Thats right. A Tracker exists for your old mid 90's macintosh.

This is the wildest tracker ever and it took me a while to find. I used to have an old Macintosh Performa 5200 from my childhood in 1995. A lot of schools used them well into the early 2000's as classroom computers. Well supposedly this would run on that machine as the classic mac os 9 could support this bad boy.
I cant lie.... this thing is kinda ridiculous.

http://playerpro.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/playerpro/

Features
- plays music tracker modules
- opens native MADK and older MADfg , MADH, MADI
- imports MOD, S3M, XM, IT, MED, OktaMED ,669, Midi , MTM , ULT, UMX, AMF, DMF
- exports AIFF , MPEG4/AAC , as well as MOD , S3M , XM modules
- midi I/o enabled on supported platforms for recording + playback
- OpCode OMS on Mac OS Classic, CoreMidi on Mac OS X
- multi-track midi recording
- supports native and VST effects for samples , channels and global
- VST effect plugins are computed at 32bits
- SoundFonts / DLS2 supported for samples
- handles 256 instruments and 256 simultaneous audio channels
- supports stereo (binaural) samples and multiple channels per track
- can render at 24 bit / 48KHz; with surround, reverb and up to 30x oversampling
- audio output can be routed via Steinberg ASIO device API support.
- APIs offer program extensibility through plugins (effects,formats etc)
- supports up to 64 samples per instrument ; with smart regions
- can perform actual musical chords in addition to fancy arpeggios
- Realtime pitch and speed adjustment during authoring and playback
- 16bit volume and panning envelopes
- lots of visual inspectors for amp and PSNR monitoring

This might be of some interest to you :]

Since there's a serious lack of info regarding this issue, I thought this thread could help people get into Adlib Tracking more easily

Here's a list with OPL3 laptops I've found so far, feel free to contribute:

Compaq Armada 100S
Compaq Armada 1598DT
Compaq Armada 1700
Compaq Armada 1750
Compaq Armada 7700 DMT
Compaq Armada 7770 DMT
Compaq Armada 7510 MT
Compaq Armada 7730 MT
Compaq Armada 7710 MT
Compaq Armada 7360 DMT
Compaq Presario 1245
Gateway Solo 2500
Thinkpad 760EL
Toshiba Equium 6260M
Toshiba Libretto 50CT
Toshiba Libretto L70CT
Toshiba Libretto 100CT
Toshiba Libretto 110CT
Toshiba Portege 300CT
Toshiba Portege 320CT
Toshiba Portege 620CT
Toshiba Portege 660CDT
Toshiba Satellite 220CDS
Toshiba Satellite 225CDS
Toshiba Satellite 305CDS
Toshiba Satellite 310CDS
Toshiba Satellite 310CDT
Toshiba Satellite 315CDS
Toshiba Satellite 315CDT
Toshiba Satellite 320CDS
Toshiba Satellite 320CDT
Toshiba Satellite 325CDS
Toshiba Satellite 330CDS
Toshiba Satellite 330CDT
Toshiba Satellite 335CDS
Toshiba Satellite 335CDT
Toshiba Satellite 430CDS
Toshiba Satellite Pro 410CDT
Toshiba Satellite Pro 430CDT
Toshiba Satellite Pro 440CDT
Toshiba Satellite Pro 440CDX
Toshiba Satellite Pro 445CDT
Toshiba Satellite Pro 445CDX
Toshiba Satellite Pro 460CDT
Toshiba Satellite Pro 460CDX
Toshiba Satellite Pro 465CDX
Toshiba Satellite Pro 470CDT
Toshiba Satellite Pro 480CDT
Toshiba Tecra 520CDT
Toshiba Tecra 530CDT
Toshiba Tecra 550CDT
Toshiba Tecra 750CDM
Toshiba Tecra 750CDT
Toshiba Tecra 750DVD
Toshiba Tecra 780CDM
Toshiba Tecra 780DVD
Toshiba Tecra 8000

That being said, the Tecra 8000 (which I have) has the best system specs!

Hello,

I’m trying to use Fasttracker 2 on my compaq armada sb with ES1878 Audiodrive soundcard. I downloaded a driver which is just a esscfg.exe and esscfg.ini file. In ms dos I launch esscfg.exe then FT2…

But FT2 don’t play. Playing doesn’t move. The config is on soundblaster with parameters like what esscfg.exe show.

Any idea ? If i choose speaker then it plays but the quality is bad (saturated)

Does someone have an idea ?

