Strange Demo screens

[alexh]

Not that it matters but you can Play Lethal-Xcess in windows with Deliplayer or WinJAM and get a similar / better result

[bullis1]

Probably so, but the thing is that I love circuitry, and that as a musician who uses an Atari ST, I'll probably want to use this D/A for other purposes.

Besides, I'd like to listen to the Lethal Xcess music while actually playing the game

[karlm]

bullis1:

here is the original text for you.

For everyone trying to work out what this is...

An A/D converter is in essence a bunch of resistors in parallel, which sort of works like a nut grader. The signal goes in and if it fits through the small hole, a small sound comes out, if it's too big, it goes to the next hole, and so on.

A D/A converter does exactly the opposite, it combines all the signals into one, this is why you can either elect to solder in a D/A chip or make your own 'chip' as above. The resistor version may not be as crisp as the chip version, but it has the benefit of nearly everyone able to lay their hands on a bunch of resistors...

and as a bonus, here is a link for those using a windows box to be able to see the ascii in all it's glory:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-tools/Text-editors/DAMN-NFO-Viewer.shtml

cheers

karlm.

[bullis1]

Alright, that text file is great. The information within is written for PCs, but the circuit schematics look like they will work fine on Atari. A parallel port is a parallel port, as they say.

Thanks for the file, karlm! It was a good read, and the ASCII schems look fine when I view them in MSDOS Edit.

[Gunstick]

cool. Soldering iron coming out tonight

which demos should I try Gunstick?

cheers

karlm

Sorry for my late reply.
Just wade through this list
http://www.cpu.lu/ulm/demoarchive/
and grab axelf, fastload, lifesabitch (not shure though, the possible candidate being the fullscreen), miamivice, oxygen_v2, paranoimia, paulaabdul, rendezvous, september, starrtrck, streethawk, tourisk, ulm_ny (the zoolook screen) and maybe even ulm93

Georges

[MiggyMog]

Doesn't TCB Tracker/Audio sculpture support this too?

I take it this is essentially like a Monster sound cartridge only in mono?

I wish I'd known about this mod before I got my STE, LOL!

That's something else for the emulator coders to add in along with MV16,Playback Cartridge/Replay Emulation.

[bullis1]

Any other trackers that support such a device out there?

It's a really easy and fun device to make.

[Mug UK]

Any other trackers that support such a device out there?

It's a really easy and fun device to make.

Any chance of you making one but taking proper photos of each step? Then upload it in a tutorial form for the Wiki?

[mcoder]

The disk drive grinding was on the amiga, some demo played the american anthem or somethign silly like that.. As we all remember it had a god awfully loud floppy. I was very nearly honestly scared the first time I heard my mates amiga chugging away at a game - I looked at him to see if something was wrong, but all seemed normal.. Don't let SainT's flopppy emulation fool you, the ST's was whisper quiet in comparison.

It was "La Cucaracha".
Quite horrible to hear, since it could hurt the floppy head.

[bullis1]

Any chance of you making one but taking proper photos of each step? Then upload it in a tutorial form for the Wiki?

I'm sorry Mug! I didn't see this reply when you made it!

I can take photos of the internals, but I do not plan on making another one because it uses up a lot of resitors, which I do not have many of. I don't think I'd be the best candidate for writing the wiki article anyway. My circuitry work never looks pretty

[Dal]

Don't know if that's 100% legit as some of the sound could have been added afterwards (the advent of YouTube and similar sites has caused me a lot of cyncism - everyone wants 15 minutes of fame!) but if it's 100% legit then that's a good video (and a dead scanner!)

Yup it's legit but nothing clever going on. Simply set your HP ScanJet to SCSI ID 0 and power on with the Scan button held in. It's an Easter Egg on the device.

Pretty Cool Though. Amongst other HP scanners you can find Beethoven's Ode to Joy as well as Vivaldi's Spring (1st Movement)

[Mug UK]

Well I never knew that!

Surely it must damage the scanner head in some way - mind you, if it's an Easter Egg then I guess HP wouldn't have put it in there to do damage.

Hopefully neither of my two scanners do that as they were damned expensive to buy

[bullis1]

Doesn't TCB Tracker/Audio sculpture support this too?

I take it this is essentially like a Monster sound cartridge only in mono?

I wish I'd known about this mod before I got my STE, LOL!

That's something else for the emulator coders to add in along with MV16,Playback Cartridge/Replay Emulation.

I tried out Audio Sculpture today using my parallel-port DAC. It worked a charm! However, the truly amazing thing is that Audio Sculpture lets you use a parallel port DAC and a replay cartridge at the same time, allowing for stereo composing on a plain ST! I was pretty blown away! It also allows you to use many other combinations of devices for stereo playback. I think Audio Sculpture is my new favourite digi tracker. It also successfully replayed some old .mod files that have failed to play in any other player/tracker on PC or ST!

[MiggyMog]

It also successfully replayed some old .mod files that have failed to play in any other player/tracker on PC or ST!

