Hello everyone, HVSC Update 25 is at last available for you to download. Although the update has taken some time, we've used the time well to obtain some quality information and many a SID fix, including some wonderful information from Markus Schneider himself. As you will see it nicely unravels all the Lords of Sonics mysteries in one fell swoop. We've also worked a bit more on the consistency side of HVSC and on top of that, there's some really lovely SIDs here. After this update, the collection should contain 15,342 SID files. This update features (all approximates): 540 new SIDs 58 fixed/better rips 7 repeats/bad rips eliminated 330 SID credit fixes Main Artists Featured In This Update: Patrick Peters (Audial Arts) Francois Prijt (Audial Arts) Tomas Danko Griff Laxity Barry Leitch Jörg Rosenstiel Agemixer Ass It ATOO Axl Dwayne Bakewell Brite-Lite Devilock Gerpsnot Gregfeel Gerard Hultink LMan Marc Mermaid mITCH & dANE Olav Mřrkrid Sascha Nagie Noise Pegasus Praiser PVL Rabbi Ray ReD Miron Schmidt László Simon Taxim Trident Walt and many more... So what else is new in this update then? ---------------------------------------- Plenty more new composers for you to discover, and at last the truth about ReD/WWE not being the same as Red/The Judges. Therefore please check out the two different composers' tunes. As for party entries, we have added the Party 2000 and at the last minute we managed to cram in the Forever 2001 entries as well. Some very unusual but nice tunes in those, so please do take the time to listen to them. And over 50 plus SIDs fixed this update. Hopefully (famous last words) this will be the last major batch of fixes, but we shall see. Plenty of good quality SIDs fixed, including Arkanoid, Forbidden Forest, Chase HQ II and many more. And, we have also reached the magical 15,000 SIDs mark. It has taken a lot of time and effort to reach this quite monumental figure, and I would like to say a very big thank you to everyone involved whom has made this possible. Without your help, no matter how large or small your contribution, it is your input which helps make the collection what it is today. Please do keep up the excellent work and support and who knows, maybe, just maybe, we can reach 20,000 SIDs one day? ------------------ Back In Time Live! ------------------ A quite unique C64 music event will be taking place in Birmingham, England, on Wednesday 16th May 2001. As well as this date being the official launch party for the Back In Time 3 CD (see below), it is also an event in itself: Back In Time Live. Imagine the scene, a leading nightclub full of not just C64 music but classic 1980s synth vibes, along with some of your legends there for good measure to chat to (and buy drinks for, as well ;) and many a good time will be had by all, I am sure. So far confirmed to be there (personal circumstances permitting of course) will be the following C64 and game composers: Rob Hubbard David Whittaker Ben Daglish Antony Crowther Richard Joseph Mark Cooksey Fred Gray Tim Wright It will be Ł5-00 for admission, and females come in for free. Add to that retro drinks promotions, video and laser feeds (the latter of which is being co-ordinated by the Yak himself, Jeff Minter) and the DJing being taken care of by Peter Connelly (Conz) and Gareth Dolloway (Iridium), both C64 remixers themselves, and it really is an event, that if you can get to, then I suggest you do. For the latest information including travel directions, please consult the official website: http://www.backintimelive.com/ ------------------------------ Back In Time 3 CD near release ------------------------------ And without further ado, please also note that Back In Time 3 CD is near completion too. The official release is Monday 21st May 2001, but if you attend Back In Time Live! you can get the CD there at the launch party on the 16th. This third CD in the series is a marked departure in that the theme throughout is completely sci-fi. There are indeed many a good futuristic C64 theme rendition which keeps in spirit with the originals too, and on top of that the whole lot is nicely segued together to form a melodic piece of work and a half. There are some sound samples available now, so if you would like to find out more information, please consult this website: http://www.backintime3.com/ --------------------------------- C64 music hits Swedish Television --------------------------------- Really? Yes, it's true. Recently the leading Swedish TV station Sveriges Television (SVT) broadcasted the programme "Musikbyrĺn" which not only included a segment featuring the C64 composer Tomas Danko, but also a medley which played segments from famous C64 game themes such as The Last Ninja, Parallax, Commando, Comic Bakery, Wizball and IK+. What was even nicer was that I received an email from the producers at SVT requesting contact with the original composers so SVT could pay them royalties for using their pieces on TV. This is really appreciated and shows