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Playing Atari ST Music on the Amiga with Zero CPU

arnaud-carre.github.io

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Re: Playing Atari ST Music on the Amiga with Zero CPU

#11

Post by rigonkulous »

rbanffy wrote: post #9
bartread wrote: post #8

I never had an Atari ST so wasn't familiar with the details of how its sound chip worked. I did know it was a variant of the AY chip found in the ZX Spectrum +2A, which I did own for a brief period after several years of 48K+ ownership. However, it's only as a result of reading this article that I realised the chip is only capable of generating square waves and noise, whereas I'd been under the impression it had some…

> I really wish they'd crammed a SID chip into the Amiga alongside Paula This is something the Apple IIgs had. It had an extremely capable synthesiser with good graphics and performance capped so not to compete with Macs. It was a weird machine, a sharp contrast with the minimalistic Apple IIs that preceded, over complicated and trying to be too many things at once. For the same reason I prefer the design of the ST o…

I'd love to have a IIgs in my collection these days, its truly the pinnacle computer of its type and era.

Re: Playing Atari ST Music on the Amiga with Zero CPU

#12

Post by poulpy123 »

anonzzzies wrote: post #2

I was in a Dutch demo group first for msx and then amiga, then dropped out of low level dev; the amiga coprocessors I still miss. I went to PC as everyone did and definitely at the beginning thought: what is this garbage??? We lived in the future and then it was taken from us for a while.

I had an Atari ste and when I passed from the GUI os to msdos + windows 3.11, Inhaz the same reaction

Re: Playing Atari ST Music on the Amiga with Zero CPU

#13

Post by Braini »

rbanffy wrote: post #9
bartread wrote: post #8

I never had an Atari ST so wasn't familiar with the details of how its sound chip worked. I did know it was a variant of the AY chip found in the ZX Spectrum +2A, which I did own for a brief period after several years of 48K+ ownership. However, it's only as a result of reading this article that I realised the chip is only capable of generating square waves and noise, whereas I'd been under the impression it had some…

> I really wish they'd crammed a SID chip into the Amiga alongside Paula This is something the Apple IIgs had. It had an extremely capable synthesiser with good graphics and performance capped so not to compete with Macs. It was a weird machine, a sharp contrast with the minimalistic Apple IIs that preceded, over complicated and trying to be too many things at once. For the same reason I prefer the design of the ST o…

Important fun fact, this synthesizer was an Ensoniq chip (ES5503 DOC), designed by Bob Yannes, the inventor of the SID chip. The IIGS was actually a cool machine, not very successful unfortunately.

Re: Playing Atari ST Music on the Amiga with Zero CPU

#14

Post by JetSetIlly »

bartread wrote: post #8

I never had an Atari ST so wasn't familiar with the details of how its sound chip worked. I did know it was a variant of the AY chip found in the ZX Spectrum +2A, which I did own for a brief period after several years of 48K+ ownership. However, it's only as a result of reading this article that I realised the chip is only capable of generating square waves and noise, whereas I'd been under the impression it had some…

> Well, that and the fact that after the 48K beeper the 128K was never going to sound less than incredible

Some of the stuff people do with the 48k beeper is incredible though. Tim Follin's tunes for example are basically treating the beeper like a 1-bit DAC, with amazing results. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T42WuUpBuHE

Re: Playing Atari ST Music on the Amiga with Zero CPU

#15

Post by selcuka »

JetSetIlly wrote: post #14
bartread wrote: post #8

I never had an Atari ST so wasn't familiar with the details of how its sound chip worked. I did know it was a variant of the AY chip found in the ZX Spectrum +2A, which I did own for a brief period after several years of 48K+ ownership. However, it's only as a result of reading this article that I realised the chip is only capable of generating square waves and noise, whereas I'd been under the impression it had some…

> Well, that and the fact that after the 48K beeper the 128K was never going to sound less than incredible Some of the stuff people do with the 48k beeper is incredible though. Tim Follin's tunes for example are basically treating the beeper like a 1-bit DAC, with amazing results. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T42WuUpBuHE

Follin also experimented with using both the beeper and the AY chip at the same time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1e2MOeo5eU

Re: Playing Atari ST Music on the Amiga with Zero CPU

#16

Post by rigonkulous »

This is such a delicious article for those of us who are 'retro-' computing enthusiasts. Made my Sunday cuppa shine!

