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Revision: 1.5
Committed: 2000-10-10T21:47:46Z (24 years ago) by cebix
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.4: +40 -13 lines
Log Message:
updated docs

File Contents

# User Rev Content
1 cebix 1.1
2 cebix 1.5 SIDPlayer, Version 4.0
3     A SID tune replayer
4 cebix 1.1
5 cebix 1.5 Copyright (C) 1996-2000 Christian Bauer
6 cebix 1.1
7    
8     License
9     -------
10    
11     SIDPlayer is available under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
12     See the file "COPYING" that is included in the distribution for details.
13    
14    
15     What is SIDPlayer?
16     ------------------
17    
18 cebix 1.3 SIDPlayer is a replayer program for C64 music ("SID tunes"), like PlaySID on
19 cebix 1.4 the Amiga or SIDPLAY for Unix. You can think of it as being a stripped-down
20 cebix 1.3 C64 emulator that only emulates the CPU and the sound chip of the C64.
21     SIDPlayer can replay SID tunes in the "PSID" file format, but it cannot run
22     any C64 programs.
23 cebix 1.1
24    
25     Why would I want to listen to C64 music?
26     ----------------------------------------
27    
28     The C64 had the most advanced sound capabilities of all home computers in
29     the early 80's. While other computers of that time were only able to produce
30     beeps, the C64 had a complete 3-voice analog synthesizer on its MOS 6581
31     sound chip (called "SID" - "Sound Interface Device"). Even some more modern
32     computers (as the Atari ST or the first Macs) had worse sound.
33    
34     The SID chip features three oscillators with selectable waveform, ADSR
35 cebix 1.3 envelope generators, programmable resonance filters and special effects like
36     ring modulation. With the aid of the CPU, it can also replay 4-bit sampled
37     sounds. SIDPlayer emulates all features of the SID chip, including the
38     filters.
39 cebix 1.1
40     There were (and are still) many composers programming excellent music for
41     the C64 and thousands of tunes have been converted for use with SID tune
42     replayers on nearly every existing computer platform. One big advantage of
43     SID tunes is that they take very little hard disk space: most are only 4-8K
44     in size.
45    
46    
47 cebix 1.5 System Requirements
48     -------------------
49    
50     SIDPlayer runs on all Unix systems supported by SDL (which includes Linux,
51     FreeBSD, Solaris and Irix) and on BeOS R4.5 or later versions.
52    
53     Successfully tested systems include:
54     - Linux/i386
55     - BeOS/x86 R5
56     - BeOS/ppc R4.5
57    
58    
59 cebix 1.1 Supported file formats
60     ----------------------
61    
62     The only SID tune file format supported by SIDPlayer is single-file PSID
63     files (these have the signature "PSID" in the first 4 bytes). Most SID music
64     available on the Internet is in this format.
65    
66    
67 cebix 1.5 Installing SIDPlayer
68     --------------------
69    
70     See the file "INSTALL".
71    
72    
73     Using SIDPlayer under BeOS
74     --------------------------
75 cebix 1.1
76 cebix 1.3 SIDPlayer can be started from the Tracker or from the Shell. If you give the
77     name of a PSID file as an argument from the Shell or drag a PSID file onto
78     the SIDPlayer icon from the Tracker, that file is loaded and played.
79    
80     The SIDPlayer window displays some information about the currently loaded
81     PSID file and has the usual tapedeck-like controls for pausing, restarting
82     and stopping the replay and for selecting the next or previous song
83     contained in the PSID file. The number of the song currently playing and the
84     total number of songs in the loaded PSID file are displayed to the right of
85     the tapedeck buttons. The slider in the bottom right of the window can be
86     used to adjust the replay speed.