This is the thread where I am going to give out all my information that I have learned over these past years when making music with ms-dos.  It is geared towards beginners that never had much experience with old pc's or ms-dos and want to try something new.

Congratulations!! Thank you for choosing Sound Blaster 16 as your song composing medium. May your music flourish with each changing parameter....

Overview:

Let's get right down to business. I know a lot of you would prefer to go the laptop route, since it is a complete system in one. However, what I have discovered (during heavy testing and field comparisons) is that there is much tone difference between sound cards. And the desktop sound blaster 16 ISA cards have much better overall sound quality than any other sound blaster 16 compatible laptop.  There are also sound differences between different versions of Sound Blaster 16 cards, which I will get into later. But yes, you will probably end up spending a little bit more money on getting a desktop up and running, but believe me, its WELL WORTH IT. I use sb16 compatible laptops (ESS Audiodrive) when I play live, but I write and record off a desktop with a real Sound Blaster 16 since it sounds way better.

You can run into some other issues as well. There were times I have made a song on one of the laptops in Adlib Tracker II, then put in on the desktop to play back and record. Some of the instrument patches were way off, and others were even playing back at wrong volumes. So, you can choose to either modify on the desktop to make it sound how you want or just record off the laptop and deal with the "sound character loss." If you are just doing sample tracking, it doesn't matter. Everything sounds the same when changing from laptop to desktop, from what I have found personally. It is just the change from going to emulated fm synthesis SB16 to real fm synthesis SB16.

What to get:

All my laptops and desktops have Pentium I processors. If you go the desktop route you can safely go up to a Pentium 3 processor, but everyone will just say its overkill. If you plan to do gaming though, then I would suggest going with the Pentium 3, and a decent graphics card. Then you can pretty much play any game that came out between 1988 to 1999 or maybe even earlier. Some later games will require Windows 95/98 however.

The laptops I have are maxed out at 150 mb of ram or so, and I have never had a problem with any song I have made, with sample time, or any game from the dos era. For all dos tracking, I would say 128mb is a nice amount to have.

Sound Cards (desktops):

YIKES. This took awhile to figure out the best one, but now you can skip all that jazz !

Sound Blaster 16 CT1740. This is the one you want. And these are ISA sound cards, as opposed to PCI, so make sure your motherboard has an ISA slot !!!

They are getting harder and harder to find, but by far the best sounding one. I wish I still had the audio recordings I did a couple years back, that clearly showed the tone difference in the Sound Blaster 16 models.  This is 100 percent true OPL3 (ymf262) , and has nice sound quality with minimal noise output compared to other models. And I have tried pretty much all variations of them.

Sound Cards (laptops):

It seems that the most popular choices for sb16 compatible laptops are either Compaq or Toshiba. We are just going to forget about Toshiba altogether. They are just royal pains to configure, features they have, work with, etc. The Compaq Armada line is what you want!!!

Compaq Armada 7770 series

This was the first model I ever bought to test and see if it would take an ms-dos install, and run some trackers. And it did just that with no problems. It boots to cd automatically (huge advantage even having a cd drive too). And its swappable if you want to put in a floppy drive.

If you were to get your hands on any of the Compaq Armada 7xxx series models, I am 99.9 percent confident you will have no troubles with installing ms-dos, and no problems getting sound to work whatsoever. Just pop is the dos cd and turn it on!!

Here are some specific models that I have owned and can 100 percent confirm that they work.

Compaq Armada 7700 DMT
Compaq Armada 7770 DMT
Compaq Armada 7510 MT
Compaq Armada 7730 MT
Compaq Armada 7710 MT
Compaq Armada 7360 DMT
Compaq Armada 7800
Compaq Armada 7400
Compaq Armada 3500
Compaq Presario 1640

If you want to be super safe, just get the 77xx models.

Another plus about these models is the parallel port. So just pick up a zip drive on ebay for like $6, and you are ready to transfer. Well, you'd obviously then need a USB zip drive too, to send to another computer for backup. And as mentioned before, these laptops read cds, and even burned cds. I never had any trouble with it. Some older laptops dont read burned cds at all, so again these Compaq Armadas have great features, and are fully capable of running any dos tracker you can throw at it.

Some other Compaq models that work :

Compaq 15xx dmt series
Compaq 17xx series

These are much older than the Armada laptops, will most likely max out at 32 or 64 mb of ram, and not have a cd drive.

