Originally Posted by MarioD
I believe it is because it is an 8 bit limitation. The maximum number an 8 bit machine/program is 255.
Oh, for certain, yes ... as an electronics and software guy so familiar with that, it didn't even occur to me to say that, sorry.

There are plenty of ways, in principle at least, to remove that limit, but they all need extra data somewhere and that can't always be done without changing the basic structure of the data. That's fine for new software, but if old software cannot understand the new data, it can't work properly.

In the very early days of BiaB, when storage and memory was scarce, every bit and byte bad a functional cost, so data was structured as efficiently as feasible. I'm pretty sure PGM (probably Peter) agonised over whether or not to make the limit bigger, but figured it would "happen so rarely" that it wasn't worth the cost. I believe the early program was mostly for jazz musicians and most jazz has a 32-bar basic form and multiple choruses over which one improvises.

To put that "early" in context, the size of a floppy disk back at BiaB's start was commonly just 720kB with some 1.44MB "double density" disks around. The early Atart-ST had, I believe, only 360kB. One floppy disk would have to hold a collection of songs, not just a few.

Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11
BIAB2026 Audiophile, a bunch of other software.
Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts
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