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Aminet - June 1993 [Walnut Creek].iso
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PT.ReadMe!
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1992-04-14
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328 lines
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Protracker V2.1 Release A - (C) 1992 Mushroom Studios/Noxious 16/04-1992
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Protracker is a Public Domain program, and may may be copied freely and
included in any PD library. You may not charge anything for the program
other than the cost of the disk and the PD-service.
Message to Lars "ZAP" Hamre & co:
---------------------------------
Instead of writing brand new textfiles, we've just modified your original
PT1.1 textfiles. Hope you don't mind.
This disk should contain the following files:
PT2.1A - The main program.
PT2.1A.info - The Icon for Protracker.
PROP - Protracker module player.
PT.TempoCalc.txt - How to calculate tempo etc.
PT-Play.s - Playroutine for the Seka or DevPac assemblers.
PT-CIAPlay.s - Playroutine for CIA timing.
PT.FileFormat.txt - Description of the file format.
PT.Effects.txt - Quick help on all effect commands.
PT.help - Online helpfile for PT2.1A (press the Help key).
PT.help.txt - Read-/Printable version of the help file.
PT.help.txt.info - Icon for the PT.help.txt file.
PT.config-00 - Default configuration file.
PT.Update! - Textfile with changes from PT1.1B(PT2.0)
PT.Update!.info - Icon for the PT.Update! file.
PT.ReadMe! - ****--> This file <--****
PT.ReadMe!.info - Icon for the PT.ReadMe! file.
PT.Version! - Textfile explaining the versionnumber
PT.Version!.info - Icon for the PT.Version! file.
Some info..
-----------
This disk contains all the necessary files to run Shell, CLI, and all the
most used CLI-Commands. It is possible to print songs, but we'we only
included the Generic printerdriver, so you'll have to install your own.
Remember to set the new printerdriver with Preferences. If you make your
own workdisk, remember to copy the commands "Run" and "EndCLI".
If you are going to make make a compact-disk containing Protracker, please
include PT.help!!! THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!!!
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO EDIT THE HELP-FILE!!!
The first 1024 bytes are a text-offset index for Protracker, so keep off.
For more info, press the HELP key when you have started Protracker.
It isn't possible to load old configuration files with PT2.1A, but if you
load an old config-file into an editor and change the first 5 letters to
"PT2.1", you might be able to use it, but some new functions may be set to
zero though. Remember to check the DMA-wait and all the other functions
or you'll experience some crashes etc...
--- Protracker history ---
First Version 1.0 (A) - Full of bugs...
Bugs corrected in V1.0 Release B:
---------------------------------
- PatternLoop (It always jumped to the start of the pattern, not the loop)
- Zap had put FineTune AND Glissando-Control in the same command! (E3)
- Fade Up / Down caused shit and even a few gurus!
- Delete Pos inserted pattern 77 (!) at position 127 in the song, causing
it to be longer than 80k!
- Filter All Samples was slow as hell because it tried to filter non-
existant samples.
- If you selected sample 0 from the keypad, it always played the last
sample played as sample 0!
- A590 harddisk owners couldn't use the keyboard because of the way Mahoney
& Kaktus set up the keyboard interrupt (we used their NT1.1 routine).
- Entering the help screen when in the midi screen fucked up the display.
- Escaping from Mix exited from the whole edit op.!
- CutBeg no longer fucks up the Sample length and Pos.
- The help file was FULL of bugs / misspellings.
Bugs corrected in V1.0 Release C:
---------------------------------
- Error in Finetune-table2 (note B-2)
- Abort Load sometimes caused a guru!
- Toneportamento (cmd 3) didn't work correctly with finetune.
- PLST screen was one pixel off.
MIDI screen was removed.
Changes and improvements from Protracker V1.0C to V1.1A:
--------------------------------------------------------
General:
- Protracker will now run if you have Kickstart 2.0 installed!
(A500, A1000, A2000, A3000 etc...)
- Protracker will also "Auto runback" when you start from CLI!
There's no need to use the 'run' command.
- Keyboard and mouse input is provided by an InputHandler with prior-
ity 52. The handler will grab all RAWKEY and RAWMOUSE events from
the input.device before they reach intuition. PT will no longer
interfere with windows and gadgets on the intuition screen behind.
- Keyboard buffer. Wow!!! Now you can play really fast, and PT won't
miss a single key (...well, not as many as it used to before...).
