<----------------------------------------------------------------> ............ _________ _________ '::::::::;::_\ ¬/_._\_ _/_. ::| - | | | ¬| OOOoOo. :;| | | | | OOoo:;: ;:|. . |. | | | Oo::;O::o::|:.. | |:. | | | 'Oo:o::::://_____|____//___|___|mcL! Just another musicplayer V 1.1beta www.creamhq.de mail@creamhq.de <----------------------------------------------------------------> < Introduction > <----------------------------------------------------------------> In the late 70's, early 80's, when the first homecomputers were provided with 'real' soundprocessors, a new kind of enthusiastic user came up. The Chipmaniac. Living in his own little world, he switches on his machine for only one reason. Computermusics. Funny little songs of three or four voices, made of simple square waves, noise, or triangles, sometimes filters and realtime- effects. He loves to listen to these noises, which 'normal' people consider painful. He meets his mates to swap demos just to get some new pieces of his favourite composers. And he gets mad challenging endmonsters in chance to get a new levelmusic or an endmusic. After some time he gets bored playing games and starts ripping the songs for his growing collection. But he isn't satisfied by listening to his fave songs only at home, so he records them on tape or CD to enjoy them by driving his car or riding his bike, wherever he wants to. He grows older, buys new generations of computers and expieriences new, different styles of music. One day he remembers the old songs. His old machine isn't available anymore so he explores the net for the old chippies and for emulators. His taste of music is still a mystery to his new friends. He doesn't care. He's a chipmaniac...for good. <-----------------------------------------------------------------> < The Concept > <-----------------------------------------------------------------> 'Jam' is a multiformat musicplayer based on a plugin-structure. It is supposed to run on all Atari computers with sound-DMA (M/STE Falcon, TT). The program is available for two different tastes of navigating. With a single-task custom-shell, as well as with a GEM-shell for multitasking systems like MiNT. We had no chance to test this program with clones like Hades, Milan or Phenix, so should not be expected to run on these machines. The idea of 'Jam' is to offer a chance to replay any music-format, which is available and replayable for Atari computers, like Chris Hlsbeck's TFMX, Jochen Hippel's COSO, Future Composer or PSID. The replayers for these formats are included as plugins. 'Jam' is provided with plugins for a wide range of well known formats, and is still extendable. Anybody can add his own plugin for his favourite musicformat. Find detailed explanation plugin-api, deli- vered with this package. <----------------------------------------------------------------> < Credits: > <----------------------------------------------------------------> Abyss: custom-shell coding, plugins Candyman: GEM-shell, plugins Tao: custom-shell coding, plugins <----------------------------------------------------------------> < The Plugins > <----------------------------------------------------------------> The plugins need to be copied into the 'plugins' - folder. They can be downloaded from our website (www.creamhq.de). See extra textfiles delivered with the single plugins for more information. <----------------------------------------------------------------> < Adding your own Plugin > <----------------------------------------------------------------> Read the plugin-api, delivered with this package, to get infor- mations on how to include your own plugin into 'Jam'. <----------------------------------------------------------------> < Playlist- Mode > <----------------------------------------------------------------> The GEM-version of Jam offers a playlist-mode. This version of Jam crashes when an access to a non-existing playlist occurs. So make sure, that you save a playlist, before you want to use the playlist-mode. Unless there is no playlist-mode, remember to switch of the mode. Using the playlist: You can easily add a song to the playlist, when you use the button on the right of the Jam window. The playlist window will be opened and the songfile be added automa- tically to the list. You need to change the subsong and update the list. Add more songs to the list, using the 'add'-button, or edit the list ( delete or sort ). Leave the playlist-window by closing it. Don't forget to save the playlist ( File-> Save PL). If you want to play songs from a saved playlist, use the play- button (left from the disk symbol). In playlist-mode, Jam steps through the list automatically. There are modes for that: If the plugin supports the detection of the song-end, a next song will be played after song-end. If song-end-detection is not supported , Jam considers the playtime from the preferences to to be the replaylenth of the songs. <----------------------------------------------------------------> < ACC-Mode > <----------------------------------------------------------------> If Jam is supposed to run in ACC-mode, some things have to be considered. The Jam-files, as well as the plugin-folder need to be copied into the main-path of your boot drive. Considering the known problems, we suggest to use ACC-Jam with care, to avoid losing important data. ( btw, i'm using ACC right now...saving regularly) <----------------------------------------------------------------> < INF-Files > <----------------------------------------------------------------> INF-files allow to save special-information of the song like songname, composer, preselected song or playtime. These informa- tions are interesting, when you got formats, which don't support with info about name of the song, or composer. <----------------------------------------------------------------> < Some very special greets > <----------------------------------------------------------------> Jochen Hippel ( Thanks for supporting us with sourcecodes!) Evil/DHS ( Thanks for testing and useful hints) MC Laser ( Cool ASCII-Logo, thanks! ) SWE, 505, Dma Sc, Paranoid, Grazey, Grey, ST Survivor ...not to be forgotten, all the other chipmaniacs... <----------------------------------------------------------------> < > <---------------------------------------------------------------->