"In a way, this feature is similar to the YM2149 ADSR envelope. Not technically, but because both features are mostly ignored by Atari and Amiga programmers! :)"

As an Oric-1/Atmos programmer, this line was especially juicy.

Using PAULA's attached mode is so brilliant, btw. I love it when things of this nature are discovered, decades after the fact. We've had a few such revelations in the Oric world too, none as powerful of course at Orics' 1MHZ, but nevertheless, the shoulders of the Atari/Amiga giants are perilously within reach for the climb ..

EDIT: Oh, COPPER and PAULA, paired at the bits. Such a great hack, this one ..

Re: Playing Atari ST Music on the Amiga with Zero CPU

#17

Post by lproven »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #4
anonzzzies wrote: post #2

I was in a Dutch demo group first for msx and then amiga, then dropped out of low level dev; the amiga coprocessors I still miss. I went to PC as everyone did and definitely at the beginning thought: what is this garbage??? We lived in the future and then it was taken from us for a while.

I don't know if the Amiga was ahead of its time or the PC was behind its time. AmigaOS was a pre-emptive multitasking OS whilst PCs had to wait for Windows NT/95.

Sort of both.

> AmigaOS was a pre-emptive multitasking OS

Yes, but without memory protection.

> whilst PCs had to wait for Windows NT/95.

While Windows 2 on an 8086 could pre-emptively multitask DOS apps, so long as they all fit into 640 kB at once. Windows/386 could do it in extended memory.

The innovative thing in W95 was doing it to Win32 apps as well.

OS/2 in 1987 or so could multitask OS/2 code on a 286.

Re: Playing Atari ST Music on the Amiga with Zero CPU

#18

Post by weinzierl »

anonzzzies wrote: post #2

I was in a Dutch demo group first for msx and then amiga, then dropped out of low level dev; the amiga coprocessors I still miss. I went to PC as everyone did and definitely at the beginning thought: what is this garbage??? We lived in the future and then it was taken from us for a while.

Same feeling. I often think of the 16-bit PC era as kind of the dark ages. Everything was weird, nothing made sense, elegance nowhere to be found. Things got a lot better again when 32-bit PCs came around and continued to improve with 64-bit.

Re: Playing Atari ST Music on the Amiga with Zero CPU

#19

Post by bartread »

JetSetIlly wrote: post #14
bartread wrote: post #8

I never had an Atari ST so wasn't familiar with the details of how its sound chip worked. I did know it was a variant of the AY chip found in the ZX Spectrum +2A, which I did own for a brief period after several years of 48K+ ownership. However, it's only as a result of reading this article that I realised the chip is only capable of generating square waves and noise, whereas I'd been under the impression it had some…

> Well, that and the fact that after the 48K beeper the 128K was never going to sound less than incredible Some of the stuff people do with the 48k beeper is incredible though. Tim Follin's tunes for example are basically treating the beeper like a 1-bit DAC, with amazing results. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T42WuUpBuHE

Yeah, when I had the 48K Speccy I bought this and a shoot em up called Chronos, which wasn't by any means an amazing game (not bad for the £1.99 or £2.99 I paid for it, mind), but it was blessed with incredible intro music, which I think might have been another Tim Follin special.

It's not to say amazing results from the 48K beeper were impossible, but you had to work pretty hard for them, and you were definitely into wizardry territory.

But, it's also true that the sound capabilities of the 128K machine were a big step up (also worth bearing in mind you had the beeper and the AY chip - you weren't losing the beeper).

Re: Playing Atari ST Music on the Amiga with Zero CPU

#20

Post by bartread »

selcuka wrote: post #15
JetSetIlly wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, that and the fact that after the 48K beeper the 128K was never going to sound less than incredible Some of the stuff people do with the 48k beeper is incredible though. Tim Follin's tunes for example are basically treating the beeper like a 1-bit DAC, with amazing results. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T42WuUpBuHE

Follin also experimented with using both the beeper and the AY chip at the same time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1e2MOeo5eU

Aha - and as if by magic... yeah, I just mentioned that the 128K machine had both the beeper and the AY chip, and this is a great example of them in use together.
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