Yeah, it can load TCB tracker mods & also supports a custom packed version which shows the instument as'PACK!' or simmilar when loaded in other trackers, the save as dialogue has the pack on/off function so make sure it is off!.

Be wary when saving though, it doesn't save protracker compatible, it saves some data in a .INF file with the same filename as the.MOD.

This means any looped samples don't loop when loaded in to pro-tracker compatible trackers & you have change the loop start /sample end after importing.

I had started scanning the manual in for audio sulpture a while back, has anyone else done it already, or does anyone want me to finish the job?

Have you found the built in speech synthesizer yet bullis?, you have to right click copy IIRC in the sample menu?

[Desty]

The disk drive grinding was on the amiga, some demo played the american anthem or somethign silly like that.. As we all remember it had a god awfully loud floppy. I was very nearly honestly scared the first time I heard my mates amiga chugging away at a game - I looked at him to see if something was wrong, but all seemed normal.. Don't let SainT's flopppy emulation fool you, the ST's was whisper quiet in comparison.

A bit late in responding to this, but I just saw it now. I remember hearing a couple of different sounds from my old STFM drive - the cracked custom filesystem versions I had of Saint Dragon (right at the start) and, I think, SWIV (which crashed like 90% through the game, cluck!) both made some funny noises loading chunks from the floppy.

Also, some PD file/disk utility I had at some stage tried to format the floppy it was on, but since it had the write protect tab on, just clicked through each track loudly - sounded like someone dragging a stick along a fence.
Maybe some of these were disk specific, but I think it's possible to make some interesting noises by accessing the floppy in a dodgy manner.

BTW: Saint Dragon had some nifty music, too! Pity the tunes were so short and restarted on death (which, in that game, was about every 20 seconds) though.

[bullis1]

It also successfully replayed some old .mod files that have failed to play in any other player/tracker on PC or ST!

Yeah, it can load TCB tracker mods & also supports a custom packed version which shows the instument as'PACK!' or simmilar when loaded in other trackers, the save as dialogue has the pack on/off function so make sure it is off!.

Be wary when saving though, it doesn't save protracker compatible, it saves some data in a .INF file with the same filename as the.MOD.

This means any looped samples don't loop when loaded in to pro-tracker compatible trackers & you have change the loop start /sample end after importing.

I had started scanning the manual in for audio sulpture a while back, has anyone else done it already, or does anyone want me to finish the job?

Have you found the built in speech synthesizer yet bullis?, you have to right click copy IIRC in the sample menu?

Thank you very very much for these tips! I've never searched for the manual yet, but if you plan on scanning it I'd print it out as soon as I got my hands on it. I'd appreciate it if you did finish the scan.

@Desty: Saint Dragon is a very cool game with great tunes, but I do wish someone would do a trainer that prevented you from dying. I'll be honest and say I've never beaten it, but I'd love to see the last half of the game without constantly losing my powerups and hearing the music restart.

[Lando_C]

I'd love to get my hands on a copy of audiosculpture, because all mods I ever made I made in TCB tracker.. and apparently Audiosculpture is the ONLY program anywhere that can convert these to anything compatible with anything else. It would mean I can finally publish my (admittedly lame) music on my homepage in a mod format playable for other people =)

[bullis1]

Audio Sculpture can be downloaded at http://dhs.nu/files_msx_digi.php

Enjoy! However, there are some caveats with Audio Sculpture that are detailed above in this thread.

[Tomchi]

[Delete]

[Desty]

@Desty: Saint Dragon is a very cool game with great tunes, but I do wish someone would do a trainer that prevented you from dying. I'll be honest and say I've never beaten it, but I'd love to see the last half of the game without constantly losing my powerups and hearing the music restart.

Damn right, even with infinite lives I never managed to beat the damn game.

Now that I mention it, I remember playing it in MAME so I could hear the rest of the cool soundtrack and see the ending, but even with the "invincibility" cheat I ended up dying in ridiculously crowded levels somehow and never finished it

Thankfully, programs like M1 and such came along so I could listen to it anyway

[GT Turbo]

Stepper Motor Music. Playing tunes / noise by using the motor in the floppy disk drive.

Zerosquare do it !!!!

Look this video



GT

[nobogod]

Look this video

Amazing...

[SkylineDave]

ha! thats brilliant!

[alexh]

Heh, that's not real is it?

I am sure the "music" I remember being played with the stepper motor was recognisable, but no where near that good.

[GT Turbo]

Heh, that's not real is it?

I am sure the "music" I remember being played with the stepper motor was recognisable, but no where near that good.

It's real, yes the disk drive is dead like the disk, but it's real, be sure.

Zerosquare is a great coder and a specialist in sound and video. He isn't know in Atari world, because he come from the PC world He has yet done some great code like this picture in 1376x576 on a simple Jaguar, look here :

http://www.jagware.org/index.php?s=&sho ... ost&p=3832

This year you will see some other code from him on Atari this time !!

GT