that there are people out there who care about the music. --------------------------------- Sidplay 2 emulator makes progress --------------------------------- Simon White has been a busy beaver, and each new update of Sidplay 2 emulator seems to be a sign of progress. The newest beta version, 2.0.7, has a lot of improvements, including the following: Partial VIC emulation which models both the NTSC and PAL chips. Full raster interrupts supported and therefore VIC multispeed tunes. Partial CIA emulation with full interrupt capability for Timer A and B. NMI interrupts are also supported for "real C64 samples". MOS6510s interrupts are now used. Interrupt/BRK now fixed to always run the first instruction in the interrupt handler. This means the an IRQ cannot interrupt an NMI should the first instruction in the handler be SEI. SID6510. SID specialisation of the processor now improved and those bits from the player enviroment which should have been here now are. This module provides most of the SIDPlay1 compatibility, but not everything can now be supported as in version 2.0.6 due to other environment changes. Upon listening to a fair few SIDs whilst testing the beta, it seems to be improving nicely, so feel free to take a look: http://sidplay2.sourceforge.net/ --------------------------------- Yodeking and Ul-Tomten's SID Quiz --------------------------------- Erstwhile SID fans Peter Sandén and Per Bolmstedt came up with the rather nice idea of setting a SID Quiz to see how well you know the game tunes out there in HVSC. You think you know all those old SIDs by heart? Here's your chance to prove your skills against other SID lovers. They have taken snippets from fifteen classic SID game tunes - anywhere in the tune - but always the default tune of the SID in question. Do you know from which games the snippets come? Download the quiz today from: http://w1.462.telia.com/~u46205668/sidquiz01.zip (489 KB) SHEET ===== Tune 01 is: ________________________________ Tune 02 is: ________________________________ Tune 03 is: ________________________________ Tune 04 is: ________________________________ Tune 05 is: ________________________________ Tune 06 is: ________________________________ Tune 07 is: ________________________________ Tune 08 is: ________________________________ Tune 09 is: ________________________________ Tune 10 is: ________________________________ Tune 11 is: ________________________________ Tune 12 is: ________________________________ Tune 13 is: ________________________________ Tune 14 is: ________________________________ Tune 15 is: ________________________________ Please send your answers to Peter Sandén with the message subject "SID Quiz". Please do not send them to me. Entries need to be in by Sunday 15 April (that's Easter Sunday) but please do send your entries in, even if you can't find all 15 SIDs. It could well be that the winner may not even get them all, and all entries are positively encouraged. --------------- HardSID Quattro --------------- Like the idea of a HardSID card but want more? Well, now you can. The HardSID Quattro is based on the now famous HardSID card, but this card can carry four separate SIDs, not just one. And with the MIDI drivers developed for the card, you can indeed use multiple SID chip voices in your MIDI applications, something which is proving to be quite popular amongst those who have already purchased the card. And you can also mix and match 6581 and 8580 revision SID chips on the same card, too, which means you can listen to SIDs in HVSC with any of the four SID chips on board. If you would like more information, please consult the official HardSID website: http://www.hardsid.com/ ----------------------- KDVS 6581 SID show ends ----------------------- After two years of bringing SID music to the masses on the American radio station KDVS, Justin Beck (aka Hard Hat Mack) has called it a day.. here's what he had to say: Dear SID fans of the world: It has been a tremendous pleasure and honour to host "6581 SID" radio show on KDVS-FM for the past two years. My reasons for ending the program have to do mainly with pressures from my new career as a teacher; also, I needed to get away from KDVS itself, which I'd been involved in a variety of capacities for four years. My sincere thanks go out to the incredibly hard-working and dedicated HVSC team, all those programmers and musicians keeping the scene alive and fresh, Brendan Reid of the Commodore Wire (and Commodore news correspondent for KDVS), Chris from c64audio, Teli Sandor and Hard Software, Reyn Ouwehand, Michael Schwendt, Adam Lorentzon, and to anyone who listened to and enjoyed the show. SID music has become an important part of my life through doing the radio show and I look forward to all the exciting SID activity that the future will bring! Thanks and keep on rocking the good old C-64! Please enjoy the new update, and once again many thanks to everyone for their continued assistance. :) Kind regards Warren Pilkington.