Apple 2 Disk Drive Sound Simulator Copyright (C) Moose O'Malley, ----------------------------------- November 2002. +===========================================================+ | T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S | +===========================================================+ | * Introduction | | * Why is this useful ? / Why do this ? | | * About the Disk Drive Sounds | | * Using this Program | | * The Future | | * Special Greetings / Thanks to | | * Program License / Limitations / Restrictions | | * Warranty | * Amendment History | | * Contacting the Program's Author | +===========================================================+ Introduction : -------------- Apple 2 Disk Drive Sound Simulator for Windows 95 / 98 / ME / NT / 2000, etc. Apple 2 Disk Drive Sound Simulator does just what the title says - it simulates the sound of Apple 2 disk drives by playing back sounds I recorded of my Apple 2 disk drives in action. In particular, Apple 2 Disk Drive Sound Simulator enables you to : 1. Play back any individual disk drive sounds you select, 2. Play back groups of disk drive sounds for a particular game (such as Apple Panic - a classic Apple 2 game). For these, the sounds have been grouped and sequenced to roughly simulate how a real Apple 2 disk drive sounds when loading the game. 3. Play Apple 2 disk drive sounds continuously at random - to annoy your friends, neighbours, kids, wife, etc !! ;) You could also play this to your parrot and see if you can get it to talk like an Apple 2 Disk Drive - now, there's an idea !!! ;)) 4. Or, play a group of sounds associated with numbers you have entered. e.g. Entering "0,1,4" in the User Defined Sounds box would play Apple_Panic_Start, Beep, and Grunt_Grind_2 sounds in that order. Simply click on an individual sound to see what number it is, (you can also play this sound on its own) and then enter this number in the User Defined Group box. This program is FREE software - any person and any company is welcome to copy it, use it, and distribute it as they see fit, as long as the EXEcutable and this text file remain intact. If you find this program useful or funny or think I need serious mental help, please visit my WEB page and check out some of the other Freeware or $5 dollar shareware programs I have on offer there. Developed using 32-bit Delphi. Long Live the Apple ][ !!! Why is this useful ? / Why do this ? -------------------------------------- This program is not useful at all. Only insane old Apple 2 fanatics would ever dream of writing a program like this !! ;) As far as I know, this is the first program of its type anywhere in the world. (I certainly have never heard of a program like this). Anybody who saw my posts in the newsgroup comp.emulators.apple2 in 1994 / 1995 may remember that I was planning to "one day" write a program like this. Well, here it is - finally !! ;) About the Disk Drive Sounds : ----------------------------- As people may know from the Apple 2 Emulation section of my WEB pages : At the best of times, the Apple 2 disk drive used to make horrible grunting and scrapping sounds as it loaded programs. When I used to go to the local Burleigh Heads library and used the Apple 2 there, everyone in the library would stop and stare (and sometimes glare !) at us whenever the Apple 2 was reading floppy disks - the grunts and groans from the drive were *that* loud !! N.B. These terrible sounds were perfectly normal for Apple 2 drives, and they were quite loud as well, even when using brand new floppy disks and brand new floppy drives. However, people today didn't believe me about the sounds or how loud they really were. So now, a short MP3 of some Apple 2 disk drive sounds is available from my WEB page. And, in addition, I have written this program to simulate some Apple 2 disk drive sounds. All of the Apple 2 disk drive sounds were recorded by me on April 10 and 11, 2000. To record the sounds, I used a cheap microphone hooked up to my Windows 98 PC, which was running Goldwave a good sound editing program. I placed the microphone at the entrance to the Apple 2 floppy drive, and then proceeded to record the loading sounds the drive made for a bunch of games and programs. (I own an Apple ][c with both internal and external drives). Finally, in December 2001, I again listened carefully to the sounds I recorded 18 months ago, and edited out some of the more common sound bytes. Then, I wrote a Delphi program to play them back, and compiled all of the sounds into a single resource file, which was later compiled and compressed into the Executable program. That is why there are no WAV files accompanying this program - they are all contained inside the EXE file !! The "squeak" was a sound that the disk drive makes very occassionally when (I think) it is swinging its read head backwards and forwards very quickly and the rubber belt slips - not sure about how it happens but it does happen. It is definitely a sound the drive makes - not the door on the drive. I rember it happening on all of the