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As of now I'm browsing the web and I came across a format created by a Japanese fellow. It's called KSS and I believe it was designed for MSX computers. It works similar to SID or NSF files, in a sense that the KSS files use pure Z80 code instead of generic log calls. My assumption that is was designed for MSX was that it talks about the FM-PAC, the AY chip, and the PSG chips. This format should be compadabable with not only MSX, but Colecovision, Atari 7800 (I think), SG1000, SC3000, Master System, and even Game Gear because there's events for PSG stereo, a feature that's used in the Game Gear. Mabye this is old news but I figured it's on topic for what goes on around here. Especially with the birth to the new logged formats like PSG and SSL.

Chris :o|

The japanese NSF utility, NezAmp, has support for the KSS format but I'm having a hard time scrounging up Sega and MSX dumps. So far, I've found working dumps of music from SDI and Super Monaco GP 2 for the Master System. These files are super small, even smaller than NSF files, at 16K. There is a format specification and stuff. Lemme find these links...

Here's one on the format itself...

http://nesmusic.zophar.net/txt/kssspec.txt

This link will give you general links to other sites in Japanese and stuff...

http://nesmusic.zophar.net

I was luckily enough to find SDI and Super Monaco 2 by trial and error via the BBS pages and I bet there's some more lurking out there in the net. I say since the idea has finally been capitalized that SMS Power speak publically on the format and get crakin. It would also be a good idea to create some type of KSS archive here. So that way people could come and collect all their favorite SMS musics without having to search the net like I did. If anyone finds or has more KSS files...Please, let me know ASAP. I'll send the two that I found if you want them.

Chris :o)

Quote

>their favorite SMS musics without having to search the net like

Would it be apropriate to have MSX and other stuff here was well? It is a multi-format and all, not just SMS.

Chris :o)

Quote

> The japanese NSF utility, NezAmp, has support for the KSS format but I'm having a hard time scrounging up Sega and MSX dumps. So far, I've found working dumps of music from SDI and Super Monaco GP 2 for the Master System. These files are super small, even smaller than NSF files, at 16K. There is a format specification and stuff. Lemme find these links...

Well it's interesting. I think C64 SID files use something similar, an emulated 6502(or 6510? I forget) and sound chip. Rips are kind of difficult to do, though, apparently it's not simply a matter of turning on logging, rather the music player portion of the c64 program needs to be extracted from the original software... if I remember correctly...

Quote

> http://nesmusic.zophar.net/txt/kssspec.txt

The first flaw that I see is that it seems to be locked at 60hz, which might irritate PAL people (but not me).
And I'd hope in the future other sound chips and CPU's might be supported.
Is NezAmp a standalone program or is it a WinAmp plugin?

Quote

> http://nesmusic.zophar.net/txt/kssspec.txt

>I say since the idea has finally been capit

Quote

> The japanese NSF utility, NezAmp, has support for the KSS format but I'm having a hard time scrounging up Sega and MSX dumps. So far, I've found working dumps of music from SDI and Super Monaco GP 2 for the Master System. These files are super small, even smaller than NSF files, at 16K. There is a format specification and stuff. Lemme find these links...

Well it's interesting. I think C64 SID files use something similar, an emulated 6502(or 6510? I forget) and sound chip. Rips are kind of difficult to do, though, apparently it's not simply a matter of turning on logging, rather the music player portion of the c64 program needs to be extracted from the original software... if I remember correctly...

Quote

> http://nesmusic.zophar.net/txt/kssspec.txt

The first flaw that I see is that it seems to be locked at 60hz, which might irritate PAL people (but not me).
And I'd hope in the future other sound chips and CPU's might be supported.
Is NezAmp a standalone program or is it a WinAmp plugin?

Quote

> http://nesmusic.zophar.net/txt/kssspec.txt

>I say since the idea has finally been capitalized that SMS Power speak publically on the format and get crakin.

"1335 EST

SMSPower to speak on KSS Standard, Stocks Rally

NEW YORK, July 27 (Reuters): Sega emulation industry leader SMSPower, Inc. (NASDAQ: smsP) will announce later today whether or not they will support the up and coming KSS music logging format.
SMSPower CEO Omar 'Zoop' Cornut declined to comment earlier this morning, citing that he had not yet heard of KSS, or had any idea what was going on.

© 2000 Reuters Ltd."

