*** Review/Retrospective ***
*** Xav (Mark Crutch) ***
*** Utility ***
*** STe/TT/Falcon ***


*** Heading & Standfirst ***
Play it again, SAM

Xav takes a retrospective look at some software that just might be about 
to get a new lease of life...

When Atari released the Falcon, one of its greatest assets was its 
advanced sound system. At a time when PC owners were forced to spend 
hundreds of pounds on sound cards, here was a computer with built in 16 
bit audio attached via a processor-friendly direct memory access (DMA) 
system. Naturally Atari wanted to show this off, and bundled a couple of 
programs with the machine for just this purpose.

One of those programs was the System Audio Manager, or SAM to its friends. 
Programmed by Scott Sanders, the man behind the Atari Compendium, its most 
obvious feature was the ability to assign sampled sound effects to system 
events. This allowed users to have explosions everytime something crashed, 
or snippets of a favourite television programme playing at boot up. In 
fact it was possible to have sounds for a whole host of events, ranging 
from the fileselector and alert boxes, to individual keypresses!

SAM can also record samples using the Falcon's hardware, but it has 
several other features, aimed at programmers, which are not immediately 
obvious. For a start, although SAM is most at home on a Falcon, it will 
run on any other machine with DMA sound - the STe, Mega STe, and TT. When 
installed, it also creates a new Xbios function which presents programmers 
with a simple interface for playing sampled sounds, which is standardised 
across the machines.

Another feature is its ability to use *.SAA files. These are files which 
are supplied with applications and allow them to inform SAM of certain 
events, so that it can play a sample of the users choosing. Theoretically 
they allow you to specify two types of events - application globals, and 
macros. Application globals are called whenever the user selects a 
function such as "Print" or "Quit" - events that are commonly used on a 
system wide basis. With an SAA file, the user can assign sounds to these 
events which will play whenever the function is selected from any 
compatible program. Macros offer a similar facility, but are unique to 
each application, and allow the user to assign samples to individual 
events in individual programs.

This is where the story becomes a little more interesting. SAA files sound 
like a great idea - they are easy for the programmer to use and add 
flexibility for the user. Yet it is virtually impossible to find an 
application that includes them. This intrigued me, and a couple of 
friends, and spurred us into tracking down the relevant programming 
information. Sure enough, to call a sample from SAM was easy - just a 
couple of lines of code. There was even a program to create SAA files. So 
why weren't they in common use?

*** Subtitle ***
Get the SACK

The answer was clear the moment I tried to make an SAA file - the program 
to create them generated the file, but SAM refused to recognise it! One of 
my companions, Anthony Jacques, examined the file in detail and was able 
to identify the problem, and deconstruct the format of the file, so work 
began on "KP SACK" - an SAA Construction Kit. This was to be a modern GEM 
application for creating SAA files, which we hoped would spur programmers 
into using them more often. It looked good, came with online help and 
programming guidance, and even created header files to make development as 
easy as possible.

There was just one problem: having spent months developing the software, 
the resultant files didn't work as expected. They were recognised by SAM 
alright. Application globals played back perfectly. The problem lay with 
macros. Each SAA file has space for sixteen of them. We couldn't persuade 
SAM to play back any but the first.

Anthony disassembled SAM itself, and was able to track down the bug. He 
now has a patched version, but until we can contact Scott Sanders and get 
permission to distribute it, it seems that one of SAM's most useful 
features will remain dormant. KP SACK has now taken an interesting turn in 
development - having finished V1, we had to remove much of the code to 
create V0.5, which just generates SAA files for application globals, not 
for macros.

The great shame is that SAM has so much potential. It's easy to use for 
both the programmer and the user. It can be fun or functional, and allows 
you to add your own personal stamp to your machine. I would recommend it 
to any STe, TT or Falcon owner as a worthwhile addition to their software 
collection, and just hope that a future issue of AC will be able to carry 
the news that "a patched version is now available..."

*** Subtitle ***
Contacts

Both an unpatched version of SAM, and version 0.5 of KP SACK are available 
from my own web pages (www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~xav) or from Anthony's 
(www.cs.man.ac.uk/~jaqcuesa/)


*** Screenshots ***
SAM_MAIN.GIF
The main screen allows you to assign samples easily

SAM_EDIT.GIF
SAM also includes sampling and editing functions

SAM_CONF.GIF
Installing SAA files takes place on the configuration screen

*** End of article ***