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Revision: 1.1
Committed: 2000-07-28T12:42:28Z (23 years, 8 months ago) by cebix
Branch: MAIN
Branch point for: cebix
Log Message:
Initial revision

File Contents

# User Rev Content
1 cebix 1.1
2     SIDPlayer, Version 4.0
3    
4     A SID tune replayer for BeOS
5    
6     Copyright (C) 1996-2000 Christian Bauer
7     Freely distributable
8    
9    
10     License
11     -------
12    
13     SIDPlayer is available under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
14     See the file "COPYING" that is included in the distribution for details.
15    
16    
17     What is SIDPlayer?
18     ------------------
19    
20     SIDPlayer is a replayer program for C64 music ("SID tunes"), like PlaySID
21     on the Amiga or SIDPLAY for Unix. You can think of it as being a stripped-
22     down C64 emulator that only emulates the CPU and the sound chip of the
23     C64. SIDPlayer can replay SID tunes in the "PSID" file format, but it
24     cannot run any C64 programs.
25    
26    
27     Why would I want to listen to C64 music?
28     ----------------------------------------
29    
30     The C64 had the most advanced sound capabilities of all home computers in
31     the early 80's. While other computers of that time were only able to produce
32     beeps, the C64 had a complete 3-voice analog synthesizer on its MOS 6581
33     sound chip (called "SID" - "Sound Interface Device"). Even some more modern
34     computers (as the Atari ST or the first Macs) had worse sound.
35    
36     The SID chip features three oscillators with selectable waveform, ADSR
37     envelope generators, programmable resonance filters and special effects
38     like ring modulation. With the aid of the CPU, it can also replay 4-bit
39     sampled sounds. SIDPlayer emulates all features of the SID chip, including
40     the filters.
41    
42     There were (and are still) many composers programming excellent music for
43     the C64 and thousands of tunes have been converted for use with SID tune
44     replayers on nearly every existing computer platform. One big advantage of
45     SID tunes is that they take very little hard disk space: most are only 4-8K
46     in size.
47    
48    
49     Supported file formats
50     ----------------------
51    
52     The only SID tune file format supported by SIDPlayer is single-file PSID
53     files (these have the signature "PSID" in the first 4 bytes). Most SID music
54     available on the Internet is in this format.
55    
56    
57     Using SIDPlayer
58     ---------------
59    
60     SIDPlayer can be started from the Tracker or from the Shell. If you give
61     the name of a PSID file as an argument from the Shell or drag a PSID file
62     onto the SIDPlayer icon from the Tracker, that file is loaded and played.
63    
64     The SIDPlayer window some information about the currently loaded PSID file
65     and has the usual tapedeck-like controls for pausing, restarting and
66     stopping the replay and for selecting the next or previous song contained
67     in the PSID file. The number of the song currently playing and the total
68     number of songs in the loaded PSID file are displayed to the right of the
69     tapedeck buttons. The slider in the bottom right of the window can be used
70     to adjust the replay speed.
71    
72     Clicking and holding the right mouse button in the SIDPlayer window will show
73     a pop-up menu with three items:
74    
75     - "About SIDPlayer" shows some information about SIDPlayer
76     - "Sound Control" opens the sound control window
77     - "Quit" quits SIDPlayer
78    
79     To load another PSID file, drag it into the SIDPlayer window. To quit
80     SIDPlayer, close the window or select the "Quit" menu item.
81    
82     Some functions of SIDPlayer can also be controlled with the keyboard:
83     P : Play/pause
84     S : Stop
85     N : Next song
86     Esc/Space : Stop
87     Left arrow : Previous song
88     Right arrow: Next song
89     Q : Quit
90    
91     SIDPlayer can also be used as an input plugin for CL-Amp by Claes Löfqvist.
92     Simply copy the program to your CL-Amp "Plugins" directory (you have to copy
93     it, placing a link won't work) and rename it to "in_SIDPlayer".
94    
95    
96     The Sound Control window
97     ------------------------
98    
99     The checkbox labeled "Filters" is used to turn the emulation of the SID
100     filters on or off.
101    
102     The eight slider gadgets in the right part of the window control the
103     stereo panning and volume of each of the four voices (3 sythesized
104     voices, 1 sampled voice).
105    
106    
107     Where do I get PSID files
108     -------------------------
109    
110     The two largest collections of SID tunes are the "High Voltage" SID
111     Collection (http://www.dhp.com/~shark/c64music) and the "NemeSIDs"
112     archive (ftp://frodo.hiof.no/pub/c64/sidmusic). These have been used
113     for testing during the development of SIDPlayer and they should all work.
114    
115     Twelve demonstration SID tunes are included with SIDPlayer in the
116     "PSID Demo" directory.
117    
118    
119     History
120     -------
121    
122     V1.0 - First release
123     V2.0 - SID filter emulation, better envelope generation
124     V2.1 - Implemented notch filter, 60Hz replay now works, added faster/
125     slower buttons, compiled for BeOS DR8
126     V2.2 - Improved the 6510, triangle waveform is now 12 bits, output
127     clipping, stereo output, corrected SID sustain behaviour,
128     reading from a write-only SID register returns the last byte
129     written to the SID, combined waveforms sampled from a 6581R4
130     V2.3 - Corrected BRK, DCP, ARR and LAS instructions, volume levels up
131     to 200% possible, compiled for BeOS DR9
132     V2.4 - Shows name/author/copyright in ISO-Latin1
133     V2.5 - Converted panning/volume sliders to BSlider class
134     V3.0 - Unified PPC/x86 release
135     V4.0 - Now based on Frodo V5 CPU/SID code (more efficient CPU emulation,
136     post-processing effects (reverb, spatial), prefs manager), replaced
137     faster/slower buttons by slider, added popup menu and sound control
138     window, ported to BeOS R5 with new Media Kit, implemented CIA timer
139     speed control, and SIDPlayer can now also be used as a CL-Amp plugin
140    
141    
142     Christian Bauer
143     <Christian.Bauer@uni-mainz.de>