Hello, 8bitbubsy.
Thank you for release. Сould you check please Stereo covox (LPT1+LPT2) output bug, i describe there: FastTracker II halted when trying switch output to two COVOX (lpt1+lpt2)

Nice. Do you have the source to FT2? IIRC it is closed source, right?

Tronix wrote:

Hello, 8bitbubsy.
Thank you for release. Сould you check please Stereo covox (LPT1+LPT2) output bug, i describe there: FastTracker II halted when trying switch output to two COVOX (lpt1+lpt2)

I'll have a quick look in the sources to see if there's anything obvious which makes it hang, but I'm afraid that I can't help you there. I'm not really good with this kind of code, and I don't even have any ability to test LPT1+LPT2 properly.
Keep in mind that accessing both of these will most likely use interrupt 5 and 7, which is almost always in use by the sound card. This mode probably works the best on machines with no sound card installed.

EDIT: Yeah sorry, I can't see anything wrong, also this is kinda complicated low-level code.

root42 wrote:

Nice. Do you have the source to FT2? IIRC it is closed source, right?

Yes I do, and yes it's closed source.

8bitbubsy wrote:

I'll have a quick look in the sources to see if there's anything obvious which makes it hang, but I'm afraid that I can't help you there. I'm not really good with this kind of code, and I don't even have any ability to test LPT1+LPT2 properly.

I could help. I have a bunch of Covox devices, and I should be able to add an MDA card to one of my machines to act as a second LPT.

8bitbubsy wrote:

Keep in mind that accessing both of these will most likely use interrupt 5 and 7, which is almost always in use by the sound card.

You only need to output raw bytes to a Covox, no interrupts are involved (the interrupt is connected to one of the input lines, namely the ACK line at pin 10. Covox is a write-only device, so it never communicates back to the PC at all).

Alright, I see, so it's not an interrupt conflict then. Anyway, I'm not allowed to share the source code, so how would we go from here? Thanks for the offer though.

Hello, it seems like dream. IF there will be a new software then why not the new hardware devices too? Look here we are also creating new soundcards.
Is it difficult to get 2 cards at the same time to work (multitrack output!) ? In a work of double GUS?

Or what about the new multitrack card?
After I get the card ready then I can fully provide specifications so it can as well be 3x stereo output, with one IRQ in use, which can be used as routing for different external effect units.
Also there is not so much technical difficulty to add 2 MIDI ports on the new card, as then the data sending will be with 16bit port instead of 8bit port, while status register will be the same.

Because it's not trivial to implement. We're talking low-level hardware interraction through x86 assembler here. I'm not the correct dude for implementing new big things like that.

thanks for this update! I used FT2 lots back in the day!

8bitbubsy wrote:

Alright, I see, so it's not an interrupt conflict then. Anyway, I'm not allowed to share the source code, so how would we go from here? Thanks for the offer though.

Where did you get the code from? From the Triton people themselves? Perhaps they want to share the code with me, being a fellow-scener.

Failing that, I wrote a streaming sample player for Covox a while ago. I wanted to extend it to stereo using two Covoxes. I could finish that, and once it works, we should have a working proof-of-concept for dual-Covox playback.
It should actually be quite trivial: you just output samples via a timer interrupt. Where single Covox just writes one byte to port 378h (or whatever), stereo Covox should write a byte to the left Covox and to the right Covox from a single interrupt. So port 378h and 278h usually (although port 3BCh is also an option, it's what MDA cards use, so my machine will use that).

Scali wrote:

Where did you get the code from? From the Triton people themselves? Perhaps they want to share the code with me, being a fellow-scener.

From Vogue and Mr.H after some long dialogs, convincing them that it would help me with my FT2 clone development. The code I got from them is an incomplete pre-release version of FT2.07, but I re-sourced it back to 2.09 by hand, and the code/data is bit-perfect to that of FT2.09. I already had the 2.09 replayer laying (from kebby/kb), so after injecting that it was only a matter of looking for changes in comparing disassemblies, which made me find out what to rewrite next. Was not a lot of code.

Scali wrote:

Failing that, I wrote a streaming sample player for Covox a while ago. I wanted to extend it to stereo using two Covoxes. I could finish that, and once it works, we should have a working proof-of-concept for dual-Covox playback.
It should actually be quite trivial: you just output samples via a timer interrupt. Where single Covox just writes one byte to port 378h (or whatever), stereo Covox should write a byte to the left Covox and to the right Covox from a single interrupt. So port 378h and 278h usually (although port 3BCh is also an option, it's what MDA cards use, so my machine will use that).

FT2 already has dual-LPT-DAC support in stereo, but as someone said in this thread it seems like it's broken.

FT2.10 ... (did I just prayed for this) ? Anyway, thats the best birthday happening ever, however with a one day delay for my 40-th anniversary.

Oh, my... I never expected this could happen. Also I have not noticed your Win32/64 Fasttracker II clone so far. It also works very well, and includes Nibbles 😀

Uh, 2.10c already released and you haven't updated this post in a while!

DevanWolf wrote:

Uh, 2.10c already released and you haven't updated this post in a while!

Sorry, I simply forgot that I had made this thread after making the new version. Updated.

hi!

i can't express how much i'm appreciated for the support of the FT2! i'm loyal DOS and FT2 user, it is my primary sequencer 😀

the only thing i really, really need is the ability to turn off MIDI Program Change on instrument's MIDI output... is it possible to do in some future update?

thanks again for incredible work!

Sorry, but I can't do that. It would require me to make a new "program change disabled" field in the XM instrument headers, and that would be messy and could cause issues with older FT2 versions.
The only thing I could do is to give you a custom FT2.10c version where MIDI out program change is permanently disabled, but I assume that's not what you're looking for...

that's perfect! give me that version please! it would be very helpful! million thanks in advance!!!

otherwise all my external stuff gets crazy and i need to make special empty pattern to have time to get them back to order...

8bitbubsy wrote on 2020-03-26, 11:30:

Sorry, but I can't do that. It would require me to make a new "program change disabled" field in the XM instrument headers, and that would be messy and could cause issues with older FT2 versions.
The only thing I could do is to give you a custom FT2.10c version where MIDI out program change is permanently disabled, but I assume that's not what you're looking for...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ozdpo0oxtz0u3ua/FT2 … DI_PRG.ZIP?dl=1
15:41 EDIT: I did a mistake in the code, I fixed it now.

Let me know if it works, I don't really know what I'm doing since I don't know MIDI stuff very well.
As said before, this will permanently disable the program change on MIDI out, so it's possible that it messes something up by never sending that data.

thanks a lot! will test it tonight 😀

8bitbubsy wrote on 2020-03-26, 14:27:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ozdpo0oxtz0u3ua/FT2 … DI_PRG.ZIP?dl=1 15:41 EDIT: I did a mistake in the code, I fixed it now. […]
Show full quote

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ozdpo0oxtz0u3ua/FT2 … DI_PRG.ZIP?dl=1
15:41 EDIT: I did a mistake in the code, I fixed it now.

Let me know if it works, I don't really know what I'm doing since I don't know MIDI stuff very well.
As said before, this will permanently disable the program change on MIDI out, so it's possible that it messes something up by never sending that data.