GEMini Atari

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Text File | 1989-04-16 | 9.0 KB | 265 lines

Music Studio Background Player by James Patchell I. Introduction This is probably one of the more interesting programs that I have created. It allows you to play music studio songs in the background while executing other program simutaneously. As far as I know, this is the first program that allows you to do this, but who knows. The program is relatively bug free, although once in a while it does glitch, I have run it for 24 hours straight without any problems. Generally, you will only have problems when run with certain programs. I so far have found only one that caused any unexpected problems, but I have successfully and without any problems had music playing in the background while using TIMEWORKS desk top publisher, LASER C 2.0, MWC 3.0, STWRITER, etc. You should have absolutely little to zero problems with most well behaved applictions programs. However, it is not at all recomended that you use any other MIDI software while using the background player (see below). Also, if you are using MULTIDESK or a program like it, do not use the CLEAR MEMORY option while the background player is playing as this will make it bomb big time. And if you are going to de-install the Music Studio background player accessory with multidesk, besure that do a CLEAR and DE-INSTALL with the player first (see below). II. Using the MUSIC STUDIO BACKGROUND PLAYER ACCESSORY Copy msplacc.acc to the root directory of your (a) boot disk. It is probably also a good idea to put some Music Studio songs in the root directory as well, but this is not nessesary. Also, I recomend that you do not put the accessory into the root directory of your hard drive (if you have one) until you are sure that you have a working copy. This is good advice for any desk accessory. Try it out on a floppy first. It is really a pain to try and get a defective Desk Accessory off of a hard drive (I know). III. MAIN MENU When you click on the selection in the "Desk" option for the MS Player, you will get a dialog box with several options you can choose from. They are discussed one by one here. A. SAVE CONFIG This option lets you save the current configuration. After you have made a list of songs that you want to play, you can save them to a file. This will allow you to later load in this same set of files at a later time. Also, if you save a config file with the special name "default.cfg", and put it in the root directory of you boot disk, the player will load the songs listed in that file automatically. Also, the format of the config files is ASCII, so you can edit them with a text editor if you wish. B. LOAD NEW SONG This option allows you to load a new song to the ones already in the computer. You can have up to 24 different songs loaded at any one time. C. START BACKGROUND MUSIC This button starts the player up. Once started, will will play forever, untill you tell it to stop. When it has played all of the songs you have loaded, it will start over. D. STOP BACKGROUND MUSIC This function stops the player as soon as it is done playing the current event. If you press the START BACKGROUND MUSIC after you have press the STOP BUTTON, the player will start to play the next song. E. MAKE A SONG LIST This function allows you to load several different songs that will make up your background concert. The player plays them in the same order that you enter them in. F. ABOUT BACKGROUND MUSIC This function displays a dialog box with the copyright info in it as well as the revision number. G. CLEAR SONGS This function erases all of the songs in memory and returns the memory back to the computer for use. Also, using the function allows you to de-install the accessory (see below). You must do a clear even if there are no songs in memory before you do a de-install. The accessory will not let you de-install until you do a clear. H. LOAD CONFIG This function goes hand in hand with SAVE CONFIG. It allows you to load songs in that are specified in the config files you have saved before. I. RE-INSTALL This function un-does what DE-INSTALL did (see below). The accessory will only let you RE-INSTALL after you have done a DE-INSTALL. J. DE-INSTALL This function is useful if you want to run another program that uses the MIDI port. You should never use another program that uses the MIDI port if this player is loaded by the computer. Even if it is not playing, you MUST DE-INSTALL it before running that program. DE-INSTALL sets all of the interrupt vectors that pertain to the MIDI port back to their original values so that other software will work. The Desk Accessory is still in memory and can be used later, but it is non-functional after this button has been pushed. At a later time, you can RE-INSTALL the desk accessory with the RE-INSTALL function. If you use programs like MULTIDESK and plan to purge this accessory, be sure you first DE-INSTALL it before you purge it. CATASTROPHIC things may occure if you don't. K. NUMBER OF SONGS This displays the total number of songs that you have loaded into memory to play. L. MEMORY USED This displays the MINIMUM amount of memory that is being used. I say minimum because the ST OS memory allocate function will always give you what you ask for, but sometimes will give you even more. As far as I know, there is no way to know how much more it gave, but this will give you a good idea of how much memory is being used. This may be especially important to 520 users. IV. SOURCE CODE I always believe in making the source code availiable. So, you will find the source code for this program in the ARC file as well. You can through it away if you are not interested (all of the *.c, *.h files). If you are interested, you will need LASER C 2.0 to play with it. If you are really adventurous, you can modify the code to work with other compilers. The code includes lots of inline assembly, which make it "really" portable. Well, sorry about that, but this is how LASER C deals with assembly code. Some of the code is not too pretty. Well, what can I say. V. Copyright notice. This program is Copyright (c) 1989 by James Patchell. I give other the right to distribute this software free of royalties as long as this file and the source code is included. NO OTHERS MAY CLAIM ANY SECONDARY RIGHTS TO THIS PROGRAM. This program may be freely distributed on any BBS, or club disk of the month. If you make any changes to the program, please note them in the source code. If you make any real novel changes, I would like to see them. VI FINALLY This program took considerable work. If you really like it and would like to become a "registered" user, which entitles you to updates, send $20 to: JAMES PATCHELL 533 SAN BLAS PL. SANTA BARBARA, CA 93111 The more I recieve, the more likely it is that I will write more software. Writing MIDI software for the ST is fun. And, if you have any ideas on other features you would like to see in this program, or, other free programs you would like to see, I would like to hear from you.