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Toronto, Ontario, Canada

J's D-Chirp is an extremely simple piece of TRS-80 software originally written for the MC-10. It should work on any TRS-80 model that runs basic and supports the SOUND command.

It is based on a program from an old TRS-80 programming book but with all the bugs and typos fixed and a few additional features. The audio file below is NOT an example of the audio, it contains the program itself, to be played back via the cassette port and loaded with the CLOAD command. The video below walks you through the steps in case you're a complete beginner.

To be honest, there's not a lot that can be done with this sound chip using only basic but running this through an effect unit or pedals can give some nice sounds.

Instruction/Demo video:


This is version 0.1, the following features are currently functioning:

-Play notes with keys "1" through "-" (12 notes in the C major scale, starting at C)
-Change the note length with F, H, Q, E  (Whole note, half note, Quarter Note, Eighth Note)
-Ugly visual representation of notes being played

Version 0.2 is already in development and the following features are to be included:

-tracker style organ keyboard (row starting at z, white keys low octave; row starting at a black keys low octave; row starting at q white keys high octave; row starting at 1, black keys high octave)
-Nicer visual representation of note being played
-Simple arpeggios or 5th mode toggled with spacebar

If you actually use this program and think of some feature that you'd enjoy, please just ask. There's not much that can be done in terms of sound generation but UI, controls and general usability is easy to do.

Download J's D-Chirp.

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Abandoned on Fire

Hey cool!  I've still got a Coco2 hanging around.  I had an "edited" version of Synther7 that ran on it fairly well if I could ever get the tape data loaded.

EDIT:  I say "edited" because apparently Synther7 was written for PAL only and wouldn't function correctly on NTSC.  A forum member somewhere did a quick hack for me that mostly worked.

Last edited by egr (Jun 14, 2013 11:29 am)

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Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Do you still have a copy of that? I'd love to check it out.

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Abandoned on Fire

already looking for it, I'll link if I find ot.

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Abandoned on Fire

This is the forum post that I originally got the cas file from but it seems that it's not there anymore.  Maybe the virtual disk version will help?

coco3.com wrote:

gmajor
December 18, 2008 at 10:58 pm

You can find Synther 7 for the coco on a virtual disk on RTSI at:
ftp://www.rtsi.com/RSDOS/incoming/netru … ks/D06.dsk

I did a cassette version out of it that you can download at:
http://goyim.dyndns.org:8080/coco/synther7.cas

I used to play it a lot during my coco days.

Enjoy!

Guillaume

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Toronto, Ontario, Canada

If I can get that disk image converted to a ccc or cas I should be able to check it out. Thanks!

Edit: Was able to pull a binary out of that disk image that loads up in an emulator but all the binary to cas or binary to wav conversion programs seem to choke on it. Wonder what that guy did to get it into a working cas. hmm

Last edited by jefftheworld (Jun 15, 2013 6:59 am)

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Jelly Stone park, MD USA

Thanks, this is cool. I have a couple CoCo's in a box (somewhere) that I should dig out. (bad case of 'pack-ratism") Never thought of them as musical, been focused more on Ataris, but could be fun. I know I have a MC10 and I think there is a ram pack for it (can't remember the size, 16K?). Even have a Model III but never fired it up, (got it helping to clear out a NASA building; just love the 'terminal' style).
Don't know how hard to would be, but a simple sequencer would be cool. like a 8 or 16 note stack. Thinking it could be interesting with, like you mentioned, ext-fx.

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Abandoned on Fire
jefftheworld wrote:

If I can get that disk image converted to a ccc or cas I should be able to check it out. Thanks!

Edit: Was able to pull a binary out of that disk image that loads up in an emulator but all the binary to cas or binary to wav conversion programs seem to choke on it. Wonder what that guy did to get it into a working cas. hmm

Hey I'm going to look thru my external hard drive tonight and see if I can find the file there.

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Abandoned on Fire

Hey dude, here's all the results for "synther7" from my drives.  A couple are named "synther7_coco.wav" so that should be what you need.  smile

LINK: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0yjccdd2jqqfc9s/synther7.zip

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Toronto, Ontario, Canada
egr wrote:

Hey dude, here's all the results for "synther7" from my drives.  A couple are named "synther7_coco.wav" so that should be what you need.  smile

LINK: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0yjccdd2jqqfc9s/synther7.zip

Awesome, I'll check that out when I'm done with molyjam.

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Hello!

I just loaded this on my CoCo2. Loaded up fine, but when I ran it I got a "?bs error in 110" message. Bad subscript I guess. Any thoughts? Might be an easy fix, I haven't really got in there to mess around with code yet.

Seems like a cool little program though. Thanks for posting it.

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Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Hot Ron wrote:

Hello!

I just loaded this on my CoCo2. Loaded up fine, but when I ran it I got a "?bs error in 110" message. Bad subscript I guess. Any thoughts? Might be an easy fix, I haven't really got in there to mess around with code yet.

Seems like a cool little program though. Thanks for posting it.

I'll take a look when I get home. It might be a difference between the CoCo2 and the MC-10. Can you do me a favour and load the software and then run the command:

LIST 110

Just to make sure the line is not somehow loading incorrectly.

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Very cool. will do asap. I just got back from practice, so I won't be able to do it until tomorrow night. I will though. I think it's killer you made this, and I definitely want to give it a whirl if I can get it all loaded right.

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So line 110 says "NEXT T(12,2)"