Forum comments in chronological order

Anonymous
Mon 9-Apr-2018 21:40

i just got my pocket po20 arcade synth, but unfortunately i find
it impossible to actually record a pattern. according to your instructions,
I should be able to press 'write', then set the sounds by clicking
the desired 1-16 buttons and then press 'play', right?
well, it keeps playing the initial pattern, the sounds i selected are
played as well, but mixed with the existing pattern. how do i
start a pattern from scratch ?

thanks a lot, i'm wondering if the little synth is broken :(

Jonathan

6502
Andrea "6502" Griffini
Tue 10-Apr-2018 08:31

Something that programmers should try to do in my opinion is

1) write code at your limits, trying to push them farther
2) but don't do that in *production* code :-)

Code in production should be "trivial"... even if of course what is trivial and what is not depends on the reader.

Moreover the problem of writing the simplest code that can do the job can be interesting too (keeping boredom away), even if of course at a different level than writing the smartest, the fastest or the smallest.

However I don't think there is such an easy answer to the question of code complexity... the only definitive answer I think there is in programming is "it depends", and the simplest code may be too simple to be future proof and not able to accept easily the next feature that will be required, forcing a rewriting.

Nothing bad in rewriting itself of course (au contraire), but may be the economic downside won't make that an acceptable philosophy.

lft
Linus Åkesson
Tue 10-Apr-2018 12:41

To clear the current pattern, hold Chord and press Pattern. (This gesture is the same on all pocket operators, even when the button in the upper right corner is called something other than Chord.)

Good luck with the music making!

Anonymous
Sun 22-Apr-2018 00:39

Thank you very much for this amazing article!
Indeed, some things had been demystified :)

mporshnev
Max Porshnev
Wed 25-Apr-2018 11:27

Why the prg file starts with 01 08 0d, not 01 08 0b?

lft
Linus Åkesson
Wed 25-Apr-2018 12:40

I got it wrong in the file, but it doesn't matter: When you load a BASIC program, the system recomputes all the next-line pointers anyway. So when I wrote this article, I decided to put the proper value in the hex dump, just to make it less confusing. But I didn't want to change the contents of the file, as it had already been released.

mporshnev
Max Porshnev
Wed 25-Apr-2018 16:22

Thanks.