Hello everyone, HVSC Update #39 is now available for you to download at www.hvsc.c64.org After this update, the collection should contain 27,087 SID files! This update features (all approximates): 1946 new SIDs 275 fixed/better rips 3 fixes of PlaySID/Sidplay1 specific SIDs 12 repeats/bad rips eliminated 230 SID credit fixes 470 SID model infos 41 tunes moved out of /DEMOS to their composers' directories 11 tunes from /DEMOS/UNKNOWN identified :-) (1 goes back due to bad credits) 14 tunes moved out of /GAMES to their composers' directories We're once more proud to present another monster update, consisting of overall over 2100 SID tunes, 275 of those being fixes. With this release we also finally managed to completely unload our huge queue of unreleased tunes to the public. There are still a couple of problem tunes left which we'll hopefully manage to fix for the next HVSC update, but basically that's all all there is. We've got the music compo entries from the following parties in this pack: Breakpoint 2004, Sidwine 3, Floppy 2004, Forever 5 and 7D4 Further there are a lot of real, unmodified BASIC rips in this update: They are basically RSID tunes, hence they need Sidplay2 or a real C64. To make them easier to spot we have added _BASIC to the filename. Another bunch of classical tunes from the first minute have been added to HVSC: o Peter Weighill's Master Composer collection /DEMOS/UNKNOWN/Master_Composer/ o the Master Composer example tunes, most likely done by the author of the program, Paul Kleimeyer. o the Brøderbund Music Shop tunes, uncredited, but with high likeliness also composed by the maker of the tool, Don Wilson. Main Artists featured in this update: DRAX Yip Agemixer Jan Albartus Amadeus/Attic/Meka Compod Dwayne Bakewell & Kent Patfield (Pearl) Richard Bayliss Glenn Rune Gallefoss Kristian Røstøen Bzyk Comer Cosowi Cycleburner Hein Holt Jeroen Breebart Jeff Klax Kordiaukis Mitch & Dane Replay Sad Shapie Surgeon Taxim NEW Artists featured in this update: Android Commodore (BASIC classics) Paul Kleimeyer -------> (the maker of Master Composer!) Tonal Teapot 4wd-soft Amadeus/Slash David Bain Benno Black Dove Debby Cruz Freeze/The Force G-Fellow Ewen Gillies David Green Gummibeer Krwiak Lio Alexander Kern (Mac) Mr. Wig Stephan Parth (Nata) Rashka Sam/SCCS Speedcracker TheFatman Steven Judd (Wyndex) Tinnitus -------------> (Asterion & Trompkins) Oskar Törnros Steffen Wagner Nick Williams Yoshi Don Williams ---------> (the maker of the Brøderbund Music Shop!) There are a couple of things worth mentioning in this update: o The latest release of Sidplay2 not only contains some generic emulation improvements, but it also introduces the possibility to play back real BASIC tunes without the need to painfully convert them to machine code, which often resulted in rather doubtful playback quality. We ripped and re-ripped quite a lot of BASIC tunes for this update, most of which now reside in the /Commodore directory. There are the classic example tunes of the C64 users manual, some example tunes from "the bible", the C64 Programmer's Reference Guide. Also take a peek into the /GAMES dir of this update, there are a couple of classic BASIC tunes too, such as Sword of Fargoal, Telengard or the 1983 Stack Computer Services BASIC games! To make them easy to spot we added a _BASIC suffix to all the filenames. o After several requests, both from inside and outside the HVSC team, we decided to integrate Peter Weighill's old Master Composer Collection into HVSC. Many of these tunes bear a lot of nostalgic value, so it would be a shame not to have them. Be aware that due to a bug in the libsidplay1 libraries they might sometimes lock up your sidplay1-based player. They work fine on Sidplay2 and on a real C64, though. o The HVSC crew got a new member: We all want to welcome back Wilfred Bos, the author of the fabulous ACID64 Player for users with hardware based SID cards such as the Hardsid or the Catweasel. Wilfred was a HVSC member of the first hour, but had to quit four years ago due to real life priorities. Welcome back, Wilfred! o While talking about Wilfred, he just recently released a new version of ACID Player, upgrading the version number to 2.0. New features: - Cycle based emulation of 6510 CPU, 6526 CIA and 6569 VIC-II chip - Cycle based playback of SID data - Support for sample playback of RSID and C64 Program files - Support for playing