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Revision: 1.7
Committed: 2000-12-19T19:37:54Z (23 years, 3 months ago) by cebix
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.6: +2 -1 lines
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File Contents

# User Rev Content
1 cebix 1.1
2 cebix 1.6 SIDPlayer, Version 4.1
3 cebix 1.5 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 cebix 1.7 Please see the file "COPYING" that is included in the distribution for
13     details.
14 cebix 1.1
15    
16     What is SIDPlayer?
17     ------------------
18    
19 cebix 1.3 SIDPlayer is a replayer program for C64 music ("SID tunes"), like PlaySID on
20 cebix 1.4 the Amiga or SIDPLAY for Unix. You can think of it as being a stripped-down
21 cebix 1.3 C64 emulator that only emulates the CPU and the sound chip of the C64.
22     SIDPlayer can replay SID tunes in the "PSID" file format, but it cannot run
23     any C64 programs.
24 cebix 1.1
25    
26     Why would I want to listen to C64 music?
27     ----------------------------------------
28    
29     The C64 had the most advanced sound capabilities of all home computers in
30     the early 80's. While other computers of that time were only able to produce
31     beeps, the C64 had a complete 3-voice analog synthesizer on its MOS 6581
32     sound chip (called "SID" - "Sound Interface Device"). Even some more modern
33     computers (as the Atari ST or the first Macs) had worse sound.
34    
35     The SID chip features three oscillators with selectable waveform, ADSR
36 cebix 1.3 envelope generators, programmable resonance filters and special effects like
37     ring modulation. With the aid of the CPU, it can also replay 4-bit sampled
38     sounds. SIDPlayer emulates all features of the SID chip, including the
39     filters.
40 cebix 1.1
41     There were (and are still) many composers programming excellent music for
42     the C64 and thousands of tunes have been converted for use with SID tune
43     replayers on nearly every existing computer platform. One big advantage of
44     SID tunes is that they take very little hard disk space: most are only 4-8K
45     in size.
46    
47    
48 cebix 1.5 System Requirements
49     -------------------
50    
51     SIDPlayer runs on all Unix systems supported by SDL (which includes Linux,
52     FreeBSD, Solaris and Irix) and on BeOS R4.5 or later versions.
53    
54     Successfully tested systems include:
55     - Linux/i386
56     - BeOS/x86 R5
57     - BeOS/ppc R4.5
58    
59    
60 cebix 1.1 Supported file formats
61     ----------------------
62    
63     The only SID tune file format supported by SIDPlayer is single-file PSID
64     files (these have the signature "PSID" in the first 4 bytes). Most SID music
65     available on the Internet is in this format.
66    
67    
68 cebix 1.5 Installing SIDPlayer
69     --------------------
70    
71     See the file "INSTALL".
72    
73    
74     Using SIDPlayer under BeOS
75     --------------------------
76 cebix 1.1
77 cebix 1.3 SIDPlayer can be started from the Tracker or from the Shell. If you give the
78     name of a PSID file as an argument from the Shell or drag a PSID file onto
79     the SIDPlayer icon from the Tracker, that file is loaded and played.
80    
81     The SIDPlayer window displays some information about the currently loaded
82     PSID file and has the usual tapedeck-like controls for pausing, restarting
83     and stopping the replay and for selecting the next or previous song
84     contained in the PSID file. The number of the song currently playing and the
85     total number of songs in the loaded PSID file are displayed to the right of
86     the tapedeck buttons. The slider in the bottom right of the window can be
87     used to adjust the replay speed.
