Commodore Free 22/Commodore_Free_Issue_22_2008_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/t.iv stefano 1

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 13KB | 392 lines

u

INTERVIEW WITH STEFANO TOGNON
SIDIN magazine Editor
http://digilander.libero.it/ice00/
 tsid/sidin/index.html

PART 1 of 3.

COMMODORE FREE
Please would you introduce yourself to
our readers?

Stefano Tognon
I'm Stefano Tognon & I live in Italy. I'm a 35 year old informatics engineer
working into a farm as a programmer,
system administrator/DBA maintainer. In
the farm I program in Java, SQL & some
custom scripting language: computers
here are installed with Windows. I
always use Linux at home (and have done
so since 1999), I programme linux in
Java, C++,Perl, & cross assembler for
the C64 part. I'm an open source person
so I have no problem in sharing my
code. I like to assemble computers from
components (maybe a good future work..)
& install them with Linux ;)

However my dreaming job would be to
programg games, this is not so simple
to achieve in Italy & I love my
country to much to leave. I like Sid
music (the only music I really listen
to - my listening mileage is at 120
days now, I listen while jogging
looking at nature to cancel the
working stress, I read many books
about physic, math/science. I even like
all sort of sports & F1. My parents
have a farm with vineyards & I help
them when possible.

Maybe someone in the net already me as
ice00 of Ice Team (my group). Ice stay
for Informatics Computer Engineer 00
is for the millennium bug
remembrance...

CF.  Can you tell our reader about
SIDin magazine & about your website

ST. SIDin is a PDF magazine about the
SID chip (from the Inside) (this is
where the magazines name came from),
so expect to see some assembler code
in its pages ;) It is free to download
and the purpose was to have two issues
each year, but some numbers have been
skipped in the last years....mmmm...I
have too many activity around...The
magazine has a news section containing
what I find out about in the sid world
from the previous issue, an interview
with a musician/composer, & two
(technical) articles. In the articles
I speak about music routines &
techniques on how to program the sid,
how to rip a tune from a game, review
of music editors & trackers, hardware
cards, & music related projects.

Website http://digilander.iol.it/ice00
is a portal to all my activities around
the C64 or other projects I did in my
freetime. Nothing special in the site,
just pure HTML code written by hand
and the layout is a little similar to
some C64 3D platform games. Background
is made with C= related images to give
the right atmosphere. However you will
find all my releases & even their
source code.

CF.   What would our readers recognise
you for, apart from the magazine, for
example have you written any Commodore
demos or tunes

ST. I wrote two little demos: they
took place at the Christmas Online
Compo many years ago. Nothing tech-
nically special, they were created just
for fun. The first is "Silent Night", a
demo where there is a full screen
Christmas image (just a little
conversion in multicolor mode of a
card) & the border color pixels
changes according to the music. The
main task here was to open all the
horizontal borders. The second is "FD",
where there is a better hi-resolution
Christmas image that I hand created
myself with a minor animation of snow,
fire & light.

I created an image for an online Pixel
Compo. It is a high resolution image
of a Commodore-F1 machine. It is a
very low quality production, I know,
but only after having tried it
yourself you can then find Leon's
pictures are absolutely fantastic!! I
wrote 13 tunes for the C64: one is
from 86/87 & even if its of poor
quality by todays sid standard, it
gives me the stimulus to learn
computer music programming. Only 3 of
those tunes are my compositions all
the others are cover/remixs of other
peoples tunes. Lot of those tunes
where specially composed for online
compos. Others are just for testing
the sid sound. I think that some
readers may know me form my minigames.
I released this for the Minigames
Online Compos. It took place to 6
editions producing 11 games. I like to
program games & I find the minigame
a big challenge as you have to reduce
the size of the code as much as
possible. For those games I have the
help of talented musician as
Luca/Fire, Nata & Richard Bayliss.
Maybe someone knows of Little Sara
Sister (1 & 1.5), Haras, Elav,
MArkanoid & Ann-Gong games. I have
not finished Little Sara Sister 2,
this features music from Dustbin &
graphics logo from Luca/Fire. Maybe
one day I will find the time to
complete this title. I have another
big game in development that many
Italian people already know (it was to
be for the previous minigame compo,
but maybe it will be in the next one):
a Frozen Bubble port to the C64.
Something very hard to achieve. Many
people know me for having held three
editions of Sid-Wine online compo
(maybe something unique for compos)
and two Tiny Sid Compo (compo about
writing tunes with only 256 or 512
bytes). Others may know me for having
produced the High Voltage Music Engine
Collection (HVMEC)

http://digilander.libero.it/ice00/
 tsid/hvmec.html

a big collection of many of the tools
around for making sid music with the
C64. Actually there are over 260 tools
in it, but a lot are in my (soon to be
released) archive. Fortunately Stephan
Parth is helping me with this its a
very time consuming task. Very few
people know that I developed a C64
emulator (C64A) in 1994, I didn't
release it because it was in too early
a state (however I found recently the
source code & I will release it before
the code gets lost). I even developed
JC64, a Java C64 emulator in 1999, that
it is available at Sourceforge site. It
is still in a wait state, because it is
totally based on a Vic Article for the
emulation, but I find that the article
is incomplete & you cannot emulate by
following this article. From time to
time I add more code to it, but I'm
hoping that the true working of the
Vic will be documented one day...

