STOS .YM Format Replay Routine

#1 · April 1, 2021, 23:52

I am writing a STOS .YM Format Replay Routine. Why you may ask when most tunes are available in SNDH format?
Well, I personally like it and it is so that I can replay Spectrum 128k tunes on an ST, and maybe put them in a demo.I really wanted to write the routine in assembly but when I read the YM specification I thought I better write a prototype in STOS first.My recent YM rips are in YM6! format converted using AY-Emul by Sergey Bulba but when I ripped The Big Demo tunes using PaCifiST in 1998 they were in YM5! format. I have seen on the YM Jukebox that the Wings Of Death tunes are YM3! format. I haven't even got the spec for that. Should I implement support for YM3! and YM4! and higher non-interleaved format?

At the moment the YM file has to be uncompressed but I could pack it with Pack Ice 2.4 or some easily supported format which can be uncompressed to a memory bank in STOS in demos.

The player works with YM5!\YM6! Interleaved Format at the moment but I haven't implemented code for Digi Drums, SID Sound or Sinus-SID. It skips past the digi drums section to find the start of the register dump.

Download examples:

The tune included is Hydrofool (ingame) from the Spectrum 128k.

http://www.lynn3686.com/download/stos/YMPLAY2.zip

http://www.lynn3686.com/download/stos/TUNES.zip

To load a different tune:
erase 5
reserve as data 5,lengthoftune
bload "c:\ym\tune.bin",5

Any questions, comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

#2 · April 2, 2021, 17:15

This is really cool Michael! I noted on one of your posts that you were looking to get this converted into an assembly routine - did you manage to get this done? Looking at the code it should be fairly straight forward to do, so I could have a try if you wanted?

Keep up the great work!

#3 · April 2, 2021, 18:50

Hi Neil, thanks for the feedback. I haven't converted it into an assembly routine yet. I wanted to quickly get my Jukebox demo working.

These Spectrum tunes don't need digi-drums so there is no need to implement that yet. If anyone can take the routine and improve it they are welcome to do so.