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2025-05-04 19:33

Raistlin

Registered: Mar 2007
Posts: 757

SIDBlaster

A little early perhaps to put here on CSDb as a full release .. but for anyone interested, here's a new tool from me:-

https://github.com/RobertTroughton/SIDBlaster

I have big plans with this.. main features right now (may be buggy!) are:-

- ability to add simple players to SIDs <-- later on of course this will allow full visualisers, SID information and more

- relocation of SIDs. The process used for this is very different to other relocators that I've seen. I essentially do a 10mins emulation of the CPU, running through the SID, checking what's data, what's code, what's read from, what's written to, etc... detecting indirect reads, and where the vectors for those come from ... dealing with "backups" of those vectors and all that nastiness. It's far from perfect .. but it works already with many SIDs and I'll look at other SIDs to see how easy those will be to fixup.

Next tasks:-
- exposing more information to players/visualisers
- allowing import of information/defines from txt files to pass to the visualisers
- adding an "insanity check" to the relocator - so I'll do 10mins' emulation of the SID before and after relocation, recording all the $d4xx writes and making sure they tally up.

Much more to be done ... feedback is of course welcome.

Windows/Ubuntu/Mac releases are there .. though I've only tested Windows - hopefully the others "just work"??

... 20 posts hidden. Click here to view all posts....

2025-05-05 21:43

Bansai

Registered: Feb 2023
Posts: 54

Quoting Raistlin

Quoting Burglar
I'm wondering about the relocating bit, I'm a huge fan of lft's Sidreloc V1.0, which hasn't failed me yet. So, why a new tool?

So, long-term, if I can get more SIDs to be -fully- relocatable, to the point where the generated ASM can be hand-edited without problems.. then that opens up a truckload of options. Optimisation. Direct hooks for visualisers. Etc etc.

SIDdecompiler has worked great for me. Relocation cases that I've come across somewhat often that need human intervention are optimized pointer math where the upper byte of a 16-bit pointer is skipped. Addresses used as data are another fun one. Fortunately, it's not typical. :-) This is from Beyond.sid (Michael Hendriks) using the FAME player:

 957                   L_D_0EFD_TEST
 958                   .ifne L_D_0EFD_TEST-$0EFD
 959                   L_D_0EFD_RELO_PATCH ; L_ARPTAB_LO data were abused to provide filtering enables, and we need these constants, otherwise the code isn't relocatable
 960                                       ; $11 gives low pass filtering, bad values will write 1 to bit 7 of $d418 turning off voice 3
 961                    .byte $11,$14,$17,$1A,$1D
 962                   .endif
 963                   .ifeq L_D_0EFD_TEST-$0EFD
 964                    L_D_0EFD_RELO_PATCH
 965                   .endif
 966
 967                   L_ARPTAB_LO ; from 60-7D block command, writes into EFFTAB[0] table!
 968 0efd 11 14 17 1a   .byte <L_ARP_037,<L_ARP_03A,<L_ARP_035,<L_ARP_03C,<L_ARP_0180
     0f01 1d
 969                   L_ARPTAB_HI
 970 0f02 0f 0f 0f 0f   .byte >L_ARP_037,>L_ARP_03A,>L_ARP_035,>L_ARP_03C,>L_ARP_0180
     0f06 0f
 971                   L_ARPTAB_LEN
 972 0f07 03 03 03 03   .byte $03,$03,$03,$03,$03
     0f0b 03
 973                   L_ARPTAB_RPT
 974 0f0c 00 00 00 00   .byte $00,$00,$00,$00,$00
     0f10 00
 975
 976                   L_ARP_037
 977 0f11 00 03 07      .byte $00,$03,$07
 978                   L_ARP_03A
 979 0f14 00 03 0a      .byte $00,$03,$0A
 980                   L_ARP_035
 981 0f17 00 03 05      .byte $00,$03,$05
 982                   L_ARP_03C
 983 0f1a 00 03 0c      .byte $00,$03,$0C
 984                   L_ARP_0180
 985 0f1d 00 18 00      .byte $00,$18,$00
 986

2025-05-05 21:58

Burglar

Registered: Dec 2004
Posts: 1137

@raistlin, cheers for the explanation, will follow this project :)

2025-05-05 22:06

Stone

Registered: Oct 2006
Posts: 176

Quoting Raistlin

It's a fun project to work on so I'm definitely going to push ahead and see if I can get the relocation working solidly.