Quote

> It would also be a good idea to create some type of KSS archive here. So that way people could come and collect all their favorite SMS musics without having to search the net like I did. If anyone finds or has more KSS files...Please, let me know ASAP. I'll send the two that I found if you want them.

We still need to see what's involved in producing them, if it's like SID files then it's a lot of work on a per song basis to extract the music routines and data from the rest of the programs. The format took of big on the c64 because there were so many assembly coders and hackers worldwide who thought routing through the disasesmbled code of old games to find music data was fun and nostalgic. The ranks of sms hackers out there are quite slim.

Oh, you mentioned the Atari 7800 in the original post.. Like the 2600 before it it's based on a member of the 6502 family (the 6502c I think) and uses a POKEY sound chip, so the KSS format as it stands wouldn't be useful for storing 7800 music. However, that's okay, because the 7800 had a dreadfully weak sound chip, no change from the 2600's. Just two channels and 256 step frequency range (which managed to always be slightly off-key), although it had a bit more variety in sound wave types. Thus, very few 7800 had more than the most minimal music, the occasional between level fanfare but by in large that's about it. What it did have was usually a poor rendition of an arcade game music track. Nothing much lost there.

Quote

> Well it's interesting. I think C64 SID files use something similar, an emulated 6502(or 6510? I forget) and sound chip. Rips are kind of difficult to do, though, apparently it's not simply a matter of turning on logging, rather the music player portion of the c64 program needs to be extracted from the original software... if I remember correctly...

Yeah. SID and NSF files contain 6502 code in it. I dunno how they ever find all the music data but the easiest way I've heard of was to examine the rom page by page and eventually you'll find some pages with music data in them. Of course there are games that do this differently and plenty of other exceptions.

Quote

> The first flaw that I see is that it seems to be locked at 60hz, which might irritate PAL people (but not me).

True. It doesn't really irritate me either but it would be mean not to support PAL.

Quote

> And I'd hope in the future other sound chips and CPU's might be supported.

Yeah. YM2413 and some of the other stuff would be very cool.

Quote

> Is NezAmp a standalone program or is it a WinAmp plugin?

A WinAmp Plugin

Quote

> "1335 EST

> SMSPower to speak on KSS Standard, Stocks Rally

> NEW YORK, July 27 (Reuters): Sega emulation industry leader SMSPower, Inc. (NASDAQ: smsP) will announce later today whether or not they will support the up and coming KSS music logging format.
> SMSPower CEO Omar 'Zoop' Cornut declined to comment earlier this morning, citing that he had not yet heard of KSS, or had any idea what was going on.

> © 2000 Reuters Ltd."

Hah...hahaha...hehehe.hahaaa...haaaaa. Ah, hem :o)

Quote

> We still need to see what's involved in producing them, if it's like SID files then it's a lot of work on a per song basis to extract the music routines and data from the rest of the programs. The format took of big on the c64 because there were so many assembly coders and hackers worldwide who thought routing through the disasesmbled code of old games to find music data was fun and nostalgic. The ranks of sms hackers out there are quite slim.

Well, it would involve a method of hacking. The files I have are actual music rips just like the SID and NSF files. When I hit play, this NezAmp actually emulates like a real SMS and plays music. When I hit next, I guess I'm bank switching or loading new areas with music data. But, I dunno. I don't really know how to do all this but I bet there's lots of programmers out there that can contribute KSS files to here. Lot's of programmers contributed NSFs and stuff to Zophar's and the rest of the world. If people notice this stuff, mabye it will give them inspiration to rip music.

Quote

>
> Oh, you mentioned the Atari 7800 in the original post.. Like the 2600 before it it's based on a member of the 6502 family (the 6502c I think) and uses a POKEY sound chip, so the KSS format as it stands wouldn't be useful for storing 7800 music. However, that's okay, because the 7800 had a dreadfully weak sound chip, no change from the 2600's. Just two channels and 256 step frequency range (which managed to always be slightly off-key), although it had a bit more variety in sound wave types. Thus, very few 7800 had more than the most minimal music, the occasional between level fanfare but by in large that's about it. What it did have was usually a poor rendition of an arcade game music track. Nothing much lost there.

I wasn't sure on the 7800. It doesn't cause the KSS deals strictly with Z80 code and input/output ports. The 6502 uses mapped outports which isn't really compadable with the KSS format.

