Connecting cd player

[Ral-Clan]

Isn't there a way to just hook the CD player to the internal IDE connection of the A1200 (i.e. by hanging a ribbon cable with a second header outside of the A1200's case)?  You could then use the controller already included with the A1200.

I don't have an A1200, but most IDE interfaces support both a master (the hard drive) and a slave (in this case the CD-ROM drive). You'd need to power the CD-ROM drive with an external power supply, though (i.e. laptop power supply with altered power connector or a PC power supply or external drive case).

[Ral-Clan]

Yes you right there used to be a buffered interface like the one that the cf card uses with a extra connection for the cd ,and then you ran the the ribbon cable out side the amiga and then connected it to a power supply ,its just that i dont have a buffered interface adapter ,but i could as you say buy a double connector ribbon ,but would it be ok that it would not be bufferd?

I have no idea - I've never owned an A1200 - only worked with PC IDE interfaces and Amiga SCSI interfaces.  I just assumed the A1200's IDE connector on the motherboard was the same as a standard PC one - just use a double headered ribbon cable.

I'm not sure what a buffered interface is!

[Ral-Clan]

Hi i am not sure what you have ,i have spoke with Amigakit and i am awaiting a reply to see if the item they have is actualy the one i need ,as they spoke of soldering resisors on and two cables ,which sounded to me as if this was to just play a cd for the music ,thats not what i want ,i need to install my os 3.9 which is on cd

Just an idea - but is there any way to copy the contents of the OS3.9 CD to a PCMCIA card on a PC computer and then move it over to the A1200 and install it from that?  I know the OS3.9 CD checks for the presence of a special file (for copy protection) so I'm not sure if it would work if the contents of the disk were moved to another medium.

[Ral-Clan]

My only problem (with UAE) is playing native samples on Deluxe Music.  Often times, the timing is off on some of the more complicated scores.  That may be fixed of time with faster technology and finer tuning on WinUAE.  In the meanwhile, I can compose my music on WinUAE using MIDI output.  Then transfer them to a real Amiga to play using the Amiga chipset.

You can reduce audio latency to almost zero (the same as on a real hardware Amiga) by trying the following:

- in WinUAE's sound settings, reduce sound buffer size to "1".  

This will help a lot.  If it's not good enough, you should choose a low-latency audio driver.

I use the PortAudio ASIO driver for WinUAE, which is available from here:
http://www.winuae.net/files/stuff/portaudio.zip

After you've installed this in you UAE directory, you need to enable the PORTAUDIO checkbox in WinUAE's sound settings, then in the drop down menu at the top of the screen you need to choose:
 
PortAudio: [ASIO] .....etc. etc.....(your soundcard).

In order to do the PortAudio suggestion above, you need to already have installed a low-latency ASIO driver audio card in your PC (if you do any music recording on your PC you probably already have one).  If you don't have a low-latency audio card, you can download an ASIO driver for all generic PC soundcards from here:

http://www.asio4all.com/

Now....I use PortAudio's ASIO driver for WinUAE....and it works great for me.  I get zero latency when playing Amiga audio from an external MIDI controller (or from the computer's keyboard when triggering OctaMED samples) and when playing back music the Amiga's audio sounds are in sync with external MIDI devices.

However, Tony Wilen (developer of WinUAE) told me that the WASAPI driver (Windows low latency audio driver) is better supported in WinUAE than the PortAudio driver.  I can't use WASAPI because I still have a Windows XP computer with an older version of DirectX.  If you run a later version of Windows you can use WASAPI for low latency.

You'll have to google around for how to use that.  I haven't tried it.

Sorry to briefly hijack this thread, but I just wanted to point out that no-latency audio in WinUAE is totally possible, and makes audio/music productivity work under UAE entirely possible.

[Ral-Clan]

I tried your suggestion.  I run Windows 7 64-bit on a  Quad-core 4 GB RAM machine.  I changed the Sound Buffer size from 7 (default) to 1.  I also unchecked all the sound drivers except WASAPI.  It didn't make much of a difference.  If you have Deluxe Music you can try it out.  A song with a single sample (accordian) like Cleopha plays fine.  But a song like Passacaglia which uses 2 samples (ElecBass and Piano) gets flusterred.

What?  You mean that the audio samples (the four paula voices) even get out of sync with EACH OTHER on playback?  That definitely shouldn't be happening!

I just did a test of Deluxe Music 2.0 in my WinUAE setup and it plays absolutely fine.  No stutter or hesitation even with the tune you suggested.  What version are you using?  If you are using an old version maybe it's simply a WB1.3 / WB3.1 incompatibility.

Note - you not only have to check Wasapi, you have to then select your WASAPI sound output from the dropdown menu at top.  That is, if it's anything like the PortAudio ASIO WinUAE driver.

PS: you also have to do this while the emulation is NOT running in the background (i.e. choose RESTART and then change the settings, the OK to reboot the emulated Amiga).

[Ral-Clan]

On the drop-down menu on top, "WASAPI: Default Audio Device" is selected.  The other options are "WASAPI: Speakers (High Definition Audio)" and "WASAPI: Digital Audio (S/PDIF) (High Definition Audio)".

I try playing around with the other settings.

Can you clarify?  Are the paula voices out of sync with each other?  What exactly is the delay your are experiencing?  A delay when you play your Midi keyboard and the sound is emitted by the Amiga?

If the Paula voices are out of sync with each other then it's not a sound card latency issue and ASIO or WASAPI won't fix it, it's some other problem.  If I can get perfect Paula audio on a system much slower than yours, then you should be able to do it too. What version of WinUAE are you using?

[Ral-Clan]

I'm using Deluxe Music 2.0 on a AOS3.9 build almost identical to the one on my real Amiga 1200 (except it has RTG).  I also had the same issue on the AmigaForever configuration.

As a test I went to the CPU and FPU properties of WinUAE.  I changed CPU Emulation Speed from "Fastest possible, but maintain chipset timing" to "Approximate A500/A1200 cycle-exact".  That fixed the timing issue in Deluxe Music playback.  But it was at the cost of performance of the WinUAE emulation.  I'll try to play around with it more to see if I can get the timing right without sacrificing too much performance.  When I has the "Fastest possible" setting, I got 90x A4000-040 on SysInfo.

I'm using "fastest possible" and I do not have "cycle exact" checked, and my DMusic runs just fine.  I'm using WinUAE 2.5.1 and OS3.9 set for a 68040/JIT enabled.

I could always send you my config file...but unless you're using the exact same version of WinUAE it probably won't work.