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ChipMusic.org / Forums / Posts by Awol
I've emailed the SidDump creator to ask if it wouldn't be too difficult to update the tool to work with multispeed tunes. I'll let you guys know if I hear back.
It's still very useful for single speed though. I ripped a nice kick drum sound from a Mortimer Twang tune. 
Anyone have advice for designing multispeed instruments/tracks?
I want to convert my NTSC C64C to PAL. I need:
1) 8565 VIC-II chip
2) 17.734472 MHz crystal
Thanks!
Thanks for the ideas! Someone on another forum has suggested a much easier method though...
I think it's possible to piggyback these and use the chip select signal on pin 10 to choose which chip to use.
There's at least one guy here that has done this.
I feel a bit silly now.
EDIT: Found another post suggesting that piggybacking the VIC-II's and toggling chip select won't work. Hmm.
Thanks for your input 4mat. Yeah, I was talking about that brassy lead sound. I guess it's mostly just a square wave pitched up. For some reason I thought it was more complicated.
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I was having trouble getting siddump to save to a text file until I found this page. I'll just leave these instructions here for my fellow n00bs...
1) Put the siddump program in a folder
2) Put the .sid file you want to analyze in the same folder
3) Open a command prompt and navigate to the folder with the cd command
4) Type something along these lines and hit enter: SIDDUMP sidfilename.sid -tX >textfilename.txt
Where X is the song's approximate length in seconds.
The folder will now also contain textfilename.txt. Open it in notepad. If you open it in wordpad the formatting will be incorrect.
Every row in the txt stands for a video frame. PAL is 50 frames per second, so if the song is PAL (probably), every 50 rows corresponds to 1 second in the song's play time. 60 for NTSC.
I've read that converting a C64 between NTSC and PAL requires swapping the VIC-II chip and crystal, and connecting a jumper. Surprisingly simple. Even better, the VIC-II in my C64C is socketed. It would be cool though to have both NTSC and PAL selectable with a switch, on a board that plugs into the C64's VIC-II socket. Unfortunately, 40PDT switches (because the VIC-II has 40 pins) don't seem to exist, and if they did they'd be a pain to wire up. I'd like to design a functional equivalent. I don't know that much about electronics, just enough to follow other people's instructions for modding, but I've never designed anything from scratch before. So maybe my ideas will sound naive...
Transistors can work like switches right? What if the line coming from each socket pin on the motherboard splits into a Y, with one direction going to the NTSC VIC-II and the other direction going to the PAL VIC-II. Each chip would have a transistor per pin. Have an SPDT switch to apply voltage to the bases of every transistor, with one throw connected to the NTSC chip's transistors, and the other throw connected to the PAL chip's transistors. Except... I was reading about the VIC-II and it seems like some of the pins are both input and output. Is that correct? Transistors only allow current to flow one way. I read that triacs are similar to transistors but are designed for AC currents and allow flow both ways. Maybe triacs could be used instead.
Would this even work?
Even if it did, is there a better way that doesn't involve soldering 80 transistors or triacs? Some kind of IC?
I tried using siddump to check out "Electronic Transfer" by Gallefoss and got this error message: "CPU executed abnormally high amount of instructions."
Is that because it's multispeed (5x)? I really wanted to learn more about that sound that starts at 2:10...
I dug out my old laptop running Windows XP and have the C64 hooked up to it via an EasyCap video capture thing. Using a program called DScaler to view it. And it works! The top half of the SID-Wizard logo is still chopped off, but the important thing is that now I can see all three rows of the orderlist. Time to make some noise!
I did try getting the EasyCap to run on my newer Windows 7 laptop but couldn't get the driver to work.
Anyway, far from ideal. Totally regretting giving away my C64 monitor to Damon of Starscream (Infinity Shred?). There was just no way to take it with me when I moved away. Still not ideal though, as it wasn't exactly flatscreen. 
I tried 3 different TVs and had the same problem. Looking at the manual for one of them tells me that vertical position is only adjustable on the VGA input. Maybe an s-video>VGA adapter would work. 
Thanks for the help.