- The vertical blank interrupt no longer patches the vector itself, but
uses the AddIntServer function.
- The playroutine creates it's own CIA or VBLANK interrupt, and it will
not be removed if a song is playing when you go to CLI/Workbench.
- Text input routine changed a little. Use mouse to set pos and to exit.
- Improved "Out of memory" handling (hopefully no more gurus...).
- Only the first 2 bytes of a sample will be zeroed (were the first 4).
- Lots of new keyboard commands/shortcuts using the Alt key.
- Vibrato depth changed to be compatible with NT2.0. Double all your
depth numbers if you load old protracker songs.
- Funk Repeat changed to Invert Loop (may trash your samples though).
- Play samples from the keypad (dot mode) when pressing backslash.
Main Screen:
- MIDI screen has been removed. Changed to sampler instead. MIDI input
is still there, but there's no MIDI output. Sorry...
- Quadrascope. Four channel oscilloscope that displays the samples
in real-time, even when playing from keyboard. The good old spectrum
analyzer is still there, just click on the scope to toggle.
- Tempo gadget. Default is 125 BPM (normal vblank speed), but that can be
changed if you select CIA timing on Setup2. Range is 32-255 BPM, and
can also be changed with the 'F' effect command (speed/tempo).
- Repeat and replen will be updated in the samples when you change them.
You no longer have to press a key to hear the new loop.
- Protracker should now be able to show up to 10/16 megs of freemem.
- Error messages when PLST or Config not found.
- Click to enter position, pattern and length with the keyboard.
Disk Op.:
- Choose RAW or IFF when saving samples.
- Samples can be saved with IFF-loops.
- Change path without reading directory.
- All 30 characters in filename/directory stored (was 24).
- Shows directories, just click to add directory to path.
- Parent directory gadget.
- One preset and several default paths for modules/songs/samples.
- PT will now read an "unlimited" number of directory entries (was 200).
Setup:
- The only thing that's happened here is a small gadget labeled "2".
Pressing it will put you in...
Setup2:
- 8 new on/off toggles.
Override: Load/save sample from samplepath even if there's a path
in the samplename. ST-37:bigbadbass with override will be loaded
from DF0: (or whatever) instead of ST-37:. You may want to put
all your samples in one big directory on your harddisk...
NoSamples: Will load a song without asking for the samples.
BlankZero: This will show the samplenumbers in the pattern in the
same way as Noisetracker 1.2 (Zeros are blanked out).
Show Dirs: If on, directories will be shown in Disk Op.
Show Publ: If on, PT will show all free Public memory, otherwise
just free Chip memory.
CutToBuff: If on, the part of the sample cut away in the sample
editor will be saved in the copybuffer.
Load Loop: Will load loops from an IFF file when loading a sample,
or adding a path in the sampleeditor.
Slow Mode: Use this toggle if you have a 25 Mhz A3000 where every-
thing is faster. Turning it on might help.
- Set Default paths.
- You can set the maximum number of presets (used to be 2500).
- DMA wait. Use this on 25MHz Amigas (normally 300, use 900 on A3000).
- Set tuning tone (note and volume).
- Select CIA or VBlank timing.
- Set default CIA tempo.
- Spectrum Analyzer/VU-meter copper color editor!
Preset Editor:
- Use Preset removed, inserted Delete Disk instead.
- You can now save Finetune instead of Volume in the PLST.
- ST-disk number changed to hex (ST-00 --> ST-FF)!
- Adding samples with IFF-loops to the presetlist is possible.
- Proper PLST allocation. Protracker will no longer allocate
any memory if there's no PLST.
PLST:
- ST-disk number changed to HEX. This means you can have
up to $FF, or 255 ST-disks (used to be 99).
Sampler/Sample Editor:
- Sample Graphing like Audiomaster. With Show Range, Show All,
Zoom Out, Range All, etc...
- Play either Waveform, Display or Range.
- Repeat points are shown, and can be dragged around.
- Loop on/off toggle.
- A line shows current position when playing back a sample.
- A sampler just like on NT2.0.
- Resample function w/tuning tone.
- Cut, Copy and Paste functions.
- Cursor to beginning/end.
- Swap current sample with copybuffer.
Edit Op.:
1 - Transpose All bug removed.
2 - Move changed to Copy (use this to copy samples too).
3 - Upsample changed a tiny bit (allocation).
3 - Most functions will now work with marked ranges.
