Demo Songs on IBM XT? Anyone remember or have this?

[MrLoco97]

On my old hand-me-down IBM XT, I had some classic programs like Beast, Spacewar, ST: The Kobayashi Alternative... which I've identified and found. But I've been trying to find this music demo program which played through the PC speaker, and can't place it. To start, here's one I HAVE found - music.bas, shown here on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_bqgTDtV8s&

This has some songs I definitely remember... however, I really believe there was another one which had a lot more songs than this (I feel like 20 at the minimum, maybe 30 or 40) and that it was in 80-column mode, not the 40 column mode that one is in. I also feel like it maybe wasn't in BASIC, but was an .exe or .com file.

I wish I could remember specific songs this other one had. I feel like it had some classical tunes though.

Someone on another site was also asking for what might be the same thing, here's their recollection:

"A menu (all monochrome text as I recall) and you could select one of many songs, which would be played through the PC speaker (monophonic rather than polyphonic).

I remember a lot of TV and Movie Themes, as well as classical and popular tunes. I spent some time trying to track it down and turned up a few similar items, but not that exact one. This would have been the mid-80s, in the SF Bay Area. For sure it contained the "William Tell Overture"...

Anyone remember this? Or is there an archive of early to mid 80s IBM / PC software where I could maybe find it? Thanks.

 

[vwestlife]

Maybe you're thinking of Pianoman by Neil J. Rubenking?

 

[bear]

Pianoman was my guess. It has an easily identified aural fingerprint, as it isn't actual polyphonic playback, but simulated polyphony via rapidly playing single tones in sequence. So it sounds noticeably warbly.

 

[krebizfan]

There was also Music Creation Set, PC Musician, and a book Music and Speech Programs for the IBM PC. Some BBSes had collections of BASIC programs that included music designed for the BASIC play command. Spelunking through the huge number of shareware CDs that got archived should result in finding more tinny PC speaker music than anyone could deal with.

As an example, https://ia803201.us.archive.org/vie..._1990/Night_Owls_CD-ROM_-_PDSI-004-1_1990.iso shows MUSIC2.ZIP which plays MUS files and MUSIK.ZIP which includes a number of additional MUS files.

 

[Trixter]

The OP's recollection of The William Tell Overture is a dead giveaway for Pianoman. https://archive.org/details/pianoman_playrpno is a bit of a hacked-up archive of it, but should suffice.

 

[Chuck(G)]

When evaluating emulators, running the old Pianoman scores gives a good aural idea of the accuracy of the emulation.

 

[MrLoco97]

Thanks for the responses. I have zero memory of there existing any user-playable piano portion of it - I recall simply a music demo with maybe 20-40 selectable songs, in 80-column mode. But for the pianoman you linked, how would I get to such a song-demo screen if it exists? All I see is the player.

 

[jafir]

Press F1, the press alt-R to load a file. Then press alt-P to play the file.

 

[MrLoco97]

Thanks. Interesting program, but this wasn't it at all. The one I am looking for just had a bunch of selectable demo songs all on one screen, that you could tell it to play. I feel like the background may have been one of the deeper blue hues, with white 80 column text. One song may have been "Mozart Piano Sonata No. 11 Turkish March." It's been so long I'm blanking on the others. But I do think it also had Sakura, like the basic one I linked.

 

[Trixter]

There were tens, if not a hundred, such "menu with songs you can play" programs. The exact menu-driven program and selection you used to originally play these songs might be completely lost to time. What we've provided are the actual songs and the program used to create them, which hopefully suffice.

 

[Chuck(G)]

SIMTEL20 is a great source for this kind of vintage stuff.

I ran across my disk for EA's "Music Construction Set" for the PC, PC XT and PC JR. Copy-protected, of course.

 

[MrLoco97]

Thanks Chuck. I looked through that page... a couple may possibly be it (I doubt it), I'll have to check later. Does seem like a thin list, though.

Has the amount of preservation of early 80's PC software been poor? I mean, my Atari 8-bit floppy disks still work. A lot of the 5 1/4" PC floppies should still work. Most of these files have to be out there. Other stuff on that PC like Beast and Spacewar are well known. I don't think it's likely that I had some virtually unknown music file. Its selection screen looked pretty "legit."

 

[jafir]

Many people actively archive old software, but some things may be lost to time already. I have more hard drive space than I can imagine using right now, but in the 90s that wasn’t the case. And I wouldn’t have been likely to waste it on floppy images. I can also remember taking nearly every floppy I had, including shareware disks that I didn’t think I’d ever want again, and using that to backup everything so that I could switch operating systems. Also even for commercial floppies, not everyone stored them in the best of conditions. I’ve found some very old floppies that could be read just fine and I’ve also found piles of them that must have been stored in a barn and have stuff growing on them. Those are more problematic.

We are very fortunate that storage is so cheap these days.

 

[Trixter]

Has the amount of preservation of early 80's PC software been poor?

There are groups dedicated to preserving DOS software, with most doing an excellent job at great expense. But for many years, only the popular stuff got archived. You were more likely to hold onto an original game disk than a disk full of stuff you grabbed from a BBS, used once, then erased when you needed a disk for something else. You yourself have proven this: You don't have what you're looking for any more.

I don't think it's likely that I had some virtually unknown music file. Its selection screen looked pretty "legit."

I've seen at least 20 of these "pick a song from a menu" programs in my time with the IBM PC. They were everywhere -- and there was nothing terribly special about them, so most people didn't retain them. Yours might be floating around out there, but unless it had a name, good luck finding it.

 

[VileR]

I'd be surprised if this isn't somewhere in one of the big shareware collections like PC-SIG's, PC-Blue(/Green/Red), RBBS-in-a-Box etc.

Those are huge piles of disks to wade through, but they're usually indexed or organized by categories, so you'll be able to narrow it down to the music-related ones.