YoshiMatt

BIG THANKS to Miker & KJman (who PM'd directly) for the help!!! It's all starting to make lots of sense now

Mystery solved. It culprit was blown power supply. The XL powered up, but clearly the voltage wasn't right. When replaced with a new PSU, all is well. Duh!

Okay, so having had a look at CMC briefly, we're back to RMT.. mostly because it's a PC tool (easier to work with on a laptop, and the included Player XEX should make it possible to play any creations on an actual A8 as well). My kid has been chipping away at it the hard way and has figured out the basics, even made his first experimental tune. However, questions remain. Since we struck out with a 'general' help plea, perhaps if we ask some specifics, a good Samaritan might materialize? Attaching an annotated screenshot, questions below: Q1) What is format of the Music Speed NN/NN/N? The first value is clearly the speed (tempo), but what are the others? Q2) There are a couple of values listed under each Track, in the format NN NNNN. We assumed the first one determines the instrument, but it doesn't appear to be quite so. Not sure about the second value. Q3) The actual note entry is in the format NNN NN N, which we derived is Note, Instrument, Volume (hex) -- is it correct? It seems the tool also supports some additional control codes (see label Q5) -- what are those and how are those entered? Q4) The SONG area is the most puzzling still. We know taht each line represents one 'block' of the song, but we aren't clear what are the hex values per Track used for? (However, Matt did figure out how to enter the "Go to" command, to loop a song) Any answers will be much appreciated. We'll be happy to create & share a 'RMT FAQ for Dummies' afterwards!

Umm, okay, will start with Chaos then. At least we have some instructions for that one in this here topic. However, I'd still be curious if there is any fundamental difference between the purpose of a tool like RMT vs Chaos (or the other trackers). Is RMT, say, a more low-level (synth only) tracker perhaps? Or yet another A8 tracker? Thanks!

Oh yes, that was my first step, no go. Very bizarre. I was thinking maybe the signal is too weak for the TVs while the Dell monitors handle it, but what's up with the purring audio? Even stranger, it was working fine on one of the TVs just the week before. I've now tried two different video cables and yet a third LCD TV, which showed a blue scrambled screen (and no purring audio). Well, I will try running it through a receiver tomorrow...

I'm assuming you mean settings of the TV? In in the US (NTSC), went over the TV menu options but no such settings (or others that seem to make a difference).

Hi Fox-1, all.. Sorry, I searched for threads about native A8 trackers but found only RMT and Hardsynth (which I now understand is not a composition tool). Both of the tools you mention above look promising (especially if they come with instructions, ha!) But.. maybe to backtrack a bit (no pun intended!), what are the main differences between those A8 tracker tools? Proprietary song formats? Stereo? Sampled instruments vs synth-only? (I assumed the POKEY chip is a simple synth chip and 'sampled instruments' weren't possible on A8, not until the Amiga MODs came along? Sorry, I exited A8 in 1987..) Another consideration.. it might be a bit far-fetched, but let's suppose I'd like to eventually create a song to be integrated into a game or demo.. which tool would be best suited? Thanks!

Thanks for the info guys. Emkay, good to understand some of the tech issues, for sure. My main stumbling block at this stage is just understanding the interface of RMT properly. I get the basic 4 track columns per channel, but it would be just fantastic to get a simple few starting steps briefly described. Let's say I want to place a drum beat in Track 1, and some notes for melody into Track 2, running in a 4/4 tempo.. just some bullet points maybe, e.g. 1) Click here to select this, 2) Now change this setting here.. 3) Click here to play. I tried clicking in the track list and looking at the menus, but no go Of course, an annotated screenshot of the interface to go with that would be huge, but won't press my luck

Have a strange problem. When connecting my XLs to my Dell UltraSharp monitor (via composite RCA in), everything works fine. But when plugging them into our LCD HDTVs, also via composite in, I get no image, while the audio makes a 'purring' sound. Tried it on two different HDTVs (Sony and Sharp), same result. Any ideas?

Hello. I'm interested in creating some simple POKEY chiptunes. I downloaded RMS, got past the DLLs, but it doesn't come with any instructions or even simple getting started text. Although I understand the basic premise of a (MOD) tracker, I've never actually used one, so that doesn't help. Are there any users on AtariAge who know how to use RMS, willing to share some beginning tips? (Also, found some threads discussing Hardsynth.. is that another tracker? Wasn't too clear if it's been released..) Thanks!

Hello. For those familiar with the XEGS, two quick questions. 1) Will it work with the power supply used by the XL/Xe computers? 2) Doe it have composite video output (RCA)? Thanks!

@Third Age: Thanks, been meaning to find or make the "READY" wallpaper myself. Love the CRT effect @wood_jl, et al: Hopefully I'm not stepping on ThirdAge's toes but I took the liberty of modifying the above file for a full-screen HD aspect ratio for myself, so I'm sharing it here. I also tweaked the color to closer reflect my 800XL experience Plus, I repositioned "READY" to accommodate two rows of icons. I'm also attaching a layered 1920x1080 Photoshop file allowing to easily reposition the "READY" wherever, along with a adjustment layer for the color. wallpaper_a8_ready.zip

Very cool, but my main point was to try make the overall look-and-feel authentic to A8, rather than a Mac clone. But I understand you're way past that point! Looks amazing anyway. Hey, maybe support for custom skins?

A bit late to this exciting thread, but.. why not go for blue? The b/w designs strike me very Mac-like (or are you modeling it after the ST? Never had one so can't quite recall what TOS looked like..) IMO, it would be great for it to feel very A8 still, especially given all this effort. In any event, fantastic job so far!

(1) NIB 800xl stock (1) 800xl with Ctirad's external 320xl Ram (yet to do the stability mod) (1) 800xl with internal 256k Wizztronics Ram (1) 130xe stock (my son's) Also have a handful of original game carts, Atarimax SIO2PC & two AtariMax USB flash carts, Artist tablet, two trackballs.. The 800xl was my first computer so i'm happy to stick with this humble collection, but I'd love to see more original software done for both stock A8 and 320/vbxe to make those upgrades worthwhile..