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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

# Content
1
2 SIDPlayer, Version 4.1
3 A SID tune replayer
4
5 Copyright (C) 1996-2000 Christian Bauer
6
7
8 License
9 -------
10
11 SIDPlayer is available under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
12 Please see the file "COPYING" that is included in the distribution for
13 details.
14
15
16 What is SIDPlayer?
17 ------------------
18
19 SIDPlayer is a replayer program for C64 music ("SID tunes"), like PlaySID on
20 the Amiga or SIDPLAY for Unix. You can think of it as being a stripped-down
21 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
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 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
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 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 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 Installing SIDPlayer
69 --------------------
70
71 See the file "INSTALL".
72
73
74 Using SIDPlayer under BeOS
75 --------------------------
76
77 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
89 The SIDPlayer menu has three items:
90
91 - "About SIDPlayer" shows some information about SIDPlayer
92 - "Sound Control" opens the sound control window (see below)
93 - "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
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
121
122 The Sound Control window (BeOS only)
123 ------------------------------------
124
125 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 The checkbox labeled "Filters" is used to turn the emulation of the SID
131 filters on or off.
132
133 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
140
141 Where do I get PSID files
142 -------------------------
143
144 The two largest collections of SID tunes are the "High Voltage" SID
145 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
158 http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/SPMain.html
159
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 V4.1 - Runs as a command-line application under Unix (requiring SDL)
183
184
185 Christian Bauer
186 <Christian.Bauer@uni-mainz.de>