Quote

> Yeah. SID and NSF files contain 6502 code in it. I dunno how they ever find all the music data but the easiest way I've heard of was to examine the rom page by page and eventually you'll find some pages with music data in them. Of course there are games that do this differently and plenty of other exceptions.

that seems backwards to me.
What you'd want to do is isolate the music playing code, probably just by tracing through the vblank handler or looking through the main loops searching for writes to the audio ports.. then determine where in rom it's pulling its data from, extract that, and probably try to relocate it so it is sequentially after the program code. There can be additional complications, but it's a place to start the detective work.
Since you only search through code, chances are you only have to look through the first two pages (16k frames I mean) since it's rare for sms games to put code in swapping frames (although I think space harrier does).
I don't think you could recognize music data on sight, anyhow, and I don't know if there's any standard format for the music data embedded on the carts.

Quote

> Well, it would involve a method of hacking. The files I have are actual music rips just like the SID and NSF files. When I hit play, this NezAmp actually emulates like a real SMS and plays music. When I hit next, I guess I'm bank switching or loading new areas with music data. But, I dunno.

In addition to ripping the music code, some modification needs to be done to the program to support certain messaging calls that skip to different songs.
If you relocate the music data you probably don't need any bak switching, since I doubt any sms games have more than 48k of music data.

Quote

>I don't really know how to do all this but I bet there's lots of programmers out there that can contribute KSS files to here. Lot's of programmers contributed NSFs and stuff to Zophar's and the rest of the world. If people notice this stuff, mabye it will give them inspiration to rip music.

perhaps...
future versions of popular sms emulators (ahem) may have improved debugging capabilities, which would aid KSS detective work.

Quote

> I wasn't sure on the 7800. It doesn't cause the KSS deals strictly with Z80 code and input/output ports. The 6502 uses mapped outports which isn't really compadable with the KSS format.

Well, if they went through the trouble of adding a new processor emulator to the KSS virtual machine then I don't think supporting mapped hardware registers would be anything more than trivial.

Author	Message
Consolemu Guest	Fine, something ON Topic Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2000 9:53 am
Consolemu Guest	As of now I'm browsing the web and I came across a format created by a Japanese fellow. It's called KSS and I believe it was designed for MSX computers. It works similar to SID or NSF files, in a sense that the KSS files use pure Z80 code instead of generic log calls. My assumption that is was designed for MSX was that it talks about the FM-PAC, the AY chip, and the PSG chips. This format should be compadabable with not only MSX, but Colecovision, Atari 7800 (I think), SG1000, SC3000, Master System, and even Game Gear because there's events for PSG stereo, a feature that's used in the Game Gear. Mabye this is old news but I figured it's on topic for what goes on around here. Especially with the birth to the new logged formats like PSG and SSL. Chris :o\|

Consolemu Guest	By the way... Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2000 11:25 am
Consolemu Guest	The japanese NSF utility, NezAmp, has support for the KSS format but I'm having a hard time scrounging up Sega and MSX dumps. So far, I've found working dumps of music from SDI and Super Monaco GP 2 for the Master System. These files are super small, even smaller than NSF files, at 16K. There is a format specification and stuff. Lemme find these links... Here's one on the format itself... http://nesmusic.zophar.net/txt/kssspec.txt This link will give you general links to other sites in Japanese and stuff... http://nesmusic.zophar.net I was luckily enough to find SDI and Super Monaco 2 by trial and error via the BBS pages and I bet there's some more lurking out there in the net. I say since the idea has finally been capitalized that SMS Power speak publically on the format and get crakin. It would also be a good idea to create some type of KSS archive here. So that way people could come and collect all their favorite SMS musics without having to search the net like I did. If anyone finds or has more KSS files...Please, let me know ASAP. I'll send the two that I found if you want them. Chris :o)

Consolemu Guest	Re: By the way... Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2000 11:28 am
Consolemu Guest	Quote >their favorite SMS musics without having to search the net like Would it be apropriate to have MSX and other stuff here was well? It is a multi-format and all, not just SMS. Chris :o)

