little-scale
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ad-hell-aide

The Vectrex is interesting because it contains BIOS routines for music playback. OK, so that's nothing special, but what is perhaps more interesting is that a set of 13 tunes are hardcoded as part of (what I assume is) the BIOS RAM. One of them is the startup sound, of course, but the other 12 were used by programmers who didn't want to program their own music into games. So they just used one of these 12 tunes for their game. I find this idea fascinating - to pre-write music and hardcode it into a system.

Are there any other examples of this sort of thing that people know of? Or is this a common occurrence?

arfink
Offline
Minneapolis

I have never heard of anything like that, except perhaps the Nintendo "po-ling" or other sorts of startup sounds. As for music you could just use in your own games... that is certainly not something I have ever heard of.

an-cat-max
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astral cat

famicom disk system BIOS

Saskrotch
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Chicago IL

i was wondering if one of you boys would like to reformat my AnOS

Saskrotch
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Chicago IL

i'm thinking about switching to PenOS heart

little-scale
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ad-hell-aide
arfink wrote:

I have never heard of anything like that, except perhaps the Nintendo "po-ling" or other sorts of startup sounds. As for music you could just use in your own games... that is certainly not something I have ever heard of.

Yeah, it's an interesting thing, eh.

an-cat-max wrote:

famicom disk system BIOS

Care to elaborate?

PS > Thanks for your helpful input, Saskrotch, you know how much I appreciate it smile

µB
Offline
A gray world of dread

Hmm, maybe it's also for saving space on the cadriges. Do you know which games used the hardcoded tunes?

Aside from those handheld cheapo LCD games I never heard anything like that.

little-scale
Offline
ad-hell-aide

I'm sure that some of the GCE games would have used at least some of the hardcoded tunes - and yeah you're right, it's probably also for saving space, good call. I guess there is only so much you can fit into a 4KB ROM...

ant1
Offline
uhajdafdfdfa
an-cat-max wrote:

famicom disk system BIOS

http://www.zophar.net/music/nsf/famicom … -bios.html smile

arfink
Offline
Minneapolis

But, the FDS bios can't have its tunes used in-game. Sorry. smile

chunter
Offline
Brunswick, GA USA

I think of the Mac OS bings, bongs, and sosumis...  and the Sega Master System/Mark III jingle which turned into "Seee-gaaa"...

an-cat-max
Offline
astral cat
arfink wrote:

But, the FDS bios can't have its tunes used in-game. Sorry. smile

not sure that was the point, and why are you saying it like i just gave an incorrect answer? i'm just contributing to a thread and joining in with a discussion lol

i thought little-scale was asking other examples of music hardcoded on a system and AFAIK this is true with the famicom disk system!

nordloef
Offline
sweden

The Super game boy has a hand full of internal sound effects. No music though afaik:

http://nocash.emubase.de/pandocs.htm

boomlinde
Offline
Sweden

I don't know anything like it, but the YM2608 chip has built in rhythm samples, and then there's the YM2413 of course.

arfink
Offline
Minneapolis
an-cat-max wrote:
arfink wrote:

But, the FDS bios can't have its tunes used in-game. Sorry. smile

not sure that was the point, and why are you saying it like i just gave an incorrect answer? i'm just contributing to a thread and joining in with a discussion lol

i thought little-scale was asking other examples of music hardcoded on a system and AFAIK this is true with the famicom disk system!

Well, it is true that the Vectrex tunes can be used in game and called from the onboard ROM of the Vectrex, which I though was what was being sought after. But yes, the FDS does have a built in tune, though no games I know of play it in-game. In fact, I suspect the Vectrex may be the only one I have heard of to do this sort of thing. So, I apologise if I bashed you.

So, if the Vectrex has these hardcoded tunes inside which games can make use of, what's to prevent a ROM rewrite and actually change them? smile That could be quite neat, though Vectrex hardware is kinda rare and spendy in my experience.

little-scale
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ad-hell-aide
arfink wrote:

what's to prevent a ROM rewrite and actually change them? smile That could be quite neat, though Vectrex hardware is kinda rare and spendy in my experience.

Great point! I hadn't considered this possibility ;D