming (Wi-O-ming)?? Where the
sidewalks end and the West begins and the trail cuts across the lonely prairie.
The fierce hositlities of the Araphoe, Sioux, Shoshone, Cheyenne, and some Ute,
have kept our population down, but yes, real people do live here in our many
thousands of acres of rolling plains. And we -DO- own computers...
This article has been inspired by my BBS friends in New York City. <hi! guys>
I had a message very typical... "So YOU are the one who lives in Wyoming!" very
funny... I seem to get a 'hard-time' for being from Wyoming where ever I go...
and I have come up with several defense mechanisms... I proceeded to hint on
how I run my BBS in such a remote frontier without the usual luxuries of
electricity. "How do you read? or watch TV?" I was asked. I mentioned I
don't watch much TV, and read by the glow of the monitor. They were
intriged... Thus the reason for this article.
There is such a combination of the old ways and the new in my life, and they
are combined in such a way that makes my life quite tolerable, _pure and I
don't have millions of people around me. Oh, give me a home where the buffalo
roam... Yes, the millions of buffalo are gone, but there are a few, and I can
count on a small <but rather exciting> STampede on the average of every couple
of weeks. They do, however, continually knock the pole over and pound the open
wire <that is the telephone line> into the ground in a cloud of duST. No optic
fiber here.
I live in a log cabin. The dictionary calls it a 'small house... rudely
constructed. Nothin' rude here, we're friendly folk. It has all the comforts
of home. I purify my own water, I use an outhouse, I cook on a woodstove. It
supplies warmth and gives me something to constantly be doing. <NO, not the
outhouse, the stove !!> Cutting the trees, chopping the wood, hauling the wood,
loading the stove, emptying the stove... you get my idea. I burned off my
eyebrows and eyelashes once when I poured a dab of kerosene on what I THOUGHT
was a dead fire. However, they grew back. I have a beautiful brand-new washing
machine that never needs repair. It's a stick. The motion of the water in
combination with soap carries the dirt away. I don't have to listen to the
hounding of my clothes either. I have a rare refrigerator that runs on
kerosene, few exist though. I have learned to live without the need for
everything electric. "Less Power to You !" I not only know how many Desk
Accessories you can have per disk, or to forget extended format, but that a
kerosene lantern with a 1" wick will burn apx. 45 hours on 1 quart of kerosene
at the rate of 5 hours each day <12 gal. a year>. I use tallow rather than wax
candles as they burn longer, are brighter, and fairly smoke free. I get 48
hours out of a 1" by 9". They are also free, if you make them. I do not use
oleman lanterns as they hiss, clank & blind me, just like civilization. As
you can see, electricity is the least of my concerns. Till I bought the
computers. Then it became a major concern. But the power lines just ain't
reached way-out-here yet !! The wind does blow, mighty hard too; thus the
source of power that keeps me in CHAT. I am ala natural, on the great treeless
stretches, which roll away as far as the eye can see.
The wind-generator, heck I still call it the windmill, is a noisy, clanky, cus
and if the wind doesn't blow (hah!) the batteries won't charge. My first
concern is the wind will blow too hard and blow it up. How do I surge protect
THAT ?? Still it does keep me up and running and in enough power to keep The
Chip waiting for you at 2400 bps. I have considered many ways to gain access
to the power to run my computers. I am considering and finding out about high
output silicon solar cells and other such solar devices, but right now I'll
stick with the good ol wind, and the slow-revving, big fly wheel, last forever,
donkey engine. The storage of this energy is a constant pain. It is known as
Wind Generator System Storage Problems. The batteries are still a bit of a
black art even in this high tech age. The batteries are the common lead acid
type used in cars and will last several years. About the only thing I must do
to them is check them daily and feed them rain water if needed.
