| | Raistlin
Registered: Mar 2007
Posts: 722 |
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"?? |
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| | Stone
Registered: Oct 2006
Posts: 176 |
Quoting hedningMy thought exactly. I actually own one. :) https://cbmretro.fi/product/sidblaster-usb-nano/
I even made a driver for it back in the day, available here on csdb SIDBlaster USB driver BETA
I think this version is obsolete though.
Quoting Raistlinrelocation 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
Not sure how LFT does it in Sidreloc V1.0 but this sounds similar to what I did in SIDdecompiler V0.8 I basically create (through emulation) a graph for each value that is written to the SID chip and by traversing that and applying some heuristics, I try to determine which are vectors that should be relocated. I found that some drivers need to be page-aligned to some extent, e.g because of self-modifying code where only the low-byte is changed in the vector. It's a very interesting project, for sure! |
| | Raistlin
Registered: Mar 2007
Posts: 722 |
Quoting Stonee.g because of self-modifying code where only the low-byte is changed in the vector
Yep, exactly this. I mentioned this oddity just above. I do plan to tackle this one eventually as well though so that relocation still works without restricting to whole pages .. but I'm not there yet. |
| | Raistlin
Registered: Mar 2007
Posts: 722 |
Quoting Stonethis sounds similar to what I did in SIDdecompiler V0.8
Interesting! That does sound very similar indeed, actually..! We look to have very similar commandline options too.
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. |
| | Bansai
Registered: Feb 2023
Posts: 51 |
Quoting Raistlin
Quoting BurglarI'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
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| | Burglar
Registered: Dec 2004
Posts: 1129 |
@raistlin, cheers for the explanation, will follow this project :) |
| | 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. |
| | Raistlin
Registered: Mar 2007
Posts: 722 |
Quoting StoneI 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. |
| | Raistlin
Registered: Mar 2007
Posts: 722 |
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? |
| | iAN CooG
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 3229 |
"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 |
| | Raistlin
Registered: Mar 2007
Posts: 722 |
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. |
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