Sound, Music & MIDI Collection 2

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Sound, Music & MIDI Collection 2 / SMMVOL2.bin / DOS / SS_PLAY / SIDPLAYE.ZIP / SIDPLAY.DOC < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1995-11-16 | 26.2 KB | 583 lines

SIDPLAY version 1.40a Copyright (c) 1994,95 Michael Schwendt All rights reserved. Internet e-mail: 3schwend@informatik.uni-hamburg.de Normal mail: Michael Schwendt An der Wallpforte 1 D-23879 Moelln Germany ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT IS (DOES) SIDPLAY ? Basically, SIDPLAY is just an ordinary music player for PCs with a soundcard. It is not bound to a specific music data format. Instead, it emulates the sound interface device chip (MOS 6581, known as SID) and the micro processor unit (MOS 6510) of the Commodore 64 on your PC. Therefore it is able to load and execute C64 machine code programs which produce interrupt driven music or sound. In general these are independent fragments of code and data which are ripped from games and demonstration programs and are transfered directly from the C64. The idea for SIDPLAY is based on the Amiga program "The 100 most remembered C64 game-tunes" and its follower "PlaySID" by Per Håkan Sundell and Ron Birk. This program is not related to a music editing and playing program on C64 called "Sidplayer" by Craig Chamberlain or "Stereo Sidplayer" by Mark Dickenson. When beginning this project I was not aware of the existence of those C64 programs and didn't want to start any confusion by choosing a similar name. Later, support for one of Sidplayer's music data formats (MUS) has been added. C64 MUSICS / SIDTUNES / SIDS Around 3000 different soundtracks from Commodore 64 games and demos are available in several packages. These musics are still copyrighted by their original owners. That is the reason why this program is distributed without any tunes though many of them are almost 10 years old by now. Hence spreading them is more likely to act as advertising than causing any consequential damage. Please consult the file "faq.doc" for additional information about distribution sites for SIDPLAY, C64 musics or related software. Approximately, the european part of the world refers to any piece of music from the Commodore 64 as "sidtune", while the american part of the world only calls musics, which were made with the original "Sidplayer" on C64, "sidtunes" or "sids". From what I have learned so far, the "Sidplayer" was very famous and there were more than 7000 sounds for it. THE JUKEBOX The SIDSHELL is the shell-version of SIDPLAY. It needs 224KB of EMS-memory (LIM/EMM >= 3.2) and a fast 486 CPU. One of its differences to SIDPLAY is the possibility to enter the DOS shell while playing a selection of musics in the background. To leave some CPU power for other applications you are advised to play around with the output-mixing frequency (command line option /f) and the mixing buffer size (option /b). Its internal selector is able to mark files and generate playlist jukebox files. The current version handles playlists of a maximum size of 65535 bytes, i.e. around 1600 files. This should be enough for the moment. The shorter the complete path to each sidtune file, the more files fit into a single listfile. The playlist files can be edited with any normal ASCII text editor. SIDPLAY TO .WAV FILE This one was done to use complete sidtunes or single effects/instruments in own programs and on different platforms. A second version is programmed completely in portable C. If you use data calculated by SID2WAV, please don't forget to give the credits. Using some simple run-length compression, more than a minute of waveform data at average 22.05 KHz will fit into a few hundred kilobytes only. THE CARDWARE CONCEPT SIDPLAY is cardware. If you like this program, all I would like to get from you is an illustrated postcard. Please avoid sending an ordinary email as a substitute for a real postcard. I want to see how much this is used around the world. The main purpose of cardware is to support the programmer, so that he keeps motivation in programming updates and related software. If you can't find a suitable postcard in time, I am pleased with any kind of donation or gift, like a copy of a home-made CD or some money. