



                          ACID 64 Player Pro v3.2
                A next generation Commodore 64 Music Player 

                    Copyright (c) 2003-2011 Wilfred Bos
                           http://www.acid64.com




INTRODUCTION
============

ACID 64 Player Pro is the sequal of Acid 64 Player and is a cycle based
Commodore 64 music player designed for playing SID tunes on sound cards/devices
that have a real SID chip (6581/6582/8580) on board like the HardSID ISA/PCI
cards and the HardSID 4U/Uno/UPlay USB devices. ACID 64 also supports network
devices that emulate the SID chip like JSidDevice that is part of JSidplay2.

ACID 64 emulates the MOS 6510 micro processor, the 6526 CIA chip and partially
the 6569 VIC chip to run the code of a SID tune and it controls the SID chip
on the device for playing the Commodore 64 music.


PREREQUISITE
============

This software will only work on Windows Operating Systems (Win2K or higher
recommended). The supported operating system is dependend on the drivers of the
hardware or the prerequisites of the network device that is used for emulation
of the hardware. When using a HardSID card/device, the hardware and drivers
should be installed correctly in order to run ACID 64 Player Pro.
Go to http://www.hardsid.com for more information.

If you're using a HardSID ISA/PCI card, then you need to install the hardsid.dll
file in your path or in the same folder where ACID 64 Player is installed. You
can get the latest hardsid.dll from http://www.hardsid.com/downloads.php.
It is recommended to run ACID 64 Player on fast machines in order to play
multi-speed tunes and digi tunes smoothly. The HardSID 4U/Uno/UPlay USB devices
have hardware buffers and utilizes their own resources. ACID 64 consumes less
CPU time when playing SID tunes on devices with internal buffers.

As of version 3.0.3, the hardsid.dll is not required anymore for HardSID 4U,
HardSID Uno and HardSID UPlay devices.


INSTALLATION
============

Unzip the archive to a directory of your choice. You can make a shortcut for the
executable 'ACID64player.exe' and move it to your desktop.

To associate SID files with ACID 64 Player Pro just go to the 'File' menu and
choose 'Preferences...'. Then click on the 'Register as default application' 
checkbox and click on the 'OK' button. Only files with extension SID will be
associated with the ACID 64 Player Pro program. To unregister the file
association, just uncheck the checkbox and press the 'OK' button.

To configure STIL (SID Tune Information List) and the Song Length Database, you
should have installed the High Voltage SID Collection (http://www.hvsc.de) on
your drive. Go to the 'File' menu and choose 'Preferences...'. Select the HVSC
Directory (e.g. C:\High Voltage SID Collection\C64Music) and press 'Save'. When
a song is played that has some STIL info, a yellow i-button will appear. Click
on the i-button or press CTRL-I to show the STIL info. If a song is recognized
in the Song Length Database then it will show the song length after the SID
tune title.

To configure SIDId you should have the sidid.cfg file located on your drive
(http://covertbitops.c64.org/tools/sidid.zip). Go to the 'File' menu and choose
'Preferences...'. Select the SID ID Config File (e.g. C:\SIDId\sidid.cfg) and
press 'Save'. When a song is played, go to the properties dialog (F1 key) and
in the 'Identified player(s)' section you can see which players are identified.
You can also check the player within the C64 memory during playback by clicking
on the 'Memory Scan' radio button in the properties dialog. This could be useful
when you're running a PRG or SID file which is compressed or when you're
skipping parts of a PRG file with the next button and want to check the players
in memory.


KEY SHORT CUTS
==============
SPACE            : Pause/Play (in Folders panel)
ESCAPE           : Stop (in Folders panel)
                   Clear search criteria input box (in Search and Authors panel)
CTRL-ALT-0 / 9   : Play sub song 1 to 10
CTRL-1           : Mute/Undo Mute Voice 1
CTRL-2           : Mute/Undo Mute Voice 2
CTRL-3           : Mute/Undo Mute Voice 3
CTRL-4           : Mute/Undo Mute Voice 4
CTRL-A           : Select authors panel
CTRL-B           : Select Folders panel
CTRL-C           : Copy filename
CTRL-D           : Switch to next device
CTRL-SHIFT-D     : Switch to previous device
CTRL-E           : Open directory in Explorer
CTRL-F           : Toggle Filter on/off
CTRL-I           : Display STIL info
CTRL-M           : Mute all voices
CTRL-N           : Select NTSC frequency for current tune
CTRL-O           : Open file
CTRL-P           : Select PAL frequency for current tune
CTRL-S           : Select search panel
CTRL-RIGHT       : Fast forward
CTRL-ALT-HOME    : Play first sub song
CTRL-ALT-END     : Play last sub song
CTRL-ALT-RIGHT   : Next sub song or simulation of space bar and joystick buttons
CTRL-ALT-LEFT    : Previous sub song
RIGHT            : In file box -> Navigate to next song
                   In directory box -> Expand directory or switch to file box
                   In search results / song list -> Select next song
                   In authors list -> Switch to song list
LEFT             : In file box -> Switch to directory box
                   In directory box -> Collapse directory or go one directory up
                   In search results / song list -> Select previous song
                   In song list of author -> Switch to author filter input box
UP               : Scroll up in file/directory box and search results
DOWN             : Scroll down in file/directory box and search results
PAGE UP          : Scroll page up in file/directory box and search results
PAGE DOWN        : Scroll page down in file/directory box and search results
TAB              : Switch between directory box and file box (in Folders panel)
                   Goto to next field (in Search and Authors panel)
HOME             : In file box -> First song in list
                   In directory box -> First visible directory in list
                   In search box -> Move cursor before first character
                   In search results -> First entry in list
END              : In file box -> Last song in list
                   In directory box -> Last visible directory in list
                   In search box -> Move cursor after last character
                   In search results -> Last entry in list
BACKSPACE        : In file box -> Switch to directory box and show selected
                   directory
                   In directory box -> One directory up
ENTER            : In file box -> Play selected song
                   In directory box -> Expand directory or switch to file box
                   In search box -> Play selected song from search results
                   In authors list -> Play selected song from author
F1               : Properties page
F10              : Minimize ACID64 to system tray
F12              : Preferences page