PRG and PC64 files - Simulation of space bar and joystick fire buttons to skip intros - Support for restoring screen size - Added 6510 CPU performance indicator - Support for skipping silents of beginning of tunes - Better resetting of SID chip - Faster voice bar animation - Fix for frequency adjustment to avoid warble sounds in some tunes - Many other improvements Download it here: http://www.acid64.com o Sidplay2w has also seen another update, as already mentioned above. An upgrade is recommended if you want to fully enjoy the candies of this update. New features: + support for multi-subtune BASIC tunes (libsidplay2) + sprite stealing emulated (libsidplay2) + p00 support (libsidplay2) + stereo mus to sid conversion (libsidplay2) * corrected instruction overlapping (libsidplay2) * CPU Debug improvements - same memory model, progress meter, option to enter power-on delay value Go get it now at http://www.gsldata.se/c64/spw/ HardSID users get their DLL from the sidplay2 home page as usual, http://sidplay2.sourceforge.net. Here's a link straight to the downloads: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=9266&package_id=69227 o LaLa has completely rewritten his ripper tool SIDedit, which has now reached v4.02! It has some great new features, such as tag-coloring in the disassembly output and a fancy new button bar to make the usage of it even more convenient. As always, get it here: http://lala.c64.org (It's in the SID related tool section) o Stefano Tognon has released issue 6 of his SIDin magazine. There's an interview with Jan 'Rambones' Harries inside, as well as some interesting articles about the new Asterion Tracker and the Padua Digi Organizer. Recommended lecture for productive people! o SID PC64 Winamp Plugin V2.0 released: Jakub Wozniakowski has done it, he finally updated his nice tool to be compatible with Windows 2000 and Windows XP! Want to play back your SID tunes on a real SID chip, but are too lazy to fiddle around with all the helper applications? Then this is probably something for you: Control your C64 through your PC running Winamp 2.x! Here's all you need: o a PC64 cable (build one yourself or buy one through the various resellers.) o Winamp 2.x o The SID PC64 Winamp Plugin 2.0 , which includes a plugin for Winamp and a tiny client program that you have to load on your C64. How does it work? 1. Connect your PC with your C64 with the PC64 cable. 2. Install Winamp 2.x 3. Drag and drop your favourite SID tunes into the Winamp playlist. 4. Load the client program on your C64. 5. Press Play on Winamp! The SID files now get transferred to the C64 (takes about one second on average) and the client program on the C64 will take care of the playback. It's really that easy, not even a restart of the client is required if you want to play another tune. Just put 100s of files into your playlist, set a default playing time and let it run for hours! :-) Requirement: Win95/98/ME/2000/XP Yep, it does work like a breeze on XP without any tweak packages or timeconsuming trial-and-error orgies, I do use this regularly! Roughly estimated compatibility: 90-95% (no digi tunes, no RSID tunes, no tunes that have PLAY=0) Get it here: http://noname.c64.org/csdb/release/?id=8450 o Here's a rather unusual announcement to all of you out there: We're getting lots of virus infected emails emerging from SID fans that obviously have our email addresses in their address books. For the first time in computer history the amount of virus infected emails have exceeded the amount of SPAM emails! Looking at the damage this causes on a global scale we plea to all of you out there: - Regularly update your Windows through the Microsoft website www.windowsupdate.com and get the latest security patches! - Get a virus scanner, and most of all, update it regularly. - A free and very good webbased scanner can be found here: http://housecall.trendmicro.com The only information they require is the country you're from, that's all. - A completely free virus scanner with almost daily internet updates can be found here: www.free-av.com This is a low resource consuming virus scanner, that despite being completely free for non-commercial users, performed pretty well in the recent comparison tests you can find on the web. Thanks for your attention! -- This message has been sent to you via the HVSC-Update List. 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