ACID 64 Player v2.4.0 A next generation Commodore 64 Music Player Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Wilfred Bos http://www.acid64.com INTRODUCTION ============ ACID 64 Player is a cycle based Commodore 64 music player designed for playing SID tunes on sound cards/devices that have a real SID chip (6581/6582/8580) on board like the HardSID card, HardSID 4U USB device, the Catweasel MK3 PCI/Flipper card and the Catweasel MK4 card. ACID 64 emulates the MOS 6510 micro processor, the 6526 CIA chip and partially the 6569 VIC chip to run the code of a SID tune and it controls the SID chip on the device for playing the Commodore 64 music. PREREQUISITE ============ This software will only work on Windows Operating Systems (Win2K or higher recommended). The supported operating system is dependend on the drivers of the hardware. A HardSID card (ISA, PCI or Quattro), HardSID 4U USB device or Catweasel MK3/MK4 card must be installed on your machine and the drivers should be installed correctly in order to run ACID 64 Player. Go to http://www.hardsid.com or http://www.jschoenfeld.de/support/support_e.htm for more information. To support the hardware buffer of the MK4, you should connect a floppy device to the MK4 card. At the moment this is required for controlling the SIDs via the hardware buffer. This could change in future device drivers. If you're using a HardSID 4U, download the latest hardsid.dll from http://www.hardsid.com/downloads.php and put it into the folder where you've installed ACID 64 to. If you don't have a HardSID 4U USB device or Catweasel MK4 card, it is recommended to run ACID 64 Player on fast machines in order to play multi-speed tunes and digi tunes smoothly. The HardSID 4U USB device and Catweasel MK4 card have hardware buffers and utilizes their own resources. The HardSID 4U has two main CPUs + 8KB buffer and the Catweasel MK4 has one CPU + 1KB buffer. ACID 64 consumes less CPU time when playing SID tune on these hardware. INSTALLATION ============ Unzip the archive to a directory of your choice. You can make a shortcut for the executable 'ACID64player.exe' and move it to your desktop. To associate SID files with ACID 64 Player just go to the 'File' menu and choose 'Preferences...'. Then click on the 'Register as default application' checkbox and click on the 'OK' button. Only files with extension SID will be associated with the ACID 64 Player program. To unregister the file association, just uncheck the checkbox and press the 'OK' button. To configure STIL (SID Tune Information List) and the Song Length Database, you should have installed the High Voltage SID Collection (http://hvsc.c64.org/) on your drive. Go to the 'File' menu and choose 'Preferences...'. Select the HVSC Directory (e.g. C:\High Voltage SID Collection\C64Music) and press 'Save'. When a song is played that has some STIL info, a yellow i-button will appear. Click on the i-button or press CTRL-I to show the STIL info. If a song is recognized in the Song Length Database then it will show the song length after the SID tune title. To configure SIDId you should have the sidid.cfg file located on your drive (http://covertbitops.c64.org/tools/sidid.zip). Go to the 'File' menu and choose 'Preferences...'. Select the SID ID Config File (e.g. C:\SIDId\sidid.cfg) and press 'Save'. When a song is played, go to the properties dialog (F1 key) and in the 'Identified player(s)' section you can see which players are identified. You can also check the player within the C64 memory during playback by clicking on the 'Memory Scan' radio button in the properties dialog. This could be useful when you're running a PRG or SID file which is compressed or when you're skipping parts of a PRG file with the next button and want to check the players in memory. KEY SHORT CUTS ============== SPACE : Pause/Play ESCAPE : Stop 1-0 : Play sub song 1 to 10 CTRL-1 : Mute/Undo Mute Voice 1 CTRL-2 : Mute/Undo Mute Voice 2 CTRL-3 : Mute/Undo Mute Voice 3 CTRL-4 : Mute/Undo Mute Voice 4 CTRL-C : Copy filename CTRL-D : Switch to next device CTRL-SHIFT-D : Switch to previous device CTRL-E : Open directory in Explorer CTRL-F : Toggle Filter on/off CTRL-I : Display STIL info CTRL-M : Mute all voices CTRL-N : Select NTSC frequency for current tune CTRL-O : Open file CTRL-P : Select PAL frequency for current