Heliophobe Site Admin Joined: 25 Oct 1999 Posts: 2029 Location: Monterey, California	Re: By the way... Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2000 5:56 pm
	Quote > The japanese NSF utility, NezAmp, has support for the KSS format but I'm having a hard time scrounging up Sega and MSX dumps. So far, I've found working dumps of music from SDI and Super Monaco GP 2 for the Master System. These files are super small, even smaller than NSF files, at 16K. There is a format specification and stuff. Lemme find these links... Well it's interesting. I think C64 SID files use something similar, an emulated 6502(or 6510? I forget) and sound chip. Rips are kind of difficult to do, though, apparently it's not simply a matter of turning on logging, rather the music player portion of the c64 program needs to be extracted from the original software... if I remember correctly... Quote > http://nesmusic.zophar.net/txt/kssspec.txt The first flaw that I see is that it seems to be locked at 60hz, which might irritate PAL people (but not me). And I'd hope in the future other sound chips and CPU's might be supported. Is NezAmp a standalone program or is it a WinAmp plugin? Quote > http://nesmusic.zophar.net/txt/kssspec.txt >I say since the idea has finally been capit

Heliophobe Site Admin Joined: 25 Oct 1999 Posts: 2029 Location: Monterey, California	Re: By the way... Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2000 5:56 pm
	Quote > The japanese NSF utility, NezAmp, has support for the KSS format but I'm having a hard time scrounging up Sega and MSX dumps. So far, I've found working dumps of music from SDI and Super Monaco GP 2 for the Master System. These files are super small, even smaller than NSF files, at 16K. There is a format specification and stuff. Lemme find these links... Well it's interesting. I think C64 SID files use something similar, an emulated 6502(or 6510? I forget) and sound chip. Rips are kind of difficult to do, though, apparently it's not simply a matter of turning on logging, rather the music player portion of the c64 program needs to be extracted from the original software... if I remember correctly... Quote > http://nesmusic.zophar.net/txt/kssspec.txt The first flaw that I see is that it seems to be locked at 60hz, which might irritate PAL people (but not me). And I'd hope in the future other sound chips and CPU's might be supported. Is NezAmp a standalone program or is it a WinAmp plugin? Quote > http://nesmusic.zophar.net/txt/kssspec.txt >I say since the idea has finally been capitalized that SMS Power speak publically on the format and get crakin. "1335 EST SMSPower to speak on KSS Standard, Stocks Rally NEW YORK, July 27 (Reuters): Sega emulation industry leader SMSPower, Inc. (NASDAQ: smsP) will announce later today whether or not they will support the up and coming KSS music logging format. SMSPower CEO Omar 'Zoop' Cornut declined to comment earlier this morning, citing that he had not yet heard of KSS, or had any idea what was going on. © 2000 Reuters Ltd." Quote > It would also be a good idea to create some type of KSS archive here. So that way people could come and collect all their favorite SMS musics without having to search the net like I did. If anyone finds or has more KSS files...Please, let me know ASAP. I'll send the two that I found if you want them. We still need to see what's involved in producing them, if it's like SID files then it's a lot of work on a per song basis to extract the music routines and data from the rest of the programs. The format took of big on the c64 because there were so many assembly coders and hackers worldwide who thought routing through the disasesmbled code of old games to find music data was fun and nostalgic. The ranks of sms hackers out there are quite slim. Oh, you mentioned the Atari 7800 in the original post.. Like the 2600 before it it's based on a member of the 6502 family (the 6502c I think) and uses a POKEY sound chip, so the KSS format as it stands wouldn't be useful for storing 7800 music. However, that's okay, because the 7800 had a dreadfully weak sound chip, no change from the 2600's. Just two channels and 256 step frequency range (which managed to always be slightly off-key), although it had a bit more variety in sound wave types. Thus, very few 7800 had more than the most minimal music, the occasional between level fanfare but by in large that's about it. What it did have was usually a poor rendition of an arcade game music track. Nothing much lost there.

