Few people have heard of it, yet many consider John Blankenbaker's KENBAK-1 to be the first commercial personal computer.
MSSIAH Commodore 64 Music Production System
By James Grahame
MSSIAH is an updated version of the Prophet64 music cartridge for the Commodore 64 that will be released in early 2008. It's loaded with four retro-styled music programs (sequencer, mono synthesizer, bassline TB-303 clone and drummer) that take advantage of the C-64's SID analog synthesizer chip.
Best of all, MSSIAH will include a MIDI IN that handles up to six tracks of MIDI data including note, velocity, control change and pitch bend information. It will also load original Prophet64 files. There's no word on price, but given that the original cartridge was only 32 euros, it should be quite reasonable.
I predict this will be next year's 'killer app' in the chiptunes world, especially when combined with the SID2SID dual SID chip adapter board that enables up to six notes of polyphony from a single C-64. It's mind-blowing to think that products like this are being created a quarter century after the C-64 first burst onto the home computing scene.
MSSIAH music production cartridge FAQ [via Matrixsynth]
Get the lowdown on the software at the official Prophet64 site
