To be very honest, much of this is speculations until proof of concepts are made. The hardware is there.
65 May 5, 2012 3:30 pm
Re: Oh, 2a0x, what other secrets do you hide? (21 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
66 May 5, 2012 12:49 pm
Topic: Oh, 2a0x, what other secrets do you hide? (21 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
By the magic of decapping a 2a03, additional hidden "TEST" features were found on at least a couple revisions of the 2a03 on pin 30. Not everything has been fully tested to determine all capabilities, which revisions of 2a03 contain the set of TEST features, or if the PAL 2a07 and its revisions have any TEST features at all. Among the known features there is extended APU function in addresses $4018 through $401A. Registers $4018 through $401A are readable. When read those registers supply the current values of the sound channels. Interestingly enough, when the first 4 bits of $401A are written to it changes the position of the triangle channel. In laymans terms, it allows for 4-bit PCM on the triangle channel. Why was this feature conceived and hidden? The 7th bit of $401A locks all sound channels if turned on.
Related post here. More technical details are explained within.
Not much testing has been done as of yet, but there are great possibilities for demoscene productions and these functions. Also there may be additional functions undiscovered with the TEST pin given voltage that we are all unaware to the possibilities.
67 Sep 19, 2011 2:48 pm
Re: the Totek Flash Cartridge: how do i get my .tfd files to play? (1 replies, posted in Sega)
So Tototek's flash cart supports SMS mode as well. What you could do is export to VGM with VGMMaker, making sure only PSG channels are used, and convert your VGM to an SMS ROM using Maxim's VGM Player. See if this works. I don't have a flash cart myself for GG, but in theory this should do the trick.
68 Aug 1, 2011 10:45 pm
Re: Raster Music Tracker (RMT) (29 replies, posted in Atari)
Radek (Raster).
Many of us found and still find your tracker to be very useful. To carry on your legend, hopefully someone will create another POKEY tracker in your memory.
69 Jul 16, 2011 4:23 am
Re: VGM Music Maker - a Sega Genesis tracker (174 replies, posted in Sega)
Shiru:
Any plans to support SMS's simpler YM2413? As far as I know XPMCK is the only tool to support its use.
Cheers yet again. 
70 Jul 15, 2011 2:26 am
Re: VGMplay and VGM music maker not workin (22 replies, posted in Sega)
DeadFish: Much appreciated with this work! This may be the final reason I decide to get an Everdrive.
71 Jul 14, 2011 1:14 am
Re: VGMplay and VGM music maker not workin (22 replies, posted in Sega)
animalstyle wrote:
I think it pulls the info from the GD3 tags to display in the ROM, so that would make total sense. How'd you figure that one out?
I'm gonna go write Micheal Stamper - he helped me out with the whole ROM padding thing in VGMplay 3.0 - I'm sure he'll fix this. It's probs something very small in the code.
Also - haven't seen you in 4evr Boo - you should come hang at 8static again!! we miss ya.
Hey, man. Yeah it's been a while. May do 8static one of these days. 
Good to know that DeadFish (Matthew) is still alive and active doing his thing. I decided that I would attempt to troubleshoot the issue and determined the amounts of points of failure. I started on a hunch with the GD3 footer information and was right.
Something that also doesn't work in VGM_PLAY v3.1 is his VGC support. Using his VGMConv application, we're able to compress VGM files to an undocumented format that he made, but when processing them with the VGM_PLAY v3.1 application, a strange error saying "OUT OF MEMORY: this may also be a bug," or something of the like appears. If the VGM_PLAY v3.1 application actually banks and decompresses compressed VGM to VGC files, it would mean more available songs per binary file. Taking into account that the compression most likely only compresses pattern and instrument data. Compression of sample information would potentially cause more problems than help. With compression of pattern and instrument data, the only cost would be CPU resources; resulting in a small pause from decrunching between song loads.
I'm hoping that someone creates a binary song format for Genesis and 32X some time soon; like NSF, SID, SGC, etc... Would also be nice if VGM MM takes advantage of 32X PWM, being that the VGM format supports it!
72 Jul 13, 2011 3:39 pm
Re: VGMplay and VGM music maker not workin (22 replies, posted in Sega)
Shiru / Animalstyle: In VGM_PLAY v3.10 it will process VGMMM VGMs as long as you zero out the GD3 information. It either doesn't process GD3 footers properly, or it doesn't like VGMMM's GD3 footer formatting.
73 Jul 13, 2011 7:08 am
Re: VGMPLAY rom thread (18 replies, posted in Sega)
saskrotch: I got VGM_PLAY v3.10 to process VGMMM VGMs if I zeroed out the GD3 footer information with a hex editor. VGM_PLAY v3.10 doesn't like the way VGMMM organizes its GD3 footer information for some reason. I could probably pinpoint which area it doesn't like, but I'm tired at the moment. 
You all are also aware that Maxim's VGMPlayer for SMS can input VGMs as well, right?
74 Jun 11, 2011 12:23 pm
Re: NES NSF Player with Mute Support? (14 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
NSFPlay (or NSFPlug) is great for muting channels. It also has good expansion support.
Btw, weird how our names are similiar. o_O ...
75 Jun 1, 2011 1:25 pm
Topic: FlashNSF Update (0 replies, posted in Bugs and Requests)
Site currently uses FlashNSF v0.4 alpha. Is there a reason why the site doesn't use v0.6 stable? Looks smaller and sleeker too.
76 Jun 1, 2011 12:33 am
Re: NSF playback in Flash (48 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
77 May 29, 2011 5:51 pm
Re: VGM player for NES (4 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
mic_ has updated his project with a song from RushJet1 and has posted a video on YouTube.
78 May 28, 2011 8:04 pm
Re: Atari 800 Pokey (RMT Tracker) (34 replies, posted in Atari)
You need a SIO cable to your PC. If you're running Windows you can use APE.
Here's a manual.
79 May 28, 2011 1:48 am
Re: VGM player for NES (4 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
He's finally released a demo of NESVGM. I hacked it up with a song by GreaseMonkey using IT2VGM and kulor using MOD2PSG2 too. My songs won't fit because they're over 200K and the PRG space (not including player code) is 128K with the mapper currently used.
80 May 27, 2011 3:25 pm
Topic: VGM player for NES (4 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
mic_ of XPMCK fame has recently released a video showing VGM (SN76489 for GG/SMS) playing on NES hardware using a PowerPak.
It's still in development and he's still ironing out a few kinks. Currently since the SN76489 has 3 pulse channels and the stock 2a0x only has 2, it uses an extra pulse from VRC6. Meaning if the project continues as is, a modded NES will be necessary.
He's also done other spectacular projects such as:
VGM Player for GB
VGM Player for TG-16/PCE
VGM Player for SNES
VGM Player for MD/Genesis
NSF Player for TG-16/PCE
SPC Player for SNES
All of them are released and located at his site.
If you want to know what can currently compose VGM (SN76489) music if you are looking at the playback options, currently you can use MOD2PSG2, XPMCK, and IT2VGM.