It has been two years since everybody loved Richard and now everybody loves him even more! This time included are 18 new songs in addition to all of the previous ones and improved controls such as the ability to browse the menu more quickly. All of the songs are preloaded into a 256K RAM Expansion and a random song will play when you start.
This collection will not work at all without a RAM Expansion! Select SID 8580. You traverse the songlist with joystick up, down, left and right. Press space for a random tune! You will be taken to that song in the song list as well. The song list is green, with currently selected song shown as light green and presently playing song in yellow.
Loading instructions
C64: in BASIC type LOAD "EVERYBODY LOVES", 8 : RUN
C128: go to 64 mode and do the above or with the disk in drive 8 do a reset or power up your computer or use the BOOT command in BASIC or in the monitor type GFE000!
Description
This is an enhanced collection of Richard's best tunes, in my opinion, emphasis being on his more recent activity. There are now 64 songs, all pre-loaded into the RAM Expansion. At least 256K of 1764/1750-compatible expanded memory will be needed! Additionally, full sources and other development material will be available on my website later. Furthermore, there are three alternative downloads available as follows.
EverybodyLovesHardware: This is the normal version, for use on actual Commodore computers but also on emulators for a more authentic feel. A load error indicates failure to install DreamLoad or to access the data file.
EverybodyLovesImage: In this one you will find a raw image file for systems that allow direct loading to an emulated or real RAM Expansion. Load the .bin file into the RAM Expansion and then just run the program!
EverybodyLovesVICE: Special version for the versatile VICE emulator. Contains a VSF snapshot file. This will load the whole thing instantaneously!
If you are using an emulator, remember to enable RAM Expansion emulation and make it at least 256 kilobytes in size. This is not necessary when using the VICE snapshot file, because it will automatically set it. You should save your own settings before running the VSF, because VICE will read many settings from the snapshot! If you run the regular version in VICE, turn True Drive Emulation on, because otherwise it will fail.
DreamLoad has support for 1541, 1571, 1581 and some other drives. However, loading is possible from drive 8 only and there must be no other devices on the serial bus concurrently to loading from disk. I used the old version with an identified bug, because I didn't get a reply from Doc Bacardi and no new version is available on their site, but said bug doesn't affect this use of DL and it will work just fine for this purpose!
Background and technical information
Initially I started mulling over the idea of a revised Richard Bayliss music collection in November and got the reworked logo from JSL on the 16th. Then over a month passed with me only having done preliminary work. Suddenly I had 3 days to do this. :-) Loading time is about 1 minute and 20 seconds for the entire program, which is well worth the wait and besides, you will only load it once and then keep it running for hours! ;-)
It takes up to five centiseconds on average to change a tune. The first frame after fire is pressed, the new tune is fetched from the memory expansion, and the second frame after fire, it is initialized ($1000 called instead of $1003) so prepare for two frames of silence between songs! The big scroller will unfortunately skip a beat during the first frame after song selection, because that raster time slot is used to perform the DMA operation. :P
The following is how the disk loader works. There are 256 kilobytes of data to store into the RAM Expansion. Those data have been broken apart into 16 chunks of 16 kilobytes each and separately compressed with exomizer. The loader switches between loading and decrunching these pieces one at a time. Each piece is depacked in turn to 8192-24575 from the loading buffer at $6800 and then moved in succession to the expanded memory.
The loader utilizes the Get interface of DreamLoad to extract a variable amount of data from the single big file that contains all of the compressed chunks. Since raw backwards-crunched exomizer data blocks end with 0, 96 and start with 128, 0 this gives a unique sequence that is monitored to identify transitions of the packed pieces. The main program itself is concatenated at the end as the 17th compressed chunk.
The image download contains said 256 kilobytes of data (64 songs at 4K each) in uncompressed form. I have not tested it myself outside of emulation, but providing that third-party hardware and firmware operate in a way one would expect, this version should allow usage on the Turbo Chameleon, some 1541 Ultimate cartridges and even MMC64 or MMC Replay using a custom plugin by Hannenz. No guarantee is given for possible functioning!
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