87 cebix 1.1
88 cebix 1.3 The SIDPlayer menu has three items:
89 cebix 1.1
90     - "About SIDPlayer" shows some information about SIDPlayer
91 cebix 1.5 - "Sound Control" opens the sound control window (see below)
92 cebix 1.1 - "Quit" quits SIDPlayer
93    
94     To load another PSID file, drag it into the SIDPlayer window. To quit
95     SIDPlayer, close the window or select the "Quit" menu item.
96    
97     Some functions of SIDPlayer can also be controlled with the keyboard:
98     P : Play/pause
99     S : Stop
100     N : Next song
101     Esc/Space : Stop
102     Left arrow : Previous song
103     Right arrow: Next song
104     Q : Quit
105    
106 cebix 1.5
107     Using SIDPlayer under Unix
108     --------------------------
109    
110     SIDPlayer currently only works as a command-line application. It is invoked
111     as follows:
112    
113     sidplayer FILE [song_number]
114    
115     "FILE" is the name of the PSID file to be loaded. The optional "song_number"
116     specifies the number of the song to be player (instead of the default song).
117     SIDPlayer cannot detect when a song has finished, so you have to use Ctrl-C
118     to quit it.
119 cebix 1.1
120    
121 cebix 1.5 The Sound Control window (BeOS only)
122     ------------------------------------
123 cebix 1.1
124 cebix 1.3 Sound post-processing is controlled with the "Effect" pop-up menu and the
125     "Delay" and "Feedback" sliders. The available effects are "None" (no post-
126     processing), "Reverb" (simple reverb) and "Spatial" (reverb with phase
127     shift, intended for headphone users).
128    
129 cebix 1.1 The checkbox labeled "Filters" is used to turn the emulation of the SID
130     filters on or off.
131    
132 cebix 1.3 The "New SID Chip" checkbox selects the type of SID chip to be emulated.
133     Currently this only affects some combined waveforms.
134    
135     The eight slider gadgets in the right part of the window control the stereo
136     panning and volume of each of the four voices (3 synthesized voices, 1
137     sampled voice).
138 cebix 1.1
139    
140     Where do I get PSID files
141     -------------------------
142    
143     The two largest collections of SID tunes are the "High Voltage" SID
144 cebix 1.3 Collection (http://hvsc.c64.org) and the "NemeSIDs" archive
145     (ftp://frodo.hiof.no/pub/c64/sidmusic). These have been used for testing
146     during the development of SIDPlayer and they should all work.
147    
148     Twenty demonstration SID tunes are included with SIDPlayer in the "PSID
149     Demo" directory.
150    
151    
152     Support
153     -------
154    
155     Updates of SIDPlayer are available on the official SIDPlayer home page:
156 cebix 1.1
157 cebix 1.3 http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/SPMain.html
158 cebix 1.1
159    
160     History
161     -------
162    
163     V1.0 - First release
164     V2.0 - SID filter emulation, better envelope generation
165     V2.1 - Implemented notch filter, 60Hz replay now works, added faster/
166     slower buttons, compiled for BeOS DR8
167     V2.2 - Improved the 6510, triangle waveform is now 12 bits, output
168     clipping, stereo output, corrected SID sustain behaviour,
169     reading from a write-only SID register returns the last byte
170     written to the SID, combined waveforms sampled from a 6581R4
171     V2.3 - Corrected BRK, DCP, ARR and LAS instructions, volume levels up
172     to 200% possible, compiled for BeOS DR9
173     V2.4 - Shows name/author/copyright in ISO-Latin1
174     V2.5 - Converted panning/volume sliders to BSlider class
175     V3.0 - Unified PPC/x86 release
176     V4.0 - Now based on Frodo V5 CPU/SID code (more efficient CPU emulation,
177     post-processing effects (reverb, spatial), prefs manager), replaced
178     faster/slower buttons by slider, added popup menu and sound control
179     window, ported to BeOS R5 with new Media Kit, implemented CIA timer
180     speed control, and SIDPlayer can now also be used as a CL-Amp plugin
181 cebix 1.5 V4.1 - Runs as a command-line application under Unix (requiring SDL)
182 cebix 1.1
183    
184     Christian Bauer
185     <Christian.Bauer@uni-mainz.de>