1. Re: Eu and SID:s
- Posted by John Kinsey <jkinsey at BELLSOUTH.NET>
Jun 04, 1999
-
Last edited Jun 05, 1999
Hi Tor,
and everyone else on the EU list. I know I haven't kept up with this list
for a while but I got a spare moment and thought I would comment. Here we
go. I have a book that you (sound fanatics or whatever you would like to
call yourselves
called 'Blaster Mastery' from SAMS Publishing its quite
old had to knock the dust from it but it might contain the incantations you
guys want for building programs that can make a noise or two. Here is the
ISBN number 0-672-30352-3 It will be hard to find I think I bought it on
sale for about $9.00 US originally it was $34.95 US/$43.95 CAN. Well anyway
you might be able to find it a your local Public Library or used computer
bookstore. It has allot of hardware info that could still apply today
remember the cards still are backwards compatible with the older IO
addresses for the most part. Here are some of the registers from the book.
offset type Use
00h Read FM music status, left channel
00h Write FM music register, left channel
01h Write FM music data, left channel
02h Read FM music status, right channel
02h Write FM music register, right channel
03h Write FM music data, right channel
04h Write Mixer chip register
05h Read/Write Mixer chip data
These are just a sample from the book they are for the Sound Blaster Pro,
Pro2, and Pro basic boards.
"This card uses 24 individual I/O port addresses, beginning at one of the
following base addresses: 220h or 240h." quoted from the book. Also you
should be able to find Info on sound programming on Microsoft's DirectX site
and Creative Labs Developer Web Site if it is still there I think they have
a SDK from Creative Labs.
Thanks,
JKinsey
PS If I have time I will try to put together a little help file from the
stuff in this book for everyone.
-----Original Message-----
From: Euphoria Programming for MS-DOS
[mailto:EUPHORIA at LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU]On Behalf Of Tor Bernhard Gausen
Sent: Friday, May 28, 1999 2:54 PM
To: EUPHORIA at LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
Subject: Re: Eu and SID:s
Stab master <stabmaster_ at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
> Does anyone on this list know ANYTHING about how to emulate the SID chip
on
> a PC?
> I've downloaded SidPlay for Windows, and the entire HighVoltage SID
> Collection. While listening to the cheesy old tunes of Giana Sisters and
> R-type I came up with an idea: how bout a SID-player for Euphoria?
> People who are familar with sound programming are free to give their
opinion
> on this.
>
> ...so are all of you who don't...
I don't. But I do have an opinion. First of all, die hard 64 freaks like
me never think emulations sound nearly as good as the original,
but that's just because we want to stress that we are REAL die
hard 64 freaks. SidPlay is for instance (seen more objectively) not
that bad. But the emulation requires enormous computer power
compared to what you get back. The SID hardware could do pulse
waveforms, ring modulations, syncronizations and REAL TIME
RESONANCE FILTER (!) all at once. An emulator must also
simultaneously do the work of 1 MHz main processor if you want
the real thing. Even in C this must be a challenge.
So in the end, I don't see the big point.
What I would like instead is a new Euphoria programmed synthetic
music library like one of those AD-LIB routines (I don't know much
about those, just listened to the music in freeware games like
'COWS' and in some executables that can be downloaded from the
"Maniacs Of Noise" site. I think this sounds great, and at the same
time it takes up no memory compared to sample based music.
Look at the Lemon Heads game for instance. What took up all the
memory and made it awkward to download?
I would really like to give something like this a go myself, but there
are two things I don't know:
1) How to output a multi channel 16 bit signal to the soundcard
(kind of important, I guess .
2) How to do the multi-tasking, so that you can start the music and
let it play in the background while the program does other things.
I assume a simple software synthesizer could be coded in clean
EU without any machin code.
But I'm not sure...
( BTW: In the High Voltage Collection: check out
the song 'WALKMAN' under 'other composers'.
I made that in 1987 
(though is says 1988).
Makes Beethoven's 5th bleak in comparison ! )
Best Regards,
Tor Gausen