When I run this tracker on a real C64C plugged into my TV via s-video the top and bottom of the screen (the info area and third row of the orderlist area) get cut off! Does this have anything to do with my machine being NTSC? Does this happen to anyone else? SID-Wizard is on version 1.4 now by the way.
I'm in the US but have a stock PAL A1200. It kept crashing. I was testing it by running AHX tracker from a floppy. Whenever I loaded and played a song, it would play for a few seconds with garbled audio and then crash. I kept getting errors "8000 0003" and "8100 0005".
So I replaced all the capacitors. It did need that because one of the through-hole caps was bulging, and one of the SMD caps had leaked. It still boots up, but has the same problems! In fact, now sometimes I get the error messages, and sometimes the screen goes glitchy and freezes while glitchy audio keeps playing. It also crashes even if I just go into the Amiga's own audio settings and try to play the test beep.
Why is this happening and how do I fix it?!
Thanks!
EDIT: Other possibly useful things to know... It's motherboard revision 1D4. The only socketed chips on it are the two Kickstart ROMs, which say version 3.0.
EDIT2: Could the problem be the hard drive? PSU? Floppy drive? Bad chips? Virus?
I fixed it! I had ground and 5v swapped by mistake. I feel stupid.
In the end I went with a 4PDT switch that reroutes the data lines for both ports (1X/1Y/2X/2Y), and I connected the power and ground lines for all 4 potentiometers straight to port 1's pins on the underside of the motherboard. When the ports are switched on, my mouse works in port 2. I haven't tried using an external controller in port 1 yet.
Well I tried the switch method suggested by nitro and now my mouse works but the pots don't anymore! I'll have to double check all the connections and see if there's a short circuit somewhere or something.
At least the JiffyDOS and uIEC/SD that I just put in work fine. I even managed to desolder the original kernel without damaging it... Ok, I broke one leg.
Well the silliest thing he has done is the case shrinking mod
but for example his "noise reduction" mod just doesn't work.
I do get significantly less noise with Alpha's noise reduction mod. Perhaps it's less effective on certain motherboard or SID revisions? I've got a C64C with 8580 SIDs.
I posted this in the Black Lines Din Sky demoset thread, but just realized you might not check that thread again since the files were taken down.
I downloaded these while they were up but only just got time to listen to them. Surprisingly relaxing! I like it!
Glad to read in the newsletter that Radiograffiti's going to be putting out more stuff again soon. I've got vinyl copies of everything released so far (and an RG sticker on the bumper of my car), but unfortunately won't be able to continue that practice thanks to lack of money/space.
I downloaded these while they were up but only just got time to listen to them. Surprisingly relaxing! I like it!
Glad to read in the newsletter that Radiograffiti's going to be putting out more stuff again soon. I've got vinyl copies of everything released so far (and an RG sticker on the bumper of my car), but unfortunately won't be able to continue that practice thanks to lack of money/space.
Great music, and cool graphic design too! Saw this on CSDB a couple days ago, but it wasn't on Youtube yet. My C64's out of order at the moment. Can't wait to check this out on real hardware.
This is my idiot-proof schematic, for people that have no idea of electronics (like me) and want to build two pots with disable switch for port 2 potentiometers:
I have to say I built this and really didn't think it was necessary to bother. I think different rate potentiometers might yield similar results.
Thanks for posting the schematic! The perfectionist side of me was considering re-doing my pots InactiveX style, but I'm too lazy, and now you say it's not worth it. I don't think I'll use the pots much anyway. Expect I'll spend most of my time checking out SID Wizard once I get my uIEC/SD connected internally.
The way I do the switch is by connecting the power lines of the pots of the same port together then onto the +5 lne, so all I have is to connect that line to a single switch. You don't need a DPDT switch. No power, no pot. Mouse works fine. I wouldn't like to power the mouse and the pots at the same time on the same pot, sounds prone to disaster.
Wouldn't cutting X and Y disconnect the pots as effectively as cutting GND or 5V? What could go wrong if you leave the pots powered but with their data output disconnected like nitro said?
As a side note, I wouldn't do almost ANYTHING that Alpha recommends.
Hm. Why, what else did he do that seems silly?
ChipMusic.org / Forums / Posts by Awol