*** PLEASE take the time to check quickly through this document BEFORE *** *** you write to me. If the answer to your questions lies within here, *** *** do NOT expect a reply at all. *** This document is currently incomplete. 1. Getting Impulse Tracker working. 1.1 Requirements to run IT 1.2 Insufficient memory messages 1.3 "Mix data not allocated" 1.4 Video characters scrambled 1.5 Impulse Tracker often hangs 1.6 Files won't load/take a long time to load! 1.7 Impulse Tracker doesn't support my soundcard! 1.8 The sound breaks up/computer slows down when playing songs! 1.9 Microsoft Windows and Impulse Tracker 2. Using Impulse Tracker 2.1 Loading external samples 3. Miscellaneous 3.1 What are these CACHE.ITS and CACHE.ITI files?? 3.2 Distribution sites. 4. Future versions of Impulse Tracker - Not written yet 1.1 Requirements of IT ------------------------------ NOTE WIN95 USERS -> READ LATER ------------------------------ Impulse Tracker requires a 386+ PC and > 500k of memory. Impulse Tracker uses EMS memