Q: Which card does Xtc-Play currently support ? A: Xtc-Play has been tested with the following cards Graphic adapters : ------------------ - S3 Trio V64+ (Vesa 1.2 and 2.0) - S3 Virge (Vesa 1.2 and 2.0) - ET4000 (Vesa 1.2 and 2.0) - Matrox Mystique (Vesa 1.2 and 2.0) - ATI MACH 64 (Vesa 1.2 and 2.0) - Cirrus Logic (Vesa 2.0) - Any standard VGA card and Vesa complient card should work Sound cards : ------------- - Gus 2.x (classic) and 3.x - Gus Max - Gus PnP (Pro) (interwave based cards) - Sound Blaster 1.0 - Sound Blaster pro - Sound Blaster 16 - Sound Blaster AWE 32 (Sb16 mode) - Mozart Sound System (Sb-Pro mode) - Any Gus or Soundblaster clone should work Q: Older versions of Xtc-Play like 0.60 supported more module formats than the new one, why ? A: The older version of Xtc-Play until version 0.60 where written with Borland Pascal. Due to a lot of memory problems, the player was *completly* rewritten in C++. Because of this, all parts of the player had to be coded again from scratch and so we decided what is more and what is less important. But don't worry, all formats which where implemented in 0.60 will be implemented in the ne versions, soon Q: My Gus has only 512kb onboard, so why am I able to load larger modules ? A: Xtc-Play uses some kind of intelligent memory managemnt, called Doubling. If the sample size is larger than the amount of Ram on your card, Xtc-Play will first try to convert 16bit samples to 8bit samples, than decrease the sample quality by 50% and at last by 75 percent. Theoratically this will expand you memory by factor 8 (making a 4 MB Gus out of a 512kb), but be careful, any conversion will result in quality loss ! BTW: This memory mangagement was implemented before Cubic's similar system ! Q: After loading a module Xtc-Plays ends up with Exception 7 A: Exception 7 means coprocessor not found, to gain most performance for all Screens Xtc-Play was compiled with the coprocessor option. I.e. you need at least a 386 with an optional coprocessor, a 486-66+ is recommended. All 486 DX classes and Pentium classes have an internal coprocessor. If you are not able to obtain such a machine, feel free to contact Kilroy or Bee-Man and ask for a version with coprecessor emulation. Q: When entering the Setup it does offer a 320x200 mode only A: Xtc-play does not directly access your graphics card, it needs some kind of vesa driver, either version 1.2 or later (e.g. 2.0). Normaly this is no problem, because all modern cards have an internal vesa driver, at least applying to the V 1.2 standard. Q: Although a VESA driver is enabled I am still not able to switch to other modes A: Some cards like Cirrus logic don't apply to the official VESA 1.2 specifications. The best way is to load a VESA 2.0 driver such as UNIVBE and everything should be fine. Q: What is UNIVBE ? A: UNIVBE is a driver that provides the best compatibility of your card. It applys to the latest VESA 2.0 specifications and will speed up all screens inside the player by introducing a so called LFB. The latest version of UNIVBE is 5.3a, you may get the file either from a local BBS or via Internet at http://www.scitechsoft.com Q: I've loaded UNIVBE but I am no more able to switch to the high-resoluted text-modes A: This is a bug (or a feature ?) of Univbe, it disables all hires textmodes. You have to options: 1. Complain at Scitech 2. Use another Vesa 2.0 driver, either your internal (e.g. most Matrox cards have one) or another external (S3 User can use S3VBE20). 3. If you have an ET4000 or S3 Chip, you don't need to worry, because they are directly accessed by the player. Q: The IT-Support sounds pretty good, but is far from perfect, why ? A: During the development of Xtc-Play a lot of formats have passed, and some of them were really tricky (e.g. DMF), but IT is nothing compared to them. IT-Tracker itself and the format is one of the best formats ever created, but also one of the most difficult. IT breaks with most conventions and is totaly different compared to most other formats. We are working heavily that IT will sound as good as all other formats , but please give us some time, this will take a (short) while. Q: Some it-modules aren't loaded, why ? A: Some IT-Modules are packed with Zirconia's module packer. This packer provides a very good compression ratio and they cann still be recognized as module by XTC-PLAY. But you'll have to obtain the mmcmp134.* packet, including several files, so that Xtc-Play is able to decompress them. This packet is avaiable inside some IT tracker versions, or separatly. You can get they file either at ftp.cdrom.com/pub/music, or at most sound related BBS (the Sanction WHQ holds the file under mmcmp134.zip). Once you got the file, decompress the archive and choose between two exe-files : 1. MMTSR.EXE, this is a TSR which should be started before they player, it will intercept all disk accesses and automatically decompress packed modules in the background 2. MMUNCMP.EXE, the original unpacker. Put that file in any directory which is in your path, Xtc-Play will recognize this and decompress the IT-File automatically Later versions of Xtc-Play will have direct support for MMCMP ! Q: What is MP3 ? A: MP3 is the so called audio mpeg-1 layer 3 standard. They are mostly compressed WAV files in 44khz, 16bit stereo, with a compression level of 1:11, that means an 11MB Wav file will be packed down to one megabyte of an MPEG stream, 1 minute will aproximately use 1 MB of diskspace. Because all MPEG-streams are 44khz 16bit only, it's a perfect format with nearly cd-quality. Nearly because, mpeg uses a lossy compression, which filters out frequencies the human ear SHOULD not be able to hear. Mpeg streams are available through the internet Q: If i try to play MP3-streams, the sound output is garbled A: MP3 needs some heavy calculation and because of this you need a pentium for best quality and performance. A P100 should be more than enough, it may work also on P60, but this is not heavily tested. Slower machines have to decrease the sound quality by using the /f switch.