The sound card in these laptops are ESS Audio drive cards. They are 100 percent sound blaster 16 compatible, and in the ms-dos install (which I will post the zip file for) contains these drivers. So there is no configurations needed!

Other other models:

Thinkpad 760EL
Toshiba Portege 620CT
Toshiba Satellite 225CDS
Toshiba Satellite 325CDS
Toshiba Tecra 8000
Toshiba Libretto 50 - 110

Lastly, You can download MS-DOS 7.1 here:

http://www.allthingsexcellent.com/plane … /dos71.zip

Just unzip it, and burn it exactly how it is to a cd. When you are installing, it asks you if you want to install sound cards. Just select the ESS AUDIODRIVE one, and you are good to go!

This version of dos also has a nice file browser. When you are in dos, just type "vc" then enter, and it will pull it up. Now you can browse your files, if you are not that savvy with dos commands yet.

Trackers:

Oh so many to choose from!! The ones I prefer are:

Impulse Tracker 2.14 (64 sample channels of mayhem!)
Adlib Tracker II (18 channel FM synthesis only)
Nerd Tracker (NES tracker)

You can download them all and more here:

http://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?type% … amp;order=

If you want rip it up and jump right into AT2, here is a short tutorial I made to help get you started:

Also, here is a tiny album I made containing some useful Adlib Tracker II stuff. It includes 34 instruments I created and 2 songs demonstrating them.

The zip file contains:

-All the instruments in one file ("O2INST.a2m")
-Individual Instrument folder (Adlib Tracker instrument format)
-2 songs demonstrating the instruments provided
in Adlib Tracker song format and mp3 format

OxygenStar - For My Friends

DOWNLOAD: http://www.allthingsexcellent.com/plane … riends.zip

So here is the rundown:

Purchase desktop with an ISA slot, and Sound Blaster 16 CT1740 sound card
or
Purchase Compaq Armada 7xxx series laptop
Download Ms-Dos 7.1 ( http://www.allthingsexcellent.com/plane … /dos71.zip )
Burn it to a CD
Put CD in drive, and boot to CD. The Compaq laptops will boot to it automatically.
Install Ms-Dos. During install, select ESS AUDIO DRIVE as sound card.
Reboot after install
Now copy any trackers you want to the computer from a cd or zip drive
The best one to try first is Adlib Tracker II, just to make sure sound works correctly. http://www.adlibtracker.net/downloads.php
If sound is wacky or jumbled up, then you just need to change one setting in the adtrack2.ini file. You can edit this file in dos by browsing to the AT2 directory and typing "edit adtrack2.ini" Scroll down until you see the "opl_latency=0" line. Change the 0 to a "1" and then save. Reboot. And now sound should playback normally.

I also found this neat application for MS-DOS a while back, and it works for the ESS AUDIODRIVE cards too. "SBVOL.EXE," It allows you to adjust master output as well as the master volume of the FM chip. Or even your line input. You can download it here:

http://www.allthingsexcellent.com/plane … /sbvol.zip

*UPDATED* 9-15-14

Here is some Info about installing an SSD in your oldie laptop. Fun fun !!

So I have been trying out some solid state drives/CF to IDE converters. I will specify here which ones I found have that work and which didn't. The advantages when using these are:

Less noisey sound output. This is huge !!! With a traditional IDE drive installed, whenever I would load a new song in Impulse Tracker, I could hear the actual hard drive being accessed. It's an audible noise. With the SSD installed, there is no more loading time noise!
Also, fast load times! Such performance!

These were tested on Compaq Armada laptops, models: 7770, 7770DMT.

THE GOOD:

Super Talent 4GB IDE SSD

Just got some today. They work great. However, you MUST do all partitioning/formatting within MS-DOS. It does not like it if you hook this up to a modern (windows 7) PC and partition and format. Even if you partitiong to FAT32, once you put the SSD in the laptop MS-DOS doesnt install correctly or won't detect. You must use FDISK, and then FORMAT on your MS-DOS machine itself. Or after running FDISK and setting it up, you can run the DOS 7.1 install since it contains FORMAT built-in.

SYBA 2.5 IDE to dual compact flash drive

**Shown inside Armada 7770DMT caddy

Works awesome. However, only works awesome with Sandisk Ultra II 15mb/s compact flash cards. I only tried with 4GB ones. It should be fine with the 8GB ones. But other brands I tried like DANE-ELEC or TRANSCEND, it did not like/did not detect. So stick to Sandisk cards (older ones) with this IDE to CF adapter. Same applies to above, you MUST do all partitioning and formatting from the MS-DOS computer for it work/detect properly.