I got tired of traveling 13.2 miles to the nearest neighboor to 'chat', so I
talked long and hard... Smooth taklin' Joe finally ambled into town to see if
they had any more of "those damn ST machines". Now we chat in comfort without
the worry of seeing the elephant, Indian attacks, fierce storms or snakes. I
never know when I will hear the war cry and a cloud of arrows. molossi tellim
piduuwi. It can be on the average of once a week. The phone lines require
regular maintainence between the Indians and the buffalo. The Indians love the
colored glass from the insulators, so I build boxes to cover them, & paint owls
on them <owls are bad luck to an Indian>. Quite often I must pour a bucket of
water on the ground rod, this makes for a better connection...you know, less
line noise. It's hell running a 24 hour BBS on an eight member party line. It
ain't too easy on them either!! Eight of the beST callers any SysOp could want.
I can still see the ruts on the land from the conestoga wagon's. There is
something about the wide open spaces, spacious skies and more than 50 miles to
anything!! Try that, in NYC, Detroit, or D.C. Winter is a challenge in itself,
something coming on here quite rapidly to stay. The geese are flying south,
the beaver lodges have more logs in them, the squirrels tails are bushier than
usual, the bark on the trees is thicker, animals gathering their food supply
early, and FoReM SysOps all over are getting their DOORS up and secured. Must
gonna bea long hard winter. I can finally learn EMACS. I must get to the wood
supply... <I find the one-woman cross cut saw nice.> It's quiet, keeps me
realistic about being a wood hog, keeps my canoe arm in shape, but can be
someone hard to start in the cold weather...hahaha. Because things tend to cool
off in the cabin at night, I have specially built insulated covers for the
equipment and the disks... Got tired of icicles forming on the SC1224. The
Inside-Out Room for the BBS was built in a different way as to prevent such a
drastic change in temperature. Completely climate-controled. Solar-heated, as
wood ash is hell on computer equipment!! I'll bet The Chip is one of the most
comfortable BBSs in the land.
Well... the night is late, the fire is low, time to hit the hay <no really I
have a waterbed... I use the heat from the manure pile to heat it>. The cat
wants out <he's a 85 pound cougar> and the wolf wants in. Brave the hardships
and dangers of the unknown wilderness. Call The Prairie Chip BBS. "Where Men
are Men and Women are....." 3/12/2400 bps, 30-45 mph wind, 307-635-0148. ST
FoReM 2.0... Wrap your feet around your power supply, and stay warm beside your
modem. You may not come back alive!!
--Happy Trails--
Ifins you want... permission granted to reprint... -=-CJ-=-
_____________________________________
Xx IBM EMULATOR UPDATE
_____________________________________
FROM ZMAG JUNE 1987
Business Users 16-Jun-87
Sb: Info on PC-Ditto
Fm: David and Sandy Small 76606,666
To: Pc-Ditters
I spent awhile on the phone with Avant-Garde (like three hours) talking about
PC-Ditto, so I thought I'd pass some info along, since there's a lot of
curiousity about it.
Jerry called me up from Comdex and said it was amazingly good. He'd done all
the things like under the table for a PC or inside for an 8088; it's a software
emulator, all right. Then, he got a bunch of his own software to test it on..
and lo and behold, it worked. He ran LapLink and DesqView on it, and while he
says it's slow, it does work. Apparently the emulation is at the chip level.
The guy who did it is an ex-IBM'er and sales type -- he was a pro salesman,
believe me -- who's working on it with his wife. Mom and pop shop, so to speak.
They've had lots of marketing offers and are very very busy. Don't expect to
get through on the phone, it's always busy.
My own experience with emulators is that you lose a 4X in clock speed with
necessary overhead. So I'd expect about a 1-2 Mhz IBM out of this. The good
thing is that I/O is done at 68000 speed, 8 Mhz, so it will only appear slow
when you get computation-bound..like recalcing a spreadsheet. Burt just copying
files, etc, it ought to scream along pretty nicely.
The big thing that they told me was they wanted everyone to know they weren't
connected at all with the MS-EM people. Apparently they had received mucho
negative feedback on that other product.