tune CTRL-RIGHT : Fast forward CTRL-HOME : Play first sub song CTRL-END : Play last sub song RIGHT : In file box -> Next sub song or simulation of space bar and joystick buttons In directory box -> Switch to file box LEFT : In file box -> Previous sub song In directory box -> One directory up UP : Browse in file/directory box DOWN : Browse in file/directory box TAB : Switch between directory box and file box HOME : In file box -> First sub song In directory box -> First directory END : In file box -> Last sub song In directory box -> Last directory BACKSPACE : Go 1 directory up and switch to directory box ENTER : Select song F1 : Properties page F10 : Minimize ACID64 to system tray F12 : Preference page TROUBLESHOOTING INFO ==================== HardSID ISA/PCI -> HardSID 4U: If you've used a HardSID ISA/PCI card before and you're using a HardSID 4U USB device instead on the same machine, then it is possible that you're still seeing the old devices in the devices dropdown. To avoid this, you should rerun the HardSIDConfig.exe utility that came with the HardSID ISA/PCI driver and auto detect SID chips by clicking the auto-detect button or remove the registry entry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Hard Software\HardSID and restart ACID 64. Timing / Performance issues: When you're using Windows 2K/XP that runs on a multi-core / multi-processor system that supports processor power management features, be aware that there are specific OS patches available (Microsoft support article ID: 909944, 896256, 895980 and 835730) to fix timing/performance issues that could occur in programs. Note that a hot fix for issue 835730 is already present in Win2K SP4 and WinXP SP2. If you experience timing problems in ACID 64, it is recommended to install the patches. After installing the patches it is possible to set the startup option 'usepmtimer' which specifies that the ACPI Power Management Timer (PMT) should be used as a high resolution counter (see article ID 895980 for more info). For Windows 2K/XP in combination of certain CPUs it is recommended that PMT is used as a high resolution counter, if available. Playback quality: When you record SID music it is recommended to leave ACID 64 on the foreground (focussed). This is recommended for the HardSID ISA/PCI and Catweasel MK3 cards. For time consuming SID tunes, ACID 64 is reducing CPU time to give your system more response time and to avoid lockups when it runs in the background. This is only done for SID tunes that write a lot of data to the SID chip in a certain time period. DISCLAIMER ========== Use this software at your own risk. ACID 64 Player comes with absolutely no warrenty. The author is not liable for any damage in any event as a result of using ACID 64 Player and also not for executing the mentioned patches and system configurations. ACID 64 Player is tested on several machines and on several Windows operating systems without any problems. This is not a guarentee that the software will work on any Windows machine. If you experience any problem with ACID 64 Player, please let the author know. COPYRIGHT ========= Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Wilfred Bos. All rights reserved. ACID 64 Player may be used freely and may only be distributed in its original zip archive format. THANKS ====== Thanks to Téli Sándor for building the HardSID family (ISA, PCI, Quattro and the 4U device). Thanks to Jens Schönfeld for creating the multi-functional Catweasel MK3 PCI/Flipper and MK4 card. Without these great SID cards and their owners, ACID 64 Player wouldn't be what it is now. Thanks to all the people who send me bug reports and suggestions about the previous versions of ACID 64 Player. Also I would like to thank J. Droege, Svein Erik Edsberg, P. Heartfield, P. Strik and A. Eriksen for their intensive beta testing. Many thanks to all the members and ex-members of the HVSC crew for their support, the great discussions about SID tunes & emulation issues and for their effort in converting so many SID tunes. Thanks to Cadaver of Covert Bitops and the contributors of SIDId for making all the signatures of the known sid players. CONTACT INFORMATION =================== Feel free to send me an e-mail for your feedback, questions or to report bugs. http://www.acid64.com email: acid64@xs4all.nl