Apple ]['s I used in the early 1980's and it still happens on my Apple ][c - but it is very occasional. The "Ghostbusters" digitised speech sound is not a disk drive sound, but I thought it would be fun to add this sound in as well to show what digitised speech on the Apple ][ sounded like. Back in the early 80's, this speech was state of the art and I remember times when people used to crowd around my Apple ][ just to hear it say "Ghostbusters" !! Using this Program : -------------------- To use this program, simply unzip it to a directory (using PKUNIP, WinZIP, or similar), and run it. The Future : ------------ In the future, many improvements could be made to this program, such as : - Screen shots and a brief history of the games - so you can see screen shots while the sounds are playing. - More sounds - this program just has some of the Apple 2's disk drive sounds. - Better recordings. e.g. 16 bit CD quality would be nice. (I need to get a galf-decent microphone as well ...} - More options - e.g. be able to have multiple user defined groups of sounds, etc. - Better methods to allow users to define their own sound groups. - Who knows, one day the sounds may even be included in an Apple ][ emulator ... If any emulator authors want some sounds recorded, let me know and I'll provide all you need !! - Improve the playback of sounds : thereis a split second of silence at the end of each sound - which is more noticeable on slower PCs. I could stream the sounds together using Direct/X / DirectSound - and this would remove the gaps. At the moment, I am using the standard windows function "PlaySound" to play the sounds - which isn't perfect and introduces small gaps / delays - even when streaming the sounds direct from memory. I may do a DirectSound version .... someday ... ;) There probably are 3rd party components I can use with Delphi to remove the gaps as well. I might look into these in the future as well ... - Anything else ? If you would like any of these improvements, or would like to suggest more, please email me and let me know. Special Greetings / Thanks to : ------------------------------- - David Ellsworth for his beautiful Apple ][ emulator : ApplePC. - Michael O'Brien and Oliver Schmidt for the amazing AppleWin Apple 2 emulator. - All the gang at comp.emulators.apple2 - particularly the old school guys and gals who were there in 1994-1996 - god we used to have some laughs and great discussions .... ;) I very rarely post there now - because too many spammers get hold of your email address, but I still always check this newsgroup at least once every week and have done this since 1994. These days, I often reply to emails direct to the person - rather than to the newsgroup - as spammers can't get you this way ... ;) Long Live the Apple ][ !!! Program License / Limitations / Restrictions : ---------------------------------------------- This program is FREE software - any person and any company is welcome to copy it, use it, and distribute it as they see fit, as long as the EXEcutable and this text file remain intact. If you find this program useful or funny or think I need serious mental help, please visit my WEB page and check out some of the other Freeware or $5 dollar shareware programs I have on offer there. Warranty : ---------- This software and the accompanying files are provided "as is" and without warranties as to performance or merchantability or any other warranties whether expressed or implied. The user assumes the entire risk of using this software. If you do find any faults with this program, email me and let me know, and I will do my best to fix it ASAP. Amendment History : -------------------- Vers Date Description 1.0 07-Dec-2001 First Public Release. (8,738 lines of code / comments.) 1.1 13-Dec-2001 Had a lot of great feedback about this program already ! A MAC version is also under development by Laz ... Add in the "Ghostbusters" digitised speech sound. While this is not a disk drive sound, I thought it would be fun to add this sound in as well to show what digitised speech on the Apple ][ sounded like. Back in the early 80's, this speech was state of the art and I remember times when people used to crowd around my Apple ][ just to hear it say "Ghostbusters" !! Improve the user interface : base sounds are now numbered and more user friendly names are displayed - rather than the "uglier" internal names I used for each sound. Add in details on the "squeak" and "Ghostbusters" sounds to the "About the Disk Drive Sounds" section above. (8,769 lines of code / comments.) 1.1b 20-Nov-2002 Bring the program up to date with my latest code libraries. (29,251 lines of code / comments.) If this program was not downloaded from my Home Page, then it is possibly an old version. The latest version of this program is available from my WEB page - see below. Mike "Moose" O'Malley ____________________________________________________ Moose's Software Valley - Established July, 1996. WEB: http://move.to/moose ____________________________________________________