Re: TI-H: Music Player

To: ti-hardware@lists.ticalc.org
Subject: Re: TI-H: Music Player
From: Grant Stockly <gussie@alaska.net>
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 18:32:25 -0800 (AKDT)
Delivered-To: ti-hardware-outgoing@towerguard.unix.edu.sollentuna.se
In-Reply-To: <19980914214827.27785.qmail@www0j.netaddress.usa.net>
Reply-To: ti-hardware@lists.ticalc.org


>I'm sure few of you remember me, as I haven't been on this lits in months.
>But to the point:
>
>I'm sure many of you have heard of MPMan, the portable MP3 player, which
>functions similar to a walkman, only with MP3's on a flash chip instead of a
>tape or CD.  Well, I'm a tracker, and I write computer music.  There's an
>extensive scene for us trackers, and we've begun to think about making a
>"MOD-Man" of sorts, tentatively titled MOD to GO.  This post is primarily
>aimed toward Grant and those like him, as he's already come up with his own
>MP3 player (if I remember right, that is), and he'd be a great resource if
>he'd lend his assistance.  Any of you who would like to help out would
>definitely be welcome to, as us trackers are primarily musicians, with a few
>coders, and almost no hardware-knowledgeable people.  I've got several ideas,
>but I need input from people who've worked in this field before.
>
>I guess the first area of concern is the processor.  I've looked into a few,
>but I really don't know what I'm going to need for this project.  It wouldn't
>require as much processing power as an MP3 player, as tracked modules (MOD's)
>were being tracked and played long before MPEG was a household name (though
>obviously the better the processor the better).  It would have to be at least
>16-bit, since most trackers use 16-bit samples.  Processing speed is a very
>tough area to cover.  I don't know how many publicly available processors can
>run at over 200MHz.  I'm running a P5-200 PC w/ 64M RAM, and there are modules
>that my computer isn't even capable of handling.  It locks up and I have to
>reboot to fix it.  There are roughly 30 different file formats that would have
>to be supported, most of them not requiring that much power, but some do.
>Also, RAM is a very important issue.  This system would also be used as a
>tracker (music-editing software), so it'd have to have enough RAM to contain
>an entire track to be edited quickly and easily.  And with this, I mean some
>tracks can be anywhere from 10k to 40M or even more.
>
>As for storage, memory chips would be nice, so that tracks could be saved on
>MOD to GO itself, but also I'd like to have a "disk" system.  Perhaps even be
>able to read IBM-formatted (and maybe Mac too) 3.5" disks and read tracks off
>of them to play.  The idea has been thrown up to have it double as an audio CD
>player, while enabling the user to also read tracks burned as data off of a
>data or hybrid CD.  I don't know about having an actual hard drive on there,
>but that idea has been thrown up as well.
>
>Currently I'm paying preliminary graphics on my TI-85, so 128x64 is the
>current size, but I'm thinking 320x200 or even more, since it'll function as a
>tracker, most of which normally use a 640x480 PC screen res.
>
>Any questions, comments, suggestions are welcome, please respod!  Especially
>Grant.  If you wish to email me directly, feel free.  I don't have a web page
>up for it yet, but I'm workin on it.  Thanks a bundle!

I could help.  It would be smart to use a 68000.  And then add a CS4334 or
4390 Dac...  Add a few discreate components, a used disk drive, program it,
push power.

There are some realy nice 256x128 LCDs that interface nicely with the 68000.

References:

TI-H: Music Player

From: Gulopine R Holiture <gulopine@usa.net>