THE BAD

Swissbit 8GB SSD

Very finicky, I only got one drive to work in one of my machines, when all the other setups/combos worked in all or none. So I would stay away from those!

That's all the brands I have tried so far. Hope this helps some of you out!! The easiest ones to get a hold of are the SYBA adapters and SANDISK ULTRA II compact flash cards.

BONUS!!!

If you are one of the very few to be rocking a desktop. I have put an SSD in one of those too. I installed a 2.5 inch 32GB Sandisk SATA drive, with a SATA to IDE adaptor. Works great in DOS !!

If anyone else has tried other brands/configurations feel free to let us all know!

This is a good basis to get started with. Feel free to post any questions on this thread,  or message me. I will update this info as I think of more things to mention, or other tips and tricks.

Your OPL3 Commander,

Carl

Hi,

I’m looking for a 1.x version of Turbosynth for classic Mac. Since I own a Mac SE that can’t get into 32-bit mode due to its processor’s limitations later versions of Turbosynth (2.x) simply crash after loading. Would be cool, if someone can help out. - Thanks

Hi,

does someone have a copy of Softsynth for classic Macintosh systems:

http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/digid … on-2-0/262

Thanks!

After 8 months of hard work, it's time 4 da calculator!

About HoustonTracker 2

HoustonTracker 2 is a music editor/sequencer for the Texas Instruments TI-82, TI-83/82STATS, and TI-83+/84+/SE. It allows you to compose and play multi-channel 1-bit music directly on your TI graphic calculator.

Features

• 3 tone channels
• 1 non-interrupting drum channel
• up to 128 note patterns
• up to 64 drum/fx patterns
• sequence length up to 255 pattern rows
• 16-bit frequency precision
• 8-bit speed precision, can be configured per step
• various effects, including:
  - L/C/R stereo hard-panning for tone and drum channels
  - 8bit duty cycle control
  - duty cycle sweep
• 2 user definable samples
• up to 8 savestates
• edit during playback

sound example

website
download (includes 82p/83p/8xp binaries and docs)
source

Bug reports? Suggestions? Feature requests? Best to post them in the dev thread over at the 1-Bit Forum.

UPDATE 2016-02-19

New version 2.10 released! Features several new effects, improved keyhandling, and a build for TI-82 Parcus models. Also, various bugs were fixed. The download links above have been updated accordingly.

Full list of changes:

NEW/CHANGES

- channel 1 now has variable duty cycle, too
- new effect: 4xx - set duty/noise mode ch1
- old 4xx (toggle duty cycle sweep) has been merged in to 5xx (set duty ch2)
- old Cxx (set drum mode) is now Dxx
- old Dxx (set vol ch1/drums) has been removed (no longer possible for technical reasons)
- new effect: 8xx - execute note table ch3
- new effect: 9xx - glitch channel 3.
- new Cxx effect: note cut ch1
- TI-82 Parcus/OS 19.006 support
- ALPHA mode is now one-shot, ie. it is turned off after an ALPHA mode action has been performed
- sound loop now has cycle-exact timing except if drum modes 2x-4x are used
- 3xx now uses inverse values (0xff = slowest setting), and is deactivated with 300 instead of 200.
  The old 300 effect can be achieved with command 9FF instead.
- 2xx/3xx no longer trigger on rest notes.
- "glitchy" drum modes no longer output sound on rows without a drum trigger
- AutoInc is now off by default


BUGFIXES

- fixed recovery from failed save attempt
- fx pattern 0x3f was previously lost during save, fixed
- note pattern 0x7f was inaccessible from sequence screen, fixed
- fixed broken loop point setting
- improved keypad debouncing on Plus models
- mode indicators were incorrect after loading/zapping a tune, fixed

UPDATE 2016-09-02

New version 2.20 released! New effects, better speed control, and a savestate manager utility.

