SAP To .XEX

[Paul Westphal]

I am compiling a file of my favorite songs in SAP format, and will eventually need them converted to .xex format to run on real hardware, and I do not have time to figure out RMT. Would anybody like to assist in the conversion to NTSC .xex?

 

Some $$ could be sent for the effort...

[Xuel]

ASAP can convert SAP to XEX.

 

You can even convert them in bulk using a one-line dos or unix command. See this thread.

 

asapconv and WASAP use a player than automatically adjusts the tempo for NTSC or PAL.

[Marius]

Is there a feature to make an real atari playlist? Or a suggestion how to do this.

 

I like to switch my Atari on, and let it play all my favorite atari musics like a playlist.

 

I have converted successfully some SAP files to XEX, they play excellent on my real hardware, but I have to load them all manually.

 

Any suggestion is welcome!

Greetz

Marius

[Paul Westphal]

Right on, thanks! I thought RMT was the only way to do it.

[Paul Westphal]

Right on, thanks! I thought RMT was the only way to do it.

[Paul Westphal]

OK I downloaded it...the player works, but the converter opens up for a second then dissapears....win xp... WTF?

[Paul Westphal]

It says," warning 1909 could not create shortcut WASAP.ink verify destination folder exists and that you can access it. " WTF?

[Xuel]

You have two options with the ASAP package.

 

1) asapconv is a command-line tool. You can run it from a cmd prompt.

2) WASAP lives in the system tray. Right click on it for the menu.

[Paul Westphal]

Thanks Xuel

[Paul Westphal]

The right click on the system tray icon will only let you convert it to WAV.

[Paul Westphal]

This is why I wanted someone to do it. You should be able to just - 1) download the program, 2) run it, 3) and be playing the Fracking songs on real hardware within minutes. I have wasted much time trying to figure out why the output on RMT won't work, and now this poop program. It should not be this hard. Maybe somethings are just too simple for me sometimes, as I am used to performing the more difficult tasks.

[Marius]

This is why I wanted someone to do it. You should be able to just - 1) download the program, 2) run it, 3) and be playing the Fracking songs on real hardware within minutes. I have wasted much time trying to figure out why the output on RMT won't work, and now this poop program. It should not be this hard. Maybe somethings are just too simple for me sometimes, as I am used to performing the more difficult tasks.

 

On my Mac I have a tool that simply does that.

 

Excellent program.

You select the SAP files or you make a list of favorite SAP files

You hit: export to XEX

and BAM... you are ready!

 

This is called Atari Sounds For The Masses

http://atari-sounds.fatmagnus.ppa.pl

[analmux]

IIRC the SAP data layout does not contain 2-tone-filter, sawtooth wave, triangle wave, STIMER control and SKCTL control. So SAP is far incomplete for simulating real PoKey music anyway, and that's a pity. It is always better to find the original XEX files instead and don't use SAP at all.

Edited May 2, 2015 by analmux

[Xuel]

The right click on the system tray icon will only let you convert it to WAV.

 

Right Click -> File information... -> Save as... -> Save as type: Atari 8-bit executable (*.xex)

[Paul Westphal]

Ok Xuel, will try it. I hope it will do it in NTSC...That's the end game

[Xuel]

IIRC the SAP data layout does not contain 2-tone-filter, sawtooth wave, triangle wave, STIMER control and SKCTL control. So SAP is far incomplete for simulating real PoKey music anyway, and that's a pity. It is always better to find the original XEX files instead and don't use SAP at all.

 

SAP is not any one data layout per se. It just stores some meta information, the 6502 code for the player and and the music data. SAP players then emulate a 6502, POKEY and some other aspects of an Atari machine (e.g. VCOUNT) to play the music back. It's fairly straight forward to convert SAP to XEX since you just need to add some code to call the player INIT routine and then call the PLAY routine at regular intervals. The INIT routine could even take over and never return. So, just about anything that can be expressed as an XEX should be possible in SAP as well, including digi music, 2-tone, etc.

 

EDIT: Here's the spec.

Edited May 2, 2015 by Xuel

[Paul Westphal]

That seemed to do it. I'm running the converted files in 800win +, NTSC with no problem with BPM. I will try it on real hardware off a MyIdeII.

[analmux]

SAP is not any one data layout per se. It just stores some meta information, the 6502 code for the player and and the music data. SAP players then emulate a 6502, POKEY and some other aspects of an Atari machine (e.g. VCOUNT) to play the music back. ...

You're right. But now I remember that the pokey.dll itself was just wrong at that time. Here you can play 'Instrumentarium.sap':

 

http://asma.atari.org/asmadb/search.php?q1=2&q2=Bernhard%20Pos%20(Analmux)&q3=1

 

Played by the real machine:

 

 

Thus this pokey.dll version had the following errors:

 

- Sawtooth wave was totally messed up

- Distortion 2 at 1.79 MHz had a wrong key shift

- Triangle wave was totally messed up

- Distortion guitar (16 bit) was totally messed up

- Clarinet (16 bit) was totally messed up

- 2-tone-filter was not enabled

Edited May 2, 2015 by analmux

[emkay]

SAP player plays it wrong due to the used DLLs..

Using the registers of the original HW should replay without any problem.

 

The Problem still is: Most PC users play obviously and without any other logical possibility, the SAP tunes on a PC.

So a fix of the DLLs has to be strongly forced...

[peteym5]

This might be something that had been talked about before. I would like to do SAP to EXE, but want to have a SAP song playing while other things are happening onscreen. Like be part of a VBI for Demos', Animations, and Games. Is there an ASM source to do this?