They've tested and certified it with lots of different IBM products; they went
through a top-40 IBM product list and it ran all that stuff. The guy who's
doing it sounds technically competent and is a good salesman.
Caveat: this is all based on a telephone conversation, but he does know what
he's doing with emulators, and it's for real. I'd suggest getting them online
on CIS a.s.a.p. to answer questions. It sounds like it'll be a good product.
-- Dave
_____________________________________
MIDI
....Michigan Midi Music Madness....
_____________________________________
The following article was first published in the Michigan Commodore Users Group
newsletter called "SPRITE" in the May 1987 issue.
Musings about Michigan Midi Music Madness by Mike Gillie Copyright 1987.
From time to time (or maybe just one time) I will be writing about my
discoveries in the world of MIDI (the Music Instrument Digital Interface). A
MIDI interface is available for most popular personal computers. This past
November (1986) I slowly began the process of configuring a MIDI system.
I will be presenting MIDI from an amateur/hobbyist perspective. An attempt
will be made to convey accurate information. For more information, I would
refer the reader to the book "MIDI for Musicians" by Craig Anderton (I
purchased my copy at MicroWorld). I have been a subsciber to Electronic
Musician (formerly Polyphony magazine) for over 10 years, and have found it
helpful. Keyboard is another magazine that covers MIDI.
A computer can serve many purposes in a MIDI system because a computer can be
programmed. I am using Music Studio from Activision to run the computer.
Music Studio will work with an Amiga or an Atari ST. Music Studio turns the
computer into a Sequencer/ Recorder.
A sequencer is a device that provides a sequence of musical notes. It is a
sort of electronic player piano roll. A recorder is like a tape recorder. It
"records" the notes played on the keyboard.
Music Studio does a good job of being a sequencer, however it does a poor job
of being a recorder. Music Studio can "record" the notes although it won't
record the duration of the note. There are other software products that will
do this.
Music Studio will present you with a musical staff. You can place the notes on
the staff using a mouse (pointing device). On an Atari ST you can play 3 voices
at once and on the Amiga 4 voices. When Music Studio is used with MIDI it can
control 15 channels of information (and many voices).
The Channel Number, Program Number and range of notes can be assigned to each
of the 15 "instruments" Music Studio uses. Each of the 15 instruments can be
named. An instrument on the MIDI network can be programmed to recognize only a
certain channel. You could have electronic drums on Channel 3 and an
electronic piano on Channel 4.
Each device would only recognize data on it's channel. An electronic piano may
have many different sounds available. This can be changed by switching to a
different program. The computer, acting as a sequencer, can automatically
change the programs (sounds) during the song.
In order to use Music Studio with MIDI, you need some kind of musical
instrument. Musical hardware is more expensive than computer hardware because
the market is smaller. At the low end of the market is the Casio CZ-101. Music
Studio has some files that are programmed for this instrument.
The Casio CZ-101 has a mini-keyboard and is a multi-timbral instrument.
"Multi-timbral" means that it can play many timbres (sounds/instruments) at the
same time. The Casio CZ-101 can play four different instruments at the same
time.
The nice thing about MIDI is that you can now devise a musical system using
components. An interesting device is the Yamaha FB-01, which is in the same
price range as the Casio CZ-101. The Yamaha FB-01 has no keyboard! However it
can play eight instruments at the same time. The FB-01 is ideal for people who
can't play the keyboard very well or who need a second synthesizer.
If you have a Casio CZ-101 (or any other MIDI device with a keyboard), it can
control the FB-01, as well as itself, giving 12 voices of music. The computer
along with Music Studio can control both machines.
I'll postpone a review of the FB-01 until a future issue. If you are
considering getting into MIDI, take a good look at the Yamaha FB-01, which I
consider a better value than the Casio CZ-101.
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ST-REPORT Issue #13 December 5, 1987
(c)1987 Syndicate Services/Rovac
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