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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 program called the System Audio Manager, or SAM to its friends, for this purpose. SAM was programmed by Scott Sanders, the man behind the invaluable reference work, Atari Compendium. SAM was typically used to assign sampled sound effects to system events. This allowed users to set off explosions when programs crashed, set up sound snippets from favourite television programmes during boot up and so on. Sounds could be assigned to almost any event, ranging from the file selector 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 other machines 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, standardised across the machines.

Another feature is its ability to use *.SAA files. These files are supplied with applications and enable them to inform SAM of certain events and play an appropriate sample. Theoretically these files allow two event types to be specified - application globals, and macros. Application globals are called whenever the user selects a function such as "Print" or "Quit" - events commonly used on a system wide basis. Using an SAA file, the user can assign sounds to these events and these will be played 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.

From here on the story gets even more interesting. SAA files seem to be a great idea - they are easy for the programmer to use and add flexibility for the user. Yet there are hardly any applications which supports 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?

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 to create SAA files - which we hoped would spur programmers into using them more often. It looked good, comes with online help, 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 resulting files didn't work as expected. They are recognised by SAM - application globals played back perfectly. The problem lay with macros. Each SAA file has space for sixteen of them and we couldn't persuade SAM to play back any but the first.

Anthony disassembled SAM and has tracked down the bug. He now has a patched version and we are in the process of obtaining permission to distribute it. Until we get permission it seems one of SAM's most useful features will have to remain locked away.

SAM is bursting with untapped potential. It's easy for both programmers and users alike. SAM can be fun or functional, and allows you to customise your machine. I would recommend it to any STe, TT or Falcon owner as a worthwhile addition to their software collection, and hopefully it won't be long before Atari Computing can carry news of the patched version being made available...

Contacts
Both an unpatched version of SAM, and version 0.5 of KP SACK are available from both my own and and Anthony Jacques web pages:
** BC on **
http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~xav
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~jaqcuesa/
** BC off **

** 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