I even released the Time Sid Manager
library that integrates with sid
player for storing the listening to
statistics about your sids. Recently I
developed Linux Xsidplay as Michael
left his development some years ago, I
sued this sid player & of course
found no more updates. It is at

http://sourceforge.net/projects/
 xsidplay2

Xsidplay has some new features like
SDL support & the ALSA is being
added (even a Windows port is
available) & many more features are
soon to come. The last project is
JITT64 (Java Ice Team Tracker):
http://jitt64.sourceforge.net/

This is my attempt to create my music
routines & an editor for it. The
programme uses Java. I'm moulding it
as I need, without taking care of
rastertime. I want to produce sid
sounds without any restriction (for
example one instrument definition can
take up to 2KB of data). I have been
working on the project from 6 months
already, & I think that before the
end of the year it can reach the state
where tunes can be produced using it...

I instead think that no one knows of
this my embryonic project:
http://regame.altervista.org/

Born as a paper magazine about C64
games, to be released free with 70dpi
resolution (like for screen viewing)
and on CD (with just a symbolic cost)
for 600dpi resolution; as it is
created using semi-professional paper
related tools (actually 170MB of
material for the first half number).
The main problem is to find someone to
help in creating reviews, & finding
an Italian to English translator.
Without this the project could stay in
this state for ages :(

CF.  The magazine is quite technical
what level of user is this aimed for?

ST. I think a mix of programmer &
musicians, most of the articles I show
how the chip is programmed to produce
a given sound. I try to give a little
example of this point. For a musician
that wants to produce & arpeggio,
the only thing that he wants to know
is that he has to put in sequence, at
a given rate of 3 notes values like D
E F into his editor /tracker. This
should not be a problem for him. For a
programmer, he has to know what is the
effect to produce an (arpeggio) &
then he has to write the appropriate
code (e.g. converting the notes to
hi/lo frequency values, & put them
at the right rates in the sid
registers 0 & 1 of one voice). However
if the reader is not in one of the
above categories, they can read the
article descriptions to get an idea of
how that effect is generated by SID.
Also, I think that articles like
ripping a tune from a game (even though
this is quite technical), could even
give a stimulus to others to try it
for themselves. That could be a good
positive for the SID community.

CF  The Magazine Covers just sound on
Commodore 64 machines, & trackers/
editors, have you thought about
covering any other items of Commodore
related news?

ST. Yes & no ... as the magazine is
based on my activities, it essentially
to reflect this in the magazines
pages. I do something today & it
follows afterwards in the magazine. I
don't know for example, if the next
issue will be formed in all these
activities. Most depends of what I
will do in the next months... For
example, I have looked many times to
try & buy a Plus4 computer without
any success. I'm sure that if I have
one, I will test the TED sound
capability compared to the SID & an
article will pop up for sure even if
don't know all the Plus4 features.
Also, recently I found that the
AY-chip of a ZX SPECTRUM hase some
sound similarities to the SID: for
example the "escape from the
spaceship" tune at
http://www.8bitpeoples.com/
 discography/8BP084

Maybe a comparison about AY & the
SID chip could be a possibility for a
future article, a way for me to learn
how AY chip works.

CF Some articles cover ripping tunes
from games etc, is this a passion of
yours?

ST. yes, & this comes from ages ago,
even though it was in another form...
In around 1989/90 I found some computer
viruses in our school computers. I
started to study them (virus were some
sort of mysterious programs at that
time, & so not much information was
available about them).

The study consisted of disassembling
the peace of code that was responsible
of the infection & reverse engineering
it, to understand how it worked. As I
liked to program in assembly languages,
this reverse task was very passionate
for me. I have developed a certain
ability or better a familiarity with
this work. I remember that having new
virus to analyze I would swap floppy
disks using traditional mail with other
people by answering magazine
announcements (there was no internet
available at that time...). All this
was because I developed an antivirus
(SVDL & MVDL) product & I wanted to
make it grow.  Unfortunately due to the
difficulties found in virus & to add to
the antivirus, I had to terminate this
kind of (reverse engineering) work,
until...I find the Big Sid Hunt many-
many years after!! The Big Sid Hunt was
(actually it is not updated now) a list
of user requests for C64 tunes from
games. Looking at this list I found
that some games like Lazarian & Dig-Dug
were not ripped into PSID files. That
was amazing as the games were very old
& even because Lazarian was the first
game I played on the C64: I cannot
stay without a PSID file of them! So I
soon took up the challenge of ripping
them, using the way I knew best:
disassemble the code & reverse
engineering it like I did for the
viruses. Doing this I have found
again, the good vibe feeling (I even
programmed my own utility in Java for
helping me in this task). Maybe this
wasnt the best way of ripping, as it
took a lot of time, but for sure it
give a true view of the music from the
inside the sid chip. I always like to
see how the sid chip is programmed for
producing such wonderful sounds. LaLa
gave me a music CD as a present for my
work in ripping tunes for the Big Sid
Hunt some years ago. Thanks.

CF. Do you think Beginners would
benefit from reading some of the
articles?

ST. Yes, not all the articles are
technical like we discuss before. In
some articles I describe music editors
and this is done from a user
perspective (maybe only some parts
could be a little more complex like in
Digiorganizer), so I think that those
articles, give the stimulus to the
reader to test the program (and maybe
to produce some tunes). In the other
articles, maybe the beginner could
however have an idea about what I'm
talking about, in future when he gets
interested about technical details, he
may like to re-read the article again.
I remember that I read & read many
times the Rob Hubbard routine
explained in C=Hacking when I was
learning the sid, & only after some
time I found the way it actually worked

         CONTINUED IN PART 2