Consolemu Guest	Re: By the way... Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2000 7:48 pm
Consolemu Guest	Quote > Well it's interesting. I think C64 SID files use something similar, an emulated 6502(or 6510? I forget) and sound chip. Rips are kind of difficult to do, though, apparently it's not simply a matter of turning on logging, rather the music player portion of the c64 program needs to be extracted from the original software... if I remember correctly... Yeah. SID and NSF files contain 6502 code in it. I dunno how they ever find all the music data but the easiest way I've heard of was to examine the rom page by page and eventually you'll find some pages with music data in them. Of course there are games that do this differently and plenty of other exceptions. Quote > The first flaw that I see is that it seems to be locked at 60hz, which might irritate PAL people (but not me). True. It doesn't really irritate me either but it would be mean not to support PAL. Quote > And I'd hope in the future other sound chips and CPU's might be supported. Yeah. YM2413 and some of the other stuff would be very cool. Quote > Is NezAmp a standalone program or is it a WinAmp plugin? A WinAmp Plugin Quote > "1335 EST > SMSPower to speak on KSS Standard, Stocks Rally > NEW YORK, July 27 (Reuters): Sega emulation industry leader SMSPower, Inc. (NASDAQ: smsP) will announce later today whether or not they will support the up and coming KSS music logging format. > SMSPower CEO Omar 'Zoop' Cornut declined to comment earlier this morning, citing that he had not yet heard of KSS, or had any idea what was going on. > © 2000 Reuters Ltd." Hah...hahaha...hehehe.hahaaa...haaaaa. Ah, hem :o) Quote > We still need to see what's involved in producing them, if it's like SID files then it's a lot of work on a per song basis to extract the music routines and data from the rest of the programs. The format took of big on the c64 because there were so many assembly coders and hackers worldwide who thought routing through the disasesmbled code of old games to find music data was fun and nostalgic. The ranks of sms hackers out there are quite slim. Well, it would involve a method of hacking. The files I have are actual music rips just like the SID and NSF files. When I hit play, this NezAmp actually emulates like a real SMS and plays music. When I hit next, I guess I'm bank switching or loading new areas with music data. But, I dunno. I don't really know how to do all this but I bet there's lots of programmers out there that can contribute KSS files to here. Lot's of programmers contributed NSFs and stuff to Zophar's and the rest of the world. If people notice this stuff, mabye it will give them inspiration to rip music. Quote > > Oh, you mentioned the Atari 7800 in the original post.. Like the 2600 before it it's based on a member of the 6502 family (the 6502c I think) and uses a POKEY sound chip, so the KSS format as it stands wouldn't be useful for storing 7800 music. However, that's okay, because the 7800 had a dreadfully weak sound chip, no change from the 2600's. Just two channels and 256 step frequency range (which managed to always be slightly off-key), although it had a bit more variety in sound wave types. Thus, very few 7800 had more than the most minimal music, the occasional between level fanfare but by in large that's about it. What it did have was usually a poor rendition of an arcade game music track. Nothing much lost there. I wasn't sure on the 7800. It doesn't cause the KSS deals strictly with Z80 code and input/output ports. The 6502 uses mapped outports which isn't really compadable with the KSS format.

Heliophobe Site Admin Joined: 25 Oct 1999 Posts: 2029 Location: Monterey, California	Re: By the way... Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2000 9:42 pm
	Quote > Yeah. SID and NSF files contain 6502 code in it. I dunno how they ever find all the music data but the easiest way I've heard of was to examine the rom page by page and eventually you'll find some pages with music data in them. Of course there are games that do this differently and plenty of other exceptions. that seems backwards to me. What you'd want to do is isolate the music playing code, probably just by tracing through the vblank handler or looking through the main loops searching for writes to the audio ports.. then determine where in rom it's pulling its data from, extract that, and probably try to relocate it so it is sequentially after the program code. There can be additional complications, but it's a place to start the detective work. Since you only search through code, chances are you only have to look through the first two pages (16k frames I mean) since it's rare for sms games to put code in swapping frames (although I think space harrier does). I don't think you could recognize music data on sight, anyhow, and I don't know if there's any standard format for the music data embedded on the carts. Quote > Well, it would involve a method of hacking. The files I have are actual music rips just like the SID and NSF files. When I hit play, this NezAmp actually emulates like a real SMS and plays music. When I hit next, I guess I'm bank switching or loading new areas with music data. But, I dunno. In addition to ripping the music code, some modification needs to be done to the program to support certain messaging calls that skip to different songs. If you relocate the music data you probably don't need any bak switching, since I doubt any sms games have more than 48k of music data. Quote >I don't really know how to do all this but I bet there's lots of programmers out there that can contribute KSS files to here. Lot's of programmers contributed NSFs and stuff to Zophar's and the rest of the world. If people notice this stuff, mabye it will give them inspiration to rip music. perhaps... future versions of popular sms emulators (ahem) may have improved debugging capabilities, which would aid KSS detective work. Quote > I wasn't sure on the 7800. It doesn't cause the KSS deals strictly with Z80 code and input/output ports. The 6502 uses mapped outports which isn't really compadable with the KSS format. Well, if they went through the trouble of adding a new processor emulator to the KSS virtual machine then I don't think supporting mapped hardware registers would be anything more than trivial.

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