rsinsch

I have just been informed that our server will be upgraded from 30th October to 1st November 2009. During this period there will be no access to www.rsinsch.de and no access to our high performance modland mirror. This also means that the iPhone ModBox application will not be able to download modfiles from the internet during this weekend.

I have decided to put the latest TinySID with experimental HardSID4U support online. Current features include

• Stereo remixing support(!)
• Cycle accurate playback of single and CIA-based multispeed tunes
• Configuration via dedicated HardSID4U options dialog
  

Sample playback is not yet included and I have also stripped the ISA/PCI compatibility.

If you feel the need for a tryout click here, or go to the TinySID windows download page.

In the case you're interested, Keripo has ported TinySID to the iPodLinux target for the iPod. Apart from the simple cross-compile, the only modification was the addition of an interactive volume controller through the iPod's scroll wheel during playback. The port has been added to Project ZeroSlackr and can be found here.

I have put some examples of the new stereo HardsidSID music routine from the next TinySID version online:

• Dalezy: Atomic Pretzel
• Jeff: Grise Lort

In order to archieve a stereo effect I have mapped instruments to different channels, depending on frequency and gate bit. Likewise the usage of different SID chips (6581 and 8580) creates a pseudo-stereo aura based on different filter settings. The effect should be quite audible.

After placing a preorder two months ago my HardSID4U arrived today:

For those who don't know: The HardSID4U device is an external USB SID device (yes, finally Téli Sándor did what I was demanding for in earlier blogs). You can plug up to four SID chips (either 6581 or 8580) into the external box and listen to good old SID music or compose something new using the VSTi plugin. As I am not a composer I will not go into deeper detail of the VSTi part here.

Having a look at the device itself I have to say that I am really astonished about the quality. Obviously Téli Sándor managed to create a professional looking device and a marvellous piece of technology. After opening the device I was afraid to see that there is a cpu fan, but luckily enough it doesn't make any reconginizable noise during operation.

Driver support is available for Windows and Vista (both 32 and 64 bit). Unfortunately the 64 bit drivers are not signed yet, so you have to manually disable the driver signing by pressing F8 during bootup in vista64 :( Anyway, the drivers work really nice and I have no stuttering or high CPU peaks at all and I can sign the drivers myself if I want to.

Sound output is available as a blended together signal or as a dry out for each SID chip individually. From my point of view the dry out seems to be the most interesting part, because with that it is possible to have stereo SID output. Unfortunately there is no software available yet for real stereo SID playback so I know what to do in my freetime ;) In the meantime I have to admit that I got used to the blended output "maxed out" for listening to both 6581 and 8580 tunes witout plugging and unplugging cables. Acid64Player will select the correct device for the current song. What a convenient feature ;)

As far as the programmers API is concerned things have changed a bit and TinySID does not work out of the box. I will update the routines as soon as I have time for it, Téli Sándor is really helpful via email and the API seems to be simply enough. And last but not least there will be a CFPlugin for OSX, which I am really looking forward to.

As soon as I have some more time I will upload some music examples and comparative results between 6581 and 8580 playback.

After bug reports from DeeKay I finally decided it is time to release TinySID 0.961 for OS X. New features include

• XCode 3 support
  
• 64 Bit support
• Song remembering during exit
• Bugfixes

Feel free to grab it in the download section or here .

I have been thinking about ways to implement a USB SID device. Well for now it's theoretical, but I believe it should be possible using the following components:

1. IO Warrior 56
   This one features guaranteed 1000Hz IO output through USB. As there are 56 IO ports simultaneously available it should be possible to send 5 "sidpokes" within a single USB packet while putting them sequentially via hardware to the SID chip. This results in 100 possible sidpokes per C64 PAL refresh cycle, I have checked some songs and about 30 pokes should suffice for singlespeed tunes.
   
   
2. Parallel port SID
   There is a nice and easy to understand project featuring detailed descriptions and schematics on how to build a parallel port SID adapter. Connecting this plus adding the simple IO output buffer idea shouldn't be that complicated.

What do you guys think. Does it make sense? Comments are welcome.

It is done: I finished porting the TinySID 0.96 branch to OS X. Feel free to download it in the TinySID OS X section. Current features include support for multispeed tunes, digitized playback and an easy-to-use file browser.

I have created a cocoa based version of TinySID. An alpha preview version is avaiable as universal binary here . Don't expect too much of it for now, but maybe someone can test it on an intel based macintosh (I don't have access to those devices) and provide some feedback.

Dietmar Klein sent me an email that his SIDTool is finally available for public beta.

Key features include

• Playback support for TinySID/Sidplay2
• Easy access to the entire High Voltage Sid Collection
• Easy single-click interface
• Songlength database support
• Continuous play to discover SIDs unknown to you
• Playlist support with ability to add certain subsongs
• and much more...

If you are into SID music, be sure to have a look at it: http://sidtool.demodungeon.com/ .

I'm pleased to announce that TinySID version 0.966 for windows is available.

Added:

• Command line support: Start and stop TinySID playing via command-line. This adds support for Dietmar Kleins "SidTool", an upcoming SID-Manager with extended playlist support and TinySID/Sidplay playback. Run "TinySID /?" for more information about available command-lines

Fixed:

• You can now register .SID filetypes to TinySID and play them through the explorer
• User-customized fonts for the filebrowser dialog will now be saved and restored correctly.
• 32 Bit version is optimized again for size and takes just ~23kbyte.
  

Versions are available in either 32bit and 64 bit format. Click here to grab them.

TinySID for PSP has been updated to version 0.3.

Whats new:

• Support for multispeed tunes
• Correct CIA timing
• Digi playback added
• Fastforward via right trigger
• Previous song selection via "O"-button

The download can be find in the TinySID download section.

Stefan Egger sent me a nice package including PSP TinySID with nice icons and support for Firmware 1.0/1.5. I also put the current sourcecode there so anyone can work on it. You can find it in the tinysid download section. Thanks Stefan!