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1995-02-27
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6KB
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159 lines
DCPlayer - another pulsating Blender Software (BS) production
-------------------------------------------------------------
It's yet another music CD player. This one sits quietly in the background and
watches the buttons on the control pad (or joystick) plugged into controller
port 1.
So now it's possible to play CDs whilst doing something else using Workbench.
When it's time to swap CDs or skip tracks you just press a button on the pad
and carry on with what you were doing before, instead of shuffling through
windows or screens, clicking on something, then finding your way back.
I really wrote it to help me sample CDs - I find that the CD32 control pad is
faster to use than my stereo and I don't want wires trailing across the room
- instead I have a sampler that's connected from the SX-1's parallel port to
the CD32's audio output, some sample software, and this to skip to the right
place on the CD before starting sampling. Easy, eh?
And another good reason - at the moment nobody's found out a way of ripping
audio data from CD to memory with cd.device. So this is the next best thing.
So, what does it work on?
-------------------------
Any Amiga with a CD drive and cd.device. That means the CD32.
It also works on the A1200 with the Archos Overdrive CD drive. It should work
with the Squirrel drive, but that hasn't been tested.
It should also work on big box Amigas with a SCSI or IDE CD drive and either
Kickstart 3.1 or Cache-CDFS or some other CD32 emulation software, but I
haven't tested it on that.
It needs lowlevel.library. It's built into the CD32. If you've got a normal
Amiga you can copy this from practically any CD32 CD to the LIBS: directory.
Or it's already there if you've upgraded to Kickstart 3.1.
It doesn't work with the CDTV or A570 because those machines use cdtv.device
and I don't have any info on that. Ho hum.
Archos Drive
------------
If you're using the Archos Drive then you won't be able to eject CDs until
you install version 9 of the software. There's nowt I can do about this. The
reverse and forward search just doesn't want to work, even with version 9.
The upgrade to version 9 should be freely available from the dealer that you
bought your drive from. Hmm...
Installing
----------
Drag the icon to your C: drawer or some other drawer you've got for programs.
Change the shell options or tooltypes if you like...
Options
-------
This time you get some options. Stick 'em in the tooltype list if you're
running from Workbench or type them as options from the shell.
- DISPLAY
You get a little read out on the screen of what's happening. It's really a
sprite, so it doesn't matter if you flip screens or have an autoscrolling
Workbench screen, it always stays there.
- LEFT <number>
The distance from the left edge of the screen to the display. 0 is the far
left and 319 is the far right (but it could be a bit more if you've got an
overscanned screen).
- TOP <number>
The distance from the top edge of the screen to the display. 0 is the top
and 255 (or 199 for NTSC) is the bottom (or a bit more for overscan).
- COLOUR1 <R><G><B>
COLOUR2 <R><G><B>
COLOUR3 <R><G><B>
The highlight, shadowed, and bright colours of the display. Each R, G, and
B number is from 0 to 9 or A to F (for 10 to 15). You can't leave a space
between the numbers. You can use COLOR too.
The defaults are no Archos, no display, the left edge just a little bit away
from the right edge of the screen, the top edge just a little bit away from
the bottom of the screen, and some very tasteful colours.
With the left and top edge defaults it has a guess at where the far end of
the screen is, but it goes a bit mad when you have two screens displayed at
once (say when the Workbench screen is dragged down a bit). I'm not bothered
about this and I don't have any RKMs so it probably won't get fixed. All you
have to do is work out the co-ords for yourself.
Running
-------
From the Workbench, click on the icon once to start it and again to stop it.
To run it all the time, drag it to your WBStartup drawer.
From the shell, type "DCPlayer" to start it and either run it again from
another shell or press CTRL and C to stop it. To run it all the time, put
"Run <>NIL: DCPlayer" at the end of your User-Startup.
Controls
--------
The CD32 pad is used in almost the same way as it is in the CD32's music CD
player. There are a few differences though. Skipping tracks is different - it
makes things easier for sampling (er, and it's easier to code...). If your CD
drive can eject CDs, you can use the shuffle button.
If you don't have a CD32 pad you can use a Megadrive joypad, a Master System
joypad, or a two button joystick instead. You just can't eject CDs or turn on
loop, a shocking loss as I'm sure you'll agree.
Finally if you've got an old crappy single fire button joystick you don't get
eject or loop and you're not able to stop the CD (but you can still pause it
though).
Function CD32 pad Others
-------- -------- ------
Play/Pause Select/Play Fire
Stop Stop (2nd fire)
Search < Reverse Up
Search > Forward Down
Track < Left Left
Track > Right Right
Eject Shuffle
Loop Loop
Boring wibble
-------------
This is copyrighted by me but freely distributible. It shouldn't be altered
in any way and you should only charge for disks, postage, or packing if you
charge for anything.
If something goes wrong (it crashes, an android appears from a trapdoor in
the floor and blows up your CD32, etc...) then I can't be held responsible
for the mess - you use this program at your own risk. After all, it's free
- what more do you want?
And finally it can't be used as part of anything that's sold for profit
without my say so, although the chances of that are fairly remote, I think. I
guess it never hurts to ask though.
My Email address is dan@blender.demon.co.uk, if you spot a bug or have a
stunning idea or just feel in the mood for some oral intercourse.
I thank you, punters. And now over to Doc who's holding a funny shaped
carrot.
Dan.