88 cebix 1.1
89 cebix 1.3 The SIDPlayer menu has three items:
90 cebix 1.1
91     - "About SIDPlayer" shows some information about SIDPlayer
92 cebix 1.5 - "Sound Control" opens the sound control window (see below)
93 cebix 1.1 - "Quit" quits SIDPlayer
94    
95     To load another PSID file, drag it into the SIDPlayer window. To quit
96     SIDPlayer, close the window or select the "Quit" menu item.
97    
98     Some functions of SIDPlayer can also be controlled with the keyboard:
99     P : Play/pause
100     S : Stop
101     N : Next song
102     Esc/Space : Stop
103     Left arrow : Previous song
104     Right arrow: Next song
105     Q : Quit
106    
107 cebix 1.5
108     Using SIDPlayer under Unix
109     --------------------------
110    
111     SIDPlayer currently only works as a command-line application. It is invoked
112     as follows:
113    
114     sidplayer FILE [song_number]
115    
116     "FILE" is the name of the PSID file to be loaded. The optional "song_number"
117     specifies the number of the song to be player (instead of the default song).
118     SIDPlayer cannot detect when a song has finished, so you have to use Ctrl-C
119     to quit it.
120 cebix 1.1
121    
122 cebix 1.5 The Sound Control window (BeOS only)
123     ------------------------------------
124 cebix 1.1
125 cebix 1.3 Sound post-processing is controlled with the "Effect" pop-up menu and the
126     "Delay" and "Feedback" sliders. The available effects are "None" (no post-
127     processing), "Reverb" (simple reverb) and "Spatial" (reverb with phase
128     shift, intended for headphone users).
129    
130 cebix 1.1 The checkbox labeled "Filters" is used to turn the emulation of the SID
131     filters on or off.
132    
133 cebix 1.3 The "New SID Chip" checkbox selects the type of SID chip to be emulated.
134     Currently this only affects some combined waveforms.
135    
136     The eight slider gadgets in the right part of the window control the stereo
137     panning and volume of each of the four voices (3 synthesized voices, 1
138     sampled voice).
139 cebix 1.1
140    
141     Where do I get PSID files
142     -------------------------
143    
144     The two largest collections of SID tunes are the "High Voltage" SID
145 cebix 1.3 Collection (http://hvsc.c64.org) and the "NemeSIDs" archive
146     (ftp://frodo.hiof.no/pub/c64/sidmusic). These have been used for testing
147     during the development of SIDPlayer and they should all work.
148    
149     Twenty demonstration SID tunes are included with SIDPlayer in the "PSID
150     Demo" directory.
151    
152    
153     Support
154     -------
155    
156     Updates of SIDPlayer are available on the official SIDPlayer home page:
157 cebix 1.1
158 cebix 1.3 http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/SPMain.html
159 cebix 1.1
160    
161     History
162     -------
163    
164     V1.0 - First release
165     V2.0 - SID filter emulation, better envelope generation
166     V2.1 - Implemented notch filter, 60Hz replay now works, added faster/
167     slower buttons, compiled for BeOS DR8
168     V2.2 - Improved the 6510, triangle waveform is now 12 bits, output
169     clipping, stereo output, corrected SID sustain behaviour,
170     reading from a write-only SID register returns the last byte
171     written to the SID, combined waveforms sampled from a 6581R4
172     V2.3 - Corrected BRK, DCP, ARR and LAS instructions, volume levels up
173     to 200% possible, compiled for BeOS DR9
174     V2.4 - Shows name/author/copyright in ISO-Latin1
175     V2.5 - Converted panning/volume sliders to BSlider class
176     V3.0 - Unified PPC/x86 release
177     V4.0 - Now based on Frodo V5 CPU/SID code (more efficient CPU emulation,
178     post-processing effects (reverb, spatial), prefs manager), replaced
179     faster/slower buttons by slider, added popup menu and sound control
180     window, ported to BeOS R5 with new Media Kit, implemented CIA timer
181     speed control, and SIDPlayer can now also be used as a CL-Amp plugin
182 cebix 1.5 V4.1 - Runs as a command-line application under Unix (requiring SDL)
183 cebix 1.1
184    
185     Christian Bauer
186     <Christian.Bauer@uni-mainz.de>