3 in 1 reply follows:
>> Of course. I think the best solution would be a more complex cartridge
>> including a MIC IN apart from other goodies. A simple stereo ADC/DAC
>> sampler/player with a MIC IN and a couple of LINE IN sockets, for example.
>
>Sorry, that would not work. The MSX cannot handle a 44kHz (8/16bit)
>(mono/stereo) datastream. IMHO, to build a high quality sampling card
>one would need:
I must confess I was thinking in terms of Amiga when I said "stereo", sorry
8:\ Well, it's obvious a 44kHz rate cannot be achieved with a plain MSX,
but that would not be the goal of such a cartridge. Neither mentioned
16-bit.
I'm proposing a low price cartridge with limited but reasonable audio
sample & playback capabilities or a mid price multifunction cartridge, with
additional features like audio booster, stereo emulation, headphone plug,
hardware pause & reset buttons, lots of LEDs and of course violent design
8;)
Of course it wouldn't be the ultimate high-end productivity audio
development device, but it could take some noisy fun out of an MSX.
>>It it is so, then the MIC IN cartridge for ADC-less MSXs is a practical
>>device.
>
>If you think MSX should be able to do everything the bigger computers can,
>yes. In a more practical view, I think that playing samples on MSX is enough.
Of course I neither think MSX should do that. It's a fanatic attitude I
dislike so much. But I think a cheap multifunction cartridge with limited
audio sample & playback capabilities could have its market.
>One of the great things of cross-development is that such tools can be
>written in Pascal or C++ or Java and still run very fast. And without
>having to worry about memory mapper pages of 16K and such.
Yes. Believe it or not, I use PostScript (!!!) to quickly develop my MSX
tools (gfx and audio converters, VDP table generators, file formatters,
image operators, etc).
I also use this *publishing* language to create all my designs (like the
"Video Hazard / Hostile Apostle" game intro screen). This way I'm 100% sure
any pixel has both a valid reason to exist and an accurate RGB value.
>I'm using PC/Win95 right now (probably the most dull environment), but I'm
>experimenting with Linux + KDE.
Dull indeed. In fact I use ANY OTHER computer (Macintosh, Amiga, even an
Atari "easy money" Portfolio!) to acomplish this task.
>You'd either have to equip the cartridge with a lot of RAM or spend a lot
>of CPU power sending data to the cartridge. The former case is expensive,
>the latter case means you can't use it in a game or something.
I'd go for the latter. Videogames need hardware standards, not custom
dongles. It would be a cheap cartridge to sample/playback medium
size/quality samples for personal use, like it was done in the Atari ST
back in the mid 80s.
The CPU had to do all the work, even clocked at 8MHz the actual speed was
not much higher than a MSX due to larger instruction timings, so few games
actually used samples in the middle of the game.
But users had a great time, and there was quite decent software.
Kiss you lot.
--
Madonna Mark Two
"Martin Galway means to me what Elvis meant to Sigue Sigue Sputnik"
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