next up previous contents
Next: 3 PlaySID compatibility issues Up: SIDPLAY Home Page Previous: 1 Introduction

2 Frequently asked questions

2.1 Songs not running in SIDPLAY

If you find a sidtune which does not play, you might have encountered

In either case try to run the song by enabling the Transparent ROM mode first. If it still does not run, try enabling the PlaySID environment mode. If it still does not run, make sure If all of the above applies, refer to section 2.2.

2.2 How to submit a bug report?

 

If you happen to encounter a bug or anything unexpected, contact the author(s). It is very unlikely that the maintainer of a sidtune collection releases non-working tunes. So if you definitely can't get a song to work, try asking the individual maintainer of that collection for verification first. But don't forget to provide at least this information

as well as at least the following, which you are supposed to provide when contacting the author(s) of SIDPLAY: Send your bug report to the contact address found inside the malfunctioning copy of SIDPLAY. Please don't send any sidtunes along unless you are asked to. This helps reducing incoming mail overhead in case of major failures. But please take your time and try to be as precise as possible.

2.3 Changes

I have noticed a difference between the latest and a previous version. Is it a bug?

If you care, please submit a report according to what is written in section 2.2. It is appreciated that you try to be as precise as possible upon describing what you think might be wrong.

2.4 Where to get sidtunes?

 

The latest and best maintained sidtune collection on the Internet is the High Voltage SID Collection. It can be found on the World Wide Web. Related information is located at the same site:

The High Voltage SID Collection
http://www.dhp.com/~shark/c64music/
You can choose between download of individual sidtunes, automated updates to the collection and always the latest complete collection. Additionally you can use a search engine to look up individual sids.

2.5 Where can I find the ASM source code of SIDPLAY?

You can't. Only the DOS version was written in ASM. The source hasn't been published, and it won't be published either because the code is outdated. With appropriate 32-bit programming tools it should be much easier to use the existing emulator engine.

2.6 Can you help me playing SID music in my demo?

Although the SIDPLAY emulator engine is not designed and optimized for usage in demos, intros and similar, it is possible to use its platform independent code. A 32-bit C++ compiler, soundcard drivers and maybe a few portability adjustments are needed.

2.7 How to transfer sidtunes from the C64?

Check the links section on the SIDPLAY home page. There is at least one emulator related home page linked that explains how to process C64 files and where to get the necessary software and hardware.

2.8 How to replay the same sidtunes on the C64?

Since you ask this question you most certainly don't know 6502 machine code programming. There is a sidtune player for the real C64 available. It is compatible to the PlaySID one-file format. Else it has nothing much in common with SIDPLAY.

The Digital Dungeon
ftp://utopia.hacktic.nl/pub/c64/Music/SidPlay/

2.9 When will feature X and effect Y be implemented?

If you want special features and improvement in certain parts of the emulator, please think about supporting the authors. We do appreciate any kind of sponsoring or donations, whether it is free hardware, software or money. Please contact us.

Volunteers of any kind - whether programmers, developers, electronic engineers, C64 musicians or team workers - who would be interested in a next generation SID emulator are hereby invited to think about a possible joint venture. There are many ideas and emulation approaches to discuss. If you would like to start your own project I would be happy to support you.

2.10 Would you happen to know what the four tunes from SIDPLAY/DOS v1.10 are?

  1. Lightforce by Rob Hubbard
  2. Rambo: First Blood Part 2 (song #10) by Martin Galway
  3. BraveStarr by David Whittaker
  4. Glider Rider by David Whittaker

2.11 How to convert the sidtune file formats?

Notice, you don't need to. In case of sidtunes that consist of more than one file, any format conversion is optional. As modern SID music collections come in one-file format only, this question might as well be removed from this FAQ.

On the contrary, there are still old sidtune packages on the Internet. Such packages may contain files in any of the formats described in section 5.2. The file naming might be very unusual. And as there is no way to detect plain C64 data files, an unknown file might as well contain text or graphics, but just no music data.

By default, but depending on the particular player front end, SIDPLAY searches your directory for the following possible file name extensions and tries to match a pair of files if the specified file is not in one-file format. This list may change at any time:

You have the possibility to configure other default file extensions. In case of two-file sidtunes you only need to provide file names which contain any of the extensions supported by the particular version of SIDPLAY you are using. It is recommended that you get accustomed to the *.sid extension for one-file sidtunes.

Experienced users of SIDPLAY may want to do optional conversion when working on sidtunes. For instance, if you would like to change the song info or modify the ripped data. This may either be done from inside the player front end or with external utilities.

2.12 How to extract old collections for PlaySID?

Q: When I downloaded the song archives, I found out that I can't extract the .INF files from the .LHA files. Apparently, when I use DOS to extract them, LHA can't handle the fact that the files have a four character extension .INFO. How can I get the info files out of the LHA files?

A: Use LHA x -a -m2 to extract the files from the LHA archives. When the extraction is complete you don't need to convert any files for use with SIDPLAY. But before proceeding, make sure what types of files the archive contained. This is necessary to successfully complete the following probably required renaming procedure:

2.13 How to extract the NemeSIDs Collection?

 

With MS-DOS always use LHA x -a -m2 to extract the files from the LHA archives. While option -a allows files with any attributes to be extracted, option -m2 enables renaming of double filenames. Double filenames are caused by LHA, cutting long filenames from the AmigaDOS file-system to the limited length of the (MS-)DOS file-system.

When the extraction is complete you find a lot of files named psid.* in each directory. In some newer packages the filename is simply the name of the tune. Caution. A few files are read only or even hidden. You will have to manually change their file attribute to be able to see them. The main job will be to rename the files, so that SIDPLAY is able to find and list them. Adding a support file extension to each file should usually be enough.

For some operating systems there are small helper utilities which are capable of renaming sidtune files automatically. 4DOS users may like to make use of the Psid EXtracting utility. The script and its documentation are available on most C64 emulation FTP servers.


next up previous contents
Next: 3 PlaySID compatibility issues Up: SIDPLAY Home Page Previous: 1 Introduction