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PACKAGE LIST: The original archive named 'sidp140a.zip' should only contain the following files: FILE_ID DIZ 360 16.11.95 1:40 SIDSETUP EXE 19628 16.11.95 1:40 SIDPLAY EXE 66246 16.11.95 1:40 SIDSHELL EXE 66086 16.11.95 1:40 SID2WAV EXE 47044 16.11.95 1:03 DOC <DIR> 16.11.95 1:40 SIDPLAY DOC 26795 16.11.95 1:40 REVISION DOC 9627 16.11.95 1:40 FAQ DOC 9823 16.11.95 1:40 LINUX DOC 127 16.11.95 1:40 README DOC 1908 18.10.95 1:37 LIESMICH DOC 2392 18.10.95 1:37 TOOLS <DIR> 16.11.95 1:40 EPEX DOC 6404 24.03.95 1:25 EPEX BTM 3590 24.03.95 1:25 INFO2SID EXE 1505 24.03.95 1:25 PSID2DAT EXE 6948 24.03.95 1:25 PSID2SID EXE 1661 24.03.95 1:25 SID2PSID EXE 1749 24.03.95 1:25 PP EXE 29696 17.06.95 0:02 DEPP EXE 25600 31.05.95 0:02 GO32 EXE 78826 18.12.94 21:39 28 Files 400391 Byte ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- KEY FUNCTIONS (SELECTOR): CURSOR KEYS, POS1, END, PAGE KEYS - move the coloured bar on a drive/directory/file RETURN - select a drive/directory/file ESCAPE - quits back to DOS (confirm with Y or N) ALT-X - quits back to DOS immediately D - start DOS shell (only in the SHELL-version) BACKSPACE - delete current file and belonging hidden files on confirmation KEY FUNCTIONS (SOUND CONTROL): CURSOR LEFT - replay previous tune if possible CURSOR RIGHT - replay next tune if possible CURSOR UP - enter four times faster replay, back to normal speed by pressing any other key, CURSOR DOWN - enable two times faster replay, back to normal speed by pressing any other key ENTER - returns back to the selector ESCAPE - quits back to DOS with Q - pause/resume replay (quiet) 1, 2, 3, 4 - toggle mute for channels 1-4 (not with option /m !) P - opens/closes the stereo panning setup window (use option /s or /st to enable this function) L, M, R - set stereo channel output to LEFT/MIDDLE/RIGHT S - toggle stereo surround effect for selected channel (use option /st to enable this function) KEY FUNCTIONS (SIDSHELL.EXE): D - start DOS shell INSERT - mark file DELETE - unmark file SPACE - toggle file mark M - start playing marked files N - stop current song and play next one from list ALT + S - save tagged files as a playlist ASCII-file CTRL + - Hotkey, stop current song and play next one from list LEFT_SHIFT + (only in DOS-Shell !) F10 Note1: The fast forward replay takes more CPU power than normal speed. Please be careful, because this might lock your machine ! Note2: The output modifying actions might start/stop after a short delay. This happens if the mixing buffer is large. The length of delay depends on the CPU speed of your machine. You can set the mixing buffer size with the /b option to achieve smarter key handling and faster reactions on your input. MOUSE SUPPORT: Exit - move pointer to top-left corner of screen and press left button Page up - left click above selector window Page down - left click under selector window ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS: SIDPLAY provides an ASCII-editable configuration file and optional command line parameters. The command line parameters always override the settings in the global configuration file SIDPLAY.CFG. /f<Hz> sets the sample mixing frequency (i.e. sound quality) where <Hz> is a frequency between 8000 and 45891 Hz /b<length> sets the amount of bytes to be processed till next interrupt occurs (a value from 1024 to 65530 is possible); a small buffer results in faster key-interrupt handling; very useful for switching through plenty of sounds /h display command line syntax screen (or any unused key => e.g /?) /m force to mono-without-mute mode. this one is slightly faster than the default mono-with-mute output /s enables quality stereo mode (press 'Q' for quality panning setup) this is only possible if your sound card has stereo capabilities /st enables stereo mode (press 'Q' for stereo panning setup) this is only possible if your sound card has stereo capabilities /v enables a special non-realtime SID register view mode (a 486DX-33 or better with a very small mixing buffer is recommended) /a force the emulator system to only use the Accumulator on song initialization. This is required for only a few musics which were accidentally (?!) setup to run on Amiga PlaySID only. Their music initialization code assumes the X- and Y-register to contain zero, which is a sloppy coding style. SIDPLAY uses all three registers on initialization to allow replaying of directly converted musics without previously fixing the music routine. Hence making that assumption is fatal and song initialization fails. /n BEWARE !!! This option doesn't make much sense, but needs a bit more explanation. Setting this switch forces SIDPLAY to call the replaying routine of all (!) musics with 60 Hz, like a vertical blanking interrupt of a NTSC based machine would do. In general this is the wrong speed, because most of the games for the C64 were designed for the PAL based machines of the european users and have either been NTSC-fixed or use timer-interrupt