ancient software that you still remember thread

[thecontrolcentre]

Pro-12

[CinningBao]

Just because I haven't seen it mentioned yet, and a mate and I used it to make our first album in 1989, the RAM Music Machine for the ZX Spectrum range. I used it on squeltchy rubber keys and a 128+.

Sadly the only vid I can find, until I make my own when I dig it out of storage, is in Spanish (I think)
1.3 seconds of sample time, 8 drum sample spots and one 'note' sound. I'm not even sure it was possible to play back the drum pattern song and the melody pattern song at the same time! And my tape system (amstrad 4 track tape with record player and radio) at the time was too wibbly wobbly to record one then rewind and record the other and expect any kind of usable sync. Shame I was too caught up in music notation and arrangement to realise the creative possibilities with that setup..

I've always wondered where they took the cowbell sample from.. any ideas?

[sprnva]

I still remember trying to figure out MIDI with Bars and Pipes on an Amiga connected up to a TX81Z.

[dark water]

Not ancient, but is old and from a different computing era (and I still sometimes use it...):

[jancivil]

I had to search for this, I had entirely forgotten what it was called.
http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/concertware

It was not MIDI, but it ported to some kind of box iirc from the serial port.
Released 1985. So I was writing on this 85-87.

I had one thing which I wanted and I still had on a floppy, when I first bought my own Mac in... late 2003 or beginning of 2004 I think. But I did not have the program so I went to Gary Leuenberger's store on Mission Street. Used to be on Market. Unannounced/no appointment and I had to press the issue, the employees looking askance to say the least. But he remembered me from the DX Workshop ca '85 and his son was working on this thing still, so he went out to Marin on Saturday or like that and fetched me it to install. I can't believe it installed (System 1 or 2 to OSX, 10.2 under Classic) and my memory fuzzes out at this juncture but I think I retrieved the compo. This story is but it happened.

I'd love to work with this thing today, tbh.

[jancivil]

I found this during the search which is something that could consume hours of your life.
http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/magic-square

This thing I do not recall: Created by composer Morton Subotnick, this multimedia production offers two pieces for MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) keyboards, MIDI mallets, flutes, cello and computer.

There's a manual: http://macintoshgarden.org/sites/macint ... manual.pdf

[McLilith]

I still remember the Ensoniq Mirage operating system, which had to be loaded from a floppy disk, before you could do anything with the Mirage sampler. It was a very arcane operating system, and legendary for it's difficulty-of-use and primitiveness.

Before that, I had some experience with very crude music software written for the Atari 400 home computer. That "amazing" machine actually had 8 kilobytes of RAM, no hard disk, and programs were stored on cassette tape. Storing your programs on cassette tape was the easy part. Reading them back into the computer at a later date was very sketchy. Sometimes, the software would refuse to load properly, and you might lose all your recent work.

Before that, I was in electronics school, in 1982. I had built a tiny 8008-CPU embedded computer on a breadboard, and as part of our lesson that day, we had to program a serial port to send square waves to a tiny speaker. With proper coding, you could control the pitch of the square wave, and program a sequence of musical pitches. All the programming had to be done in machine language, manually entering each byte one bit at a time, via a group of switches. It was very tedious. I programmed mine to play the intro melody to Pink Floyd's "In The Flesh?"

[jancivil]

I remember some thing for Ensoniq Mirage which installed on the Mac, the first Mac I believe, 128k beige Mac whose OS lived on a floppy. Before that, the only thing to do was via the LCD, which is about the size of my thumb, in HEX. Yes, defining loop points - absolutely essential given the small memory - by Hexadecimal on a tiny LCD. Then some software and a GUI! And we were STYLIN'. I had never heard of hexadecimal system before but my housemate ran the computer room for Bank of America ATM system back then and he knew all the computer stuff. I actually got to recognize hex, I have no fricken clue today.

[ghettosynth]

I remember some thing for Ensoniq Mirage which installed on the Mac, the first Mac I believe, 128k beige Mac whose OS lived on a floppy. Before that, the only thing to do was via the LCD, which is about the size of my thumb, in HEX. Yes, defining loop points - absolutely essential given the small memory - by Hexadecimal on a tiny LCD. Then some software and a GUI! And we were STYLIN'. I had never heard of hexadecimal system before but my housemate ran the computer room for Bank of America ATM system back then and he knew all the computer stuff. I actually got to recognize hex, I have no fricken clue today.

Just a point of information. The Mirage had a two digit 7-segment LED display.

[ghettosynth]

I still remember the Ensoniq Mirage operating system, which had to be loaded from a floppy disk, before you could do anything with the Mirage sampler. It was a very arcane operating system, and legendary for it's difficulty-of-use and primitiveness.

There was also an alternative OS that allowed you to use the Mirage more like a synth. I can't remember the name of it, I had it for a while, I sold it with my last Mirage.

On Edit:

Ah yes, the Soundprocess OS

[JJ_Jettflow]

Intelligent Music's "M" and "Realtime". Owned for my Atari then my Mac. Used them and ha a blast!

http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/intelligent-music/272

http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/intel ... ime-1-1/59

[McLilith]

There was also an alternative OS that allowed you to use the Mirage more like a synth. I can't remember the name of it, I had it for a while, I sold it with my last Mirage.

On Edit:

Ah yes, the Soundprocess OS

What did you think of Soundprocess?

A few times, I've thought about buying it for my Mirage, but haven't gotten around to it. (My Mirage needs a disk drive repair, before I purchase anything else for it.)

In addition to Soundprocess, which was produced by a third party company, Ensoniq also sold "MASOS 2.0" which was an advanced operating system for the Mirage. This operating system also came with a thick manual that explained the intricacies of the Mirage sampling process in great detail. It was intended for those people who wanted to do their own sampling, instead of just buying the factory sample disks, and wanted to wring out every last bit of capability from the hardware.

Also for people wanting to produce their own samples in the highest quality, they produced a special plug-in sampling cartridge that allowed for increased hardware quality during sample recording. I think it contained a better anti-aliasing filter, and I think it allowed higher sample rates than the stock Mirage could offer alone. I actually have one of those sampling cartridges, but I've yet to use it.

[Durschlack]

[sqigls]

whatever happened to Rainbow synth?
that was really expensive back then, if i remember correctly.

[McLilith]

whatever happened to Rainbow synth?
that was really expensive back then, if i remember correctly.

Which Rainbow synth? A quick Google search turned up multiple Rainbow synths.

http://www.bigtickaudio.com/goodies/rainbow

https://web.archive.org/web/20010329174 ... /home.html

http://www.noystoise.com/2009/07/rainbow-synth.html

https://littlebits.cc/projects/rainbow-synth