Asma player for real atari 8bit?

[Marius]

I live demo's ... Especially for the Music. In my room it happens that i start a mega demo in stead of playing a cd or iTunes.

 

But... I prefer listening to the real thing. So: is there an asma player for a8?

 

I would love to put all my beloved musics on my HD and make a playlist or so.

 

Thanks

ProWizard

[Rybags]

SAPEmu from the official ASAP site supposedly can play 90% + of the library on the real machine.

[Marius]

That sounds interesting… I'm going to try that today!

[w1k]

for me dont play on real HW.. i dont have stereo

[Marius]

It doesn't work on my real atari; it gives very strange memory bank numbers btw.

 

Have to think about that.

[+CharlieChaplin]

Hmm,

 

strange - afaik version 0.1 (or 1.0 ?) came without a DIR option and required 128k memory; one could choose the four extra rambanks. And if I remember correctly version 0.2 (or 2.0 ?) just added that DIR option, still requires 128k memory and one can still choose the four extra rambanks.

But I might be wrong here, maybe the program requires 128k XRAM (192k total RAM) ?!?

 

Anyways, here is a sample (example) disk with some SAP files and the SAPplayer 0.1. Since no DIR option was available in this SAPplayer version I renamed all tunes to SNDxxxx.SAP, where xxxx was just a number ranging from 0001 to 1500something, so when loading a disk with these SAP tunes one only has to remember the starting and ending number of SAP files on that disk...

 

Some years ago I downloaded and converted all available SAP tunes (around 1800 or 2000 maybe at that time) to the A8, renamed the files to 8.3 file format, sorted the files by songname alphabetically and finally tested all files with the SAPplayer 0.1 and kept only the files which worked. Finally I renamed all files into SNDxxxx.SAP numbering. This masochistic work took several months and since version 0.2 does have a DIR option all that renaming would not be required anymore (except rename to 8.3 standard). Nowadays there are many more SAP tunes available, but I do not have the time nor the motivation to do this all over again. (Think at one time I also downloaded the HVSC with more than 30,000 SID tunes, but I did not have the time to convert them to the A8 and rename them to 8.3 format nor any time to test them with the available SIDplayers for Pokey; nowadays they have more than 44,000 SID tunes available). For the time required to download and convert+test all tunes on the A8, one can be sure there is already a new version of the SID or SAP collection available with more tunes, so its a kind of Sysiphos work... and err, I think it will take my whole life to listen to all the SID and SAP (and MOD/XM...) tunes that are available nowadays, but I have some more things to do in my life...

 

-Andreas Koch.

 

 

P.S.: If you already downloaded the SAPplayer 0.2 from ASMA or ASAP page, just rename it to Autorun.SYS and copy it over the existing version on that disk (replace version 0.1 with version 0.2)...

 

EDIT: For a 130XE with 128k memory try these bank-settings: E2, E6, EA, EE (allthough most other programs use E3, E7, EB EF here), maybe this works. Use -=+* to change the value or the bank.

SAP01.zip

Edited January 14, 2014 by CharlieChaplin

[+CharlieChaplin]

For those that are interested,

here is MY full + quite old collection of converted SAP tunes I have on the A8 together with SAPplayer/SAPemu 0.1. The collection consists of 53 disks in DD-format (180k).

Alas, I do not remember which version number the ASMA archive had, when I converted all these tunes to the A8. But I guess if you want the complete + most current SAP collection you have to start over downloading and converting the files to the A8 again...

 

-Andreas Koch.

 

EDIT: sap_loading.zip contains/shows a small AVI video (DIVX-codec used) how I normally load the SAPplayer/SAPemu 0.1

 

SAP_coll_A8_old.zip

sap_loading.zip

Edited January 14, 2014 by CharlieChaplin

[Xuel]

If you install ASAP then you can automatically convert every SAP in the ASMA archive to an XEX with one command:

 

  REM First cd to wherever you unzipped the archive.
  for /F %x in ('dir /b/s *.sap') do (asapconv -o %x.xex %x)

 

Add --tag before -o if you want info displayed during playback (though some SAPs break with this).

 

You can also write out an XEX for an individual SAP from the ASAP WASAP player:

 

Right click on system tray icon -> File information... -> Save as... -> Save as type: -> *.xex

[Heaven/TQA]

Andreas... Jesus... You are really dedicated. Mich appreciatedy

[+JAC!]

I actually plan to include a .SAP player into the The!Cart menu, so so will have the whole ASMA at your fingertips on your Atari :-)

Edited January 15, 2014 by JAC!

[fox]

I recommend converting to XEX as described by Xuel, because:

- it is compatible with more SAP files than sapemu

- doesn't require extended memory (64k is enough)

- the converted XEX files are compressed and occupy less disk space than the original SAP files

Some minor variations of the command proposed by Xuel:

for /r path_to_asma %f in (*.sap) do @asapconv -o .xex %f

- doesn't echo the asapconv commands

- creates *.xex files instead of *.sap.xex

- for /r is a little shorter

On Linux/Mac:

find path_to_asma -name \*.sap -exec asapconv -o .xex {} \;