replaying routines that do not differ in speed on NTSC systems. If american, canadian or japanese (e.g.) users think a music is played too slow in comparison to the C64, this is only if the corresponding game/intro/demo on the C64 calls its music routine via the vertical blanking interrupt (VBI) instead of a timer interrupt. Due to the fact that PAL based screens (TV, monitor) generally are able to display more lines of pixels than NTSC based ones, the NTSC screen refresh rate (60 Hz) is 1.2 times faster than the PAL (50 Hz) one. Therefore on NTSC based machines the VBI driven music routine is called more often, thus leading to falsification of the originally intended music timing and making the user think it sounds correctly. Only if you are used to listen to tunes that are played too fast and you don't care about the correct replaying speed you should enable the NTSC-mode. But please DON'T think you have to enable it to make SIDPLAY replay all sounds in the proper speed. You should really believe that SIDPLAY replays all sounds like intended, without the /n option. Of course if a game and its music were designed for a NTSC based machine it generally should played with 60 Hz automatically without the /n option. Hence the SPEED entry in the description file has to be set to 60 Hz (see below). /@<char> sets the background character ( default is /@▒ ) this is useful for owners of the Video Blaster hardware, who get noisy output caused by the background pattern; entering /@<space> to get a blank background (Thanks Bernhard !) is able by adding further command line options behind this one. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DESCRIPTION OF USED FILES AND FORMATS: SIDPLAY lists any file with the extension .DAT in the current directory whether it is a valid file or not. Refer to 'faq.doc' on how to get music packages for SIDPLAY or compatible ones for PlaySID. When selecting a file SIDPLAY tries to find an appropriate hidden information file or tries to determine whether the selected file is valid, by analyzing its internal file structure. Sometimes this is no protection against corrupt contents. The various formats of the information files (*.SID, *.INF) are described further below. The filename extensions can be renamed by changing the fields in the configuration file. SIDPLAY supports the following combinations of files: .DAT + .SID binary code and data file + plain ASCII file in SIDPLAY INFOFILE format .DAT + .INF binary code and data file + Amiga Workbench icon including ASCII text strings (used by PlaySID, supported by SIDPLAY) .DAT single file, containing binary code and data preceded by a binary information header (used by PlaySID, supported by SIDPLAY) .MUS single file, containing music data, e.g. made with Compute!'s (Enhanced) Sidplayer on C64 THE DATA FILES: The .DAT files used by SIDPLAY contain binary code and data. Both, the programmer on the C64 and this emulator need information on how to access the subroutines inside the binary, that means the memory location to load the file at, the number of tunes, the starting address of the executable code and its subroutines. That specific information has to be delivered in a separate file (see below), except if the data file contains an information header (see below). THE .INF (.INFO on Amiga) FILES: These are Amiga Workbench icons containing binary graphic data and ASCII text information strings. They are used by PlaySID but are compatible to SIDPLAY. The appropriate data files generally don't have a filename extension. Refer to the chapter 'Converting from/to PlaySID' on how to extract Amiga archives and about file conversion. THE .SID FILE-FORMAT: These are plain ASCII text file introduced by the earlier versions of SIDPLAY. They are used to alter the information inside with a normal text editor and can later be converted to a single .DAT file containing a binary header. The format is (don't change the line order !): SIDPLAY INFOFILE ADDRESS=<loadaddress>,<initaddress>,<playaddress> SONGS=<total>[,<start>] SPEED=<value> NAME=<name of music/tune> AUTHOR=<name of author/composer> COPYRIGHT=<year/name of copyright owner/company> SIDSONG=<YES|NO> The first line of the text containing 'SIDPLAY INFOFILE' is only to identify the type of file (the .SID extension may not be enough !). ADDRESS=<loadaddress>,<initaddress>,<playaddress> <loadaddress> is the address to load the .DAT file at (0 means the file is in original C64 format, i.e. the first two byte contain the loadaddress (lo/hi). <initaddress> is the start address of a subroutine that initializes a sound using the 6510 accumulator as song