I Hope you do one of your write-ups on this one too. It's always interesting.

2025-05-06 19:33

Raistlin

Registered: Mar 2007
Posts: 757

Quoting Stone

I Hope you do one of your write-ups on this one too. It's always interesting.

Well, now that you mention it..!

https://c64demo.com/welcome-to-sidblaster/

And, also, while I'm here .. I added some new features today - WIP and subject to massive change - to make it easier to verify relocation work etc. It's not 100% yet but it works well enough for now.

https://github.com/RobertTroughton/SIDBlaster

PS. I will still change the name of the tool .. maybe .. but probably as I get to v1.0.

2025-05-09 17:20

Raistlin

Registered: Mar 2007
Posts: 757

Quote: RSID are not supported, it's not told anywhere, add in the readme a warning at least. Trying to relocate \MUSICIANS\T\Turbocracker_87\Crockets_Theme.sid the message is a bit vague

SIDBlaster.exe -relocate=$1000 Crockets_Theme.sid Crockets_1000.sid

Not a valid SID file!
[2025-05-05 16:50:52] [ERROR] Failed to load file: Crockets_Theme.sid

other than that, if the exe needs java to run kickass, I'm outta here. I won't install java to test if further

Hey Ian,

I've added detection for RSID on the head version now and will put in a later release .. but .. I don't suppose you can give example SIDs for the various other versions, could you..? If they exist in HVSC - maybe everything's already updated to the latest PSID version?

I might come back to RSID if there's any way to emulate it - but it sounds like it would be tricky?

2025-05-09 17:58

iAN CooG

Registered: May 2002
Posts: 3235

"RSID files require a true C64 environment and cannot be emulated by SIDBlaster."
Very well, now it's clear why the sid gets refused =) Before it seemed it was either in the wrong path or something else.

I tried a RSID to see if this new tool would support them, but apparently no tool so far emulates them to be able to relocate them.

I really don't understand what you mean by:

"I don't suppose you can give example SIDs for the various other versions, could you..? If they exist in HVSC - maybe everything's already updated to the latest PSID version?"

Which other versions? Other PSID header version?
*_2SID.sid (version 3)
f.e. HVSC\MUSICIANS\A\A-Man\Phat_Frog_2SID.sid
*_3SID.sid (version 4)
f.e. HVSC\MUSICIANS\C\Chiummo_Gaetano\Arcade_Memories_3SID.sid

2025-05-09 18:57

Raistlin

Registered: Mar 2007
Posts: 757

Thanks Ian, that's perfect. Both the _2sid and _3sid files seem to work (on the current head version at least). Interestingly, I couldn't load the _3sid file in SidPlayerW so wasn't able to audibly test it that way - but that's fine, my tool will do a before/after verify anyway so should be all good.

2025-05-22 18:50

Raistlin

Registered: Mar 2007
Posts: 757

SIDwinder is the NEW SIDBlaster :-)

https://github.com/RobertTroughton/SIDwinder

And we're back to v0.1.0.

It's worth looking at for the visualiser stuff now. I use a new (to me, anyway) technique for grabbing hold of the SID registers that means that audio playback should be PERFECT.

Basically, SIDwinder determines what memory address the SID will change in the Play() calls .. usually there's around 100 of these - but of course some players will be better or worse than others. Anyway, it then generates C64 code that can save and restore all those values.

With that, the SID Play() function can be called twice!

1) save data that might change in Play()
2) Play() <-- this is a "perfect" play call, no mods - nothing that will affect the audio at all
3) restore data
4) disable ROM
5) call Play() again
6) copy ghost bytes from $d400-d418
7) enable ROM

Due to the save in (1) and restore in (3), the 2nd Play() call is exactly like the 1st - but giving us access to the SID write values.

Try it out..! Just grab the binaries and:-

SIDwinder.exe -player=RaistlinBars input.sid output.prg

and that's it - it'll package it all up and crunch it for you.

2025-05-22 18:58

Gordian

Registered: May 2022
Posts: 98

I thought it will be SIDBuster;)

2025-05-22 21:30

iAN CooG

Registered: May 2002
Posts: 3235

SIDwinder is a native sid composing program, use some search before naming your tool after existing programs, but beware, you only have one life left =)
https://csdb.dk/search/?seinsel=all&search=SIDwinder&Go.x=0&Go...

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