Full list of changes:

NEW/CHANGES

- new effect: 7xx - auto chord ch2
- Exx is now the "Extended" fx command - execute up to 5 fx commands at once (old E00..E03 is now E80..E83)
- Bxy now has added "loop section" function
- more fine-grained tempo control
- Copy/Paste keys are arranged in a more consistent/safe manner (check the manual for details!)
- (somewhat) reduced noise during row transitions
- improved fx handling

BUGFIXES

- fixed wrong Drum panning (was inverted)
- faulty executable checksum calculation fixed (was causing errors with TI-Connect)

UPDATE 2018-03-23

New version 2.30 released! New effects, a fancy new manual, and some important bugfixes!
Full list of changes:

NEW/CHANGES
- note table tuned to ~440 Hz (and some notes produce more useful noise fx as a result)
- ch2 duty sweep (5xx, xx > 0x80) now has a configurable parameter (xx & 0x7f)
- effect 7xx (auto-chord) now has two modes: unsynced (regular) and synced (octave chord)
- channel volumes rebalanced
- slowed down ch3 slides, 3xx now works like 2xx (xx is no longer inverse)
- 9xx no longer disables 3xx
- new effect: ch3 grind (enabled with 6xx, xx>0x80)
- old Axx has been ditched
- new Axx effect: set phase offset ch3
- Synth Mode: hold current row
- add display of last used savestate
- add pattern loop playback mode

BUGFIXES
- fixed user drum input glitch
- fixed major bug in keyhandler
- reset player when clearing worktune

I'm curious. It seems like you can do pretty good music with it.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MIM3FBx9MyM

Anyone has the manual for it?
Also how it is solved if custom samples are used? The memory card space is tiny. Splitting up to multiple cards?

i am planning to use the ym2608 in a breadboard computer i am thinking about designing. when i look online the only manual i could find for the chip was from the vgmpf wiki on the chip. the only chip i could find that still is being produced is the YM2608B, so i want to know what are the diffrences between the original YM2608 and the later YM260B.

After looking into the works of Ryu Umemoto, I ended up looking into tools to write music for the PC-98.
I came across this tracker in my search. It looks similar to Famitracker and runs on Mac and Windows.

"BambooTracker is a music tracker for the Yamaha YM2608 (OPNA) sound chip which was used in NEC PC-8801/9801 series computers."

BambooTracker Github

It's that time again when we announce an update release;

New free versions of AMCS (b11102019dt) MIDI/audio sequencer, now available for download from the official website >>> amcs.3rdevent.net

Added dual display support for HDMI on the Wondermedia 8850.
Improved support with USB mice for devices that have USB.
Various very small tweaks and fixes.

We'll be at the RISC OS London Show with all the usual prototypes (including the Archimedes), bits of our music studio kit and a new full product (which the next post will explain) - www.riscoslondonshow.co.uk

And if you can't make the show but you're in Bristol, you're welcome to come and chat to the core developer (me) of AMCS about the vertical mountain of work it's taken to get from a RISC OS BASIC program on the A3000 to a full OS for newer ARM hardware, still compiled in BBC BASIC assembler on RISC OS 3, at the BRU user group - www.riscository.com/calendar

#DEDICATED #EMBEDDED #REALTIME #MULTITASKING #MUSIC #PRODUCTION #MIDI #AUDIO #SYNTH #SEQUENCER #WORKSTATION #OS

I ran into the guy who made some pretty cool software which runs natively on the Acorn 3000 and some WonderMedia netbooks [WM8650, WM8850] which is called AMCS "Advanced Music Construction System" http://amcs.3rdevent.net/download.htm

Here are some from the event I went to at the Cambridge Centre for Computing History [ http://imgur.com/a/kZJaq ]

Here is a demo video tutorial on youtube.

I'm always amazed when meeting people who spend their time making such amazing software for music making and I thought people might like to know about it here.

Forgive my ignorance as I'm still getting familiarized with the ins and outs of older hardware.

Been trying to rig together a Pure Data/OPL 3 setup. Specifically, I have a bunch of weird generative midi patches in pure data, and I want to send the midi out to an OPL3 laptop triggering samples (could be through impulse tracker midi-in, openmpt, etc.)

I have a Libretto 50CT with a port replicator which offers these connections: https://imgur.com/a/a6ZuVtt

None of these connect to the MPU-401 midi interface inside, right? I've heard of people soldering directly to the MPU-401 chip but I don't know if I feel comfortable taking a soldering iron to this thing.

As an alternative, are there cheaper opl3 laptops (like a tecra 8000) that have a simpler midi-in option? Maybe someone can shed some light on how midi control input works on opl3 laptops in general.

Love u guys

Soo my dad recently bought a replacement for the old Emachines computer that has been in the family since i was in elementary school and i inherited it.

this was the computer I used to play DOOM II on with my sister on and later RuneScape, and ive been interested in making music with the Microsoft Wavetable synth since that sound is super nostalgic to me. any help would be appreciated!