number (0-255). <playaddress> is the start address of a subroutine that can be called frequently by interrupt to produce a continuous sound. Each address is a 16-bit hexadecimal effective C64 memory address. SONGS=<total>,[<start>] <total> is the decimal number of tunes/sounds that can be initialized using the init-subroutine (minimum = 1). <start> default=1, is the decimal number of the tune to be played automatically after selecting a .DAT file (lowest = 1). SPEED=<value> <value> is a hexadecimal number that contains information about the speed of each tune/sound. For each tune/sound a bit is reserved, bit 0 for tune 1, bit 1 for tune 2 and so on. A 0 bit means the play-subroutine is called 50 Hz and a 1 bit means the speed which is indicated by the CIA Timer A (DC04/05) (default 60 Hz) Examples: SPEED=0 replays every tune at 50 Hz SPEED=1F replays tunes 1-5 (accumulator 0-4) at 60Hz and tunes 6-8 (a 5-7) at 50 Hz NAME=<name of music/tune> ; ASCII AUTHOR=<name of author/composer> ; ASCII COPYRIGHT=<year/name of copyright owner/company> ; ASCII SIDSONG=<YES|NO> is used to let SIDPLAY know that the belonging .DAT file is a (Enhanced) Sidplayer file from C64. This is useful when wanting to add extra song information into the .SID file. The format of a file 'EXAMPLE.SID' may look like this: SIDPLAY INFOFILE ADDRESS=2AF0,3002,300C SONGS=3,2 SPEED=0 NAME=Example AUTHOR=Example COPYRIGHT=1993 Example SIDSONG=NO THE 'PSID' FILE HEADER: You may display any .DAT file with a normal ASCII/HEX editor. If the first four characters/bytes contain the word 'PSID' and there are ASCII strings containing the author and copyright information you can nearly be sure that it is in PlaySID v2.2+ (Amiga) single-file-format. This format is supported by SIDPLAY. Hence you only need to add the .DAT extension to the filename, if it came from Amiga. Refer to the next chapter for more on PlaySID files and optional file conversion. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- USING FILES FROM PLAYSID (Amiga): If you have Amiga sidtune files installed on your PC, each tune may consist out of one or two files, either named '*' or '*' plus '*.info'. In both cases you will have to rename the files '*' to '*.DAT' to ensure, that SIDPLAY's simple file selector lists them. The files '*.info' generally are cut to '*.INF' while extracting Amiga archives on a DOS based PC. If you encounter any problems while extracting the Amiga archives on your PC, please take a look at the SIDPLAY 'frequently asked questions'-file 'faq.doc'. CONVERTING FILES FROM/TO PLAYSID (OPTIONAL !!!): Together with SIDPLAY four small file conversion tools have been released. You don't (!) have to use these tools to listen to any tunes currently available. Only if you like to work with the tunes, e.g. edit the description files or reduce the number of files, you are advised to use these tools. 'info2sid.exe' converts any .INF(O) file in the current directory to .SID format. Beware - there is currently no tool to reverse this operation ! Please make sure all files have been converted successfully, e.g. by counting the number of new created .SID files in comparison to the .INF files. Then you may delete the useless .INF files yourself. This operation is useful if you like to edit the song information files (please also read the previous chapter). This operation is useful if you like to edit the song information files (please also read the previous chapter). Editing a separate plain ASCII .SID file is much more easier than editing a binary .INFO workbench icon from Amiga on PC. You will have to rename any existing data files (generally without extension) to .DAT extension yourself (refer to 'faq.doc' on how to solve possible problems while extracting Amiga .lha archives on PC). 'sid2psid.exe' merges any belonging .SID and .DAT file in the current directory to a single .ONE file in the single-file-format used by PlaySID. Please make sure all files have been converted successfully, e.g. by counting the number of .ONE files in comparison to .SID files, then you may delete the .SID files and move the .ONE files to .DAT ! Don't delete any .DAT file if you're not sure it is in single-file-format already ! This operation is useful if you like to reduce the number of files or if you want to transfer sidtunes to PlaySID on Amiga. 'psid2sid.exe' separates any .DAT data file with a binary header (single-file-format used by PlaySID on Amiga) in the current directory into a .SID and a .DAT file. Please make sure all files have been converted successfully, e.g. by counting the number of .DAT files in comparison to .SID files. This operation is useful if you like to edit the song information files (please also read the previous chapter). Editing a separate plain ASCII .SID file is much more easier than editing a binary header of a PlaySID data file. 