[sdiy] Microprocessors for Music

[Rainer Buchty]

> In pursuit of a BASIC programmable analog synth controller, I have built
> units based on the Sinclair ZX-81 and the Atari 800XL. Neither was fast
> enough under BASIC to be really useful (micros only had 1 or 2 MHz
> clocks).

Not fast enough? I programmed my very own MIDIBASIC for the Commodore 64
back in the late 80s; that of course involved some assembly programming to
patch the BASIC interpreter and hooking the MIDI IRQ to some ring buffers
which in term got connected to the BASIC interpreter through the usr()
function.

Worked quite well for non timing-critical stuff (or dumps coming in faster
than the buffer could be read), so a BASIC sequencer was absolutely
unthinkable. But SysEx/editing or simple playback stuff worked.

Rainer