4 ms·
I'm saying something else entirely. Back in the day, home computers did not have enough resources to play music like modern computers do. They instead relied o
by qsort 4y ago
I'm saying something else entirely.
Back in the day, home computers did not have enough resources to play music like modern computers do. They instead relied on custom hardware to make noise. An example is the MOS SID 6581, which was on the original C64.
Once you have enough resources this is unnecessary, because you can just make a giant sample of the entire song you want to play, and that's going to sound at least as good as analog recording (and possibly better, depending on what technology you are using to make the analog record).
- spc476 4y agoThe Tandy Color Computer did not have such a chip, but it did have a 6-bit DAC (Digital/Analog Converter) that could be used to both sample and play back sound. Yes, it was CPU intensive, but you could get some pretty impressive results (I recall sampling songs, and even playing music with 4-part harmony).
- the_af 4y agoWatching The 8-Bit Guy's youtube channel I'm convinced the Tandy was probably the best DOS computer ever. A shame I never owned one; I went from an XT clone with monochrome graphics (the Hercules card had a charm of its own!) to an AT with a VGA videocard. I understand that the EGA emulation the VGA was capable of was similar but not exactly the same as Tandy color graphics.
- spc476 4y agoIt may seem weird, but the Tandy 1000 copied the graphics modes from the IBM PCjr, not the EGA standard. That included a 320x200 16 color mode, as well as 640x200 four color mode that the original CGA couldn't do (because it lacked memory). The IBM PCjr also included a sound synthesis chip (don't recall which one off the top of my head) that may also have been included in the Tandy 1000 (don't know, had the PCjr, not the Tandy).