'psid2dat.exe' includes own online docs and was written by Henrik Isacsson. Basically, it is able to perform two jobs. 1) Giving PSID files (i.e. PlaySID single-file-format) meaningful filenames by building a name out of the header information. 2) Converting like 'psid2sid.exe' together with job 1). This really helps a lot when using archive contents from different platforms (like Amiga OS), because generally extracting such an archive results in loss of filename information. Also read the file 'faq.doc'. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE JUKEBOX-FILE FORMAT: SIDPLAY PLAYLIST <data file name including complete path> <0 = play default song | 1-255 = song number> <seconds to play> . . . END | LOOP END stops playing after the last entry LOOP causes the jukebox to restart To get an example jukebox playlist file, tag a few files in the SIDSHELL selector and press ALT+S to save it. You can than edit/display the save file with a simple ASCII editor. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TECHNICAL INFORMATION: * MOS-6581 Sound Interface Device (SID) emulator: - realtime envelope and 8-bit waveform calculation - emulation of carrier-modulator ring modulation and synchronization - ability to mute single voices - playing waveforms in 8-bit mode at up to 44100 Hz - optional stereo and quality stereo output (unreal) * MOS-6502/6510 MPU interpreter: - emulation of all valid MOS-6502/6510 instructions - emulation of illegal MOS-6502/6510 instructions (part 1+2) - full RAM, ROM and I/O bank switching like the real C64 - allowing use of full 64KB C64 host memory - supporting CIA-6526 Timer-A interrupt - running either on PAL or NTSC clock speed * PlaySID (Amiga) compatibility: - compatible to PlaySID's single-file-format header v1/v2 - full compatible to PlaySID's Amiga Workbench icon tooltype info - supporting fixed C64 'volume sample' players - supporting fixed C64 'Galway-Noise' players - using only Accumulator on initialization (option /a) - supporting PowerPacker "PP20"-compression - supporting SIDSONG mark for Sidplayer .MUS songs * Soundcard compatibility: - supporting Sound Blaster, SB 2.0, SB Pro, SB 16 and compatibles - supporting Pro AudioSpectrum, PAS Plus, PAS 16 and compatibles - supporting Gravis Ultrasound, GUS Max, GUS 16 and compatibles - trying to support "99% hardware compatible Sound Blaster clones" * General information: - 100% 386 compatible macro assembler language code - two times and four times fast forward - plus optional file conversion tools (AmigaOS <-> PC-DOS) - separate tool is able to redirect the output to a .WAV file - jukebox version working with listfiles - DOS-shell/background jukebox playing - support for C64 Sidplayer .MUS files ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Greetings, thanks and messages are going to: Wolfgang Schwendt for C64 docs & tips Ron Birk and Håkan Sundell for PlaySID and its fake sample docs Ethan Brodsky for the info on SB/SB16 programming Brandon Higa and for providing first SB docs and Steven Eckwielen naming some FTP-sites earlier Ingo Meier for revealing a very lame SB 2.0 bug Andreas Schildbach for chats, ideas and PlaySID news Jan Arnt Diabelez Harries for plenty of ripped musics and Steffan Henke Agust Arni Jonsson Bernhard Schwall for Trans64 Frank Littmann for the C64-Alive emulator Adam Lorentzon for extensive beta testing, moral support, good ideas and giving me the opportunity to use his WWW account for the SIDPLAY web page Henrik Isacsson for providing 'psid2dat.exe' Mike Paull for providing 'PEX' David S. Strauss for sending the C64 Sidplayer file format Andreas Varga for maintaining a SID WWW-homepage Karsten Rohrbach Linux ist Klasse :) Akintunde Omitowoju, Toni Nikkanen (for Morgul), Ben Jos Walbeehm, Fredrik Claesson, Roger Dahl, Robert Frahm (for beta testing on a SB clone), Eckhard Guether (for extensive beta testing on a PAS16), for useful bug'n'beta reports: Dimitri Ars, Tero Kilkanen, Daniel D. Holmes, Donald Moore, Henrik Simonsen, Ulrich Steppberger, Michael Wilkes, and to all my friends, on Internet, in real life, and to those who have been forgotten accidentally, and to the rest of the SIDPLAY beta testers and users who sent postcards, gave great moral support and bug reports. Keep on ! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Now you shouldn't read this file any longer. Start the player and enjoy the good old Commodore 64 sound ! -=-