Bugfixes and changes from PT1.1A to PT1.1B:
-------------------------------------------
- Load gadget no longer hangs the program when trying to load a file that
doesn't exist.
- Better filehandling with error messages.
- Repeat and replen check installed (Rel. A hanged when replen accidentally
got the value zero).
- Repeat and replen were swapped when loading an IFF sample.
- Only RepLen values in IFF samples were added in the preset-editor.
- Tune memory wasn't always updated when editing samples.
- Swap Buffer debugged.
- The arpeggio sounded weird because the pitch wasn't set back at the
right time.
- Shift speeds up the scrolling in the PLST and preset-editor.
---------------------------------------------------------
Bugfixes and improvements from PT1.1B(& PT2.0) to PT2.1A:
---------------------------------------------------------
- mod. prefix was shown in the file-list if it wasn't lowercase only.
- ReturnfromCLI requester enhanced with quitgadget.
- Gadgetpositions fixed properly.
- Accidental and Diskspace bugs fixed.
- Editskip has now got an indicator.
- DISK OP., PLST and PRESET-ED screens have TOP/BOTTOM gadgets.
- PLST screen has now got Up/Down arrows.
- PT can load&save powerpacked samples/modules.
- PT can load&save tracks/patterns.
- Format disk bug has been fixed (I hope).
- Volume,Repeat,Replen,Pos & Mod is now editable from the keyboard.
Just click on the numbergadgets.
- You can now choose an autoinserteffect of your own.(One of the ten
effectmacros).
- The bug that completely turned the sound off when stopping the recording
has now been fixed.
- You are now able to fastscroll the file- and presetlist to the next
startcharacter.Try it out yourselves...hard to explain.
- The preset-ed routines have been corrected.To use your old PLST, simply
delete preset #0.
- The metronome has now got an accent on the first beat.
- A metronome keyboard toggle has been included.
- The metronomechannel can easily be changed to the current cursorposition.
- Most of the numbergadgets can now be zero'ed.
- Better patternrefresh when doing keyboard I/O.
- PT now reads the dir after rename/save/delete if the Autodirtoggle is on.
- You can solo a channel with the mouse by holding the right mousebutton
while pressing 1,2,3 or 4.
- You can pass an argument from workbench/shell/cli to automatically load
a module when PT starts.
- Powerpacker crunching/decrunching with powerpacker.library!
PT will automaticly append/remove ".pp" to/from the filename.
- You can save an Icon together with the module.
Known bugs, errors, stupid things and other crap:
-------------------------------------------------
- If you load a song or module that's not a proper ST-module,
Protracker may trash the upper left of the screen and/or crash.
This screen-trashing may also happen other times. Don't ask us why
or when. There is really no proper way to check if a file is a module
or song. We check for "M.K." at offset 1080, and if isn't found,
Protracker asks if you want to load it with 31 samples, since it may
be a Startrekker module. If you answer no, PT assumes it's an old
15 samples song/module.
- If you format a disk with Protracker, it's possible to save files to the
disk, but if you try to load the files you just saved, nothing comes up
in the disk op. screen. If could be that the Amiga has some problems
validating the disk, but there are no such messages. We'll have a look
at the Format routine.If you get any problems, try to take out the disk
and insert it again.PT should now re-read the dir.
- We're not sure that the MIDI input routines work at all...
- You cannot have two presets with the same name on different ST-disks.
- I have noticed that powerpacker.library crunches some samples/modules
improperly. (This goes with the powerpacker program as well).
Be sure to check the packed files before you delete the sourcefiles!
If you send us bug reports, please describe the bugs properly, so that we
can figure them out without too much trouble. State how, when and where
the bug appeared, if it's there all the time, or just happened once.
If you can tell us how to duplicate what you did to get the bug, it
would be great. THEN we can try to eliminate it, ok?
Things to come in newer versions:
---------------------------------
- Intuition campatible, multitasking.
- Synthetic sounds.
- MIDI.
PT2.1A: MIDI functions are not functioning at all!!!!!
If you really need MIDI, you'll have to wait for a new version.
We really don't know when PT2.2 will be released. Wait and see...
If you want to contact us for any reason (please do) write to:
Peter "CRAYON" Hanning
Vinterstigen 12
14440 Ronninge
Sweden
Or to:
Anders "DOLPHIN" Ramsay
Fornhojdsvagen 6 II
15158 Sodertalje
Sweden
You can also contact us at the Equipoise BBS: +46-755-87404