TROUBLESHOOTING INFO
====================

HardSID ISA/PCI -> HardSID 4U / Uno / UPlay:

If you've used a HardSID ISA/PCI card before and you're using a HardSID 4U, Uno
or UPlay USB device instead on the same machine, then it is possible that you're
still seeing the old devices in the devices dropdown. To avoid this, you should
rerun the HardSIDConfig.exe utility that came with the HardSID ISA/PCI driver
and auto detect SID chips by clicking the auto-detect button or remove the
registry entry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Hard Software\HardSID and restart
ACID 64.


Timing / Performance issues on ISA/PCI cards:

When you're using Windows 2K/XP that runs on a multi-core / multi-processor
system that supports processor power management features, be aware that there
are specific OS patches available (Microsoft support article ID: 909944, 896256,
895980 and 835730) to fix timing/performance issues that could occur in
programs. Note that a hot fix for issue 835730 is already present in Win2K SP4
and WinXP SP2.
If you experience timing problems in ACID 64, it is recommended to install the
patches. After installing the patches it is possible to set the startup option
'usepmtimer' which specifies that the ACPI Power Management Timer (PMT) should
be used as a high resolution counter (see article ID 895980 for more info). For
Windows 2K/XP in combination of certain CPUs it is recommended that PMT is used
as a high resolution counter, if available.


Playback quality:

When you record SID music it is recommended to leave ACID 64 on the foreground
(focussed). This is recommended for the HardSID ISA/PCI cards.
For time consuming SID tunes, ACID 64 is reducing CPU time to give your system
more response time and to avoid lockups when it runs in the background. This is
only done for SID tunes that write a lot of data to the SID chip in a certain
time period.


DISCLAIMER
==========

Use this software at your own risk.

ACID 64 Player Pro comes with absolutely no warrenty. The author is not liable
for any damage in any event as a result of using ACID 64 Player Pro and also not
for executing the mentioned patches and system configurations.

ACID 64 Player Pro is tested on several machines and on several Windows
operating systems without any problems. This is not a guarentee that the
software will work on any Windows machine.

If you experience any problem with ACID 64 Player Pro, please let the author
know.


COPYRIGHT
=========

Copyright (c) 2003-2011 Wilfred Bos. All rights reserved.

ACID 64 Player Pro may be used freely and may only be distributed in its
original zip archive format.


THANKS
======

Thanks to Tli Sndor for building the HardSID family (ISA, PCI, Quattro, 4U,
Uno and the UPlay device) and his extensive support. Without these great SID
cards/devices and their owners, ACID 64 Player Pro wouldn't be what it is now.

Thanks to Ken Hndel for providing the network interface to communicate with
JSidplay2. Thanks to Antti S. Lankila and Dag Lem for the wonderful SID
emulation that is used in JSidDevice and JSidplay2.

Thanks to all the people who have sent me bug reports and suggestions about the
previous versions of ACID 64 Player (Pro). Also I would like to thank
Markus Gritsch, Mattias Johansson, Kai Walter, Joerg Droege, Svein Erik Edsberg,
Paul Heartfield, Paul Strik, Anders Eriksen and Jarkko Lehti for their intensive
beta testing.

Many thanks to all the members and ex-members of the HVSC crew for their
support, the great discussions about SID tunes, emulation issues and for their
effort in converting so many SID tunes.

Thanks to Cadaver of Covert Bitops and the contributors of SIDId for making all
the signatures of the known sid players.


CONTACT INFORMATION
===================

Feel free to send me an e-mail for your feedback, questions or to report bugs.

http://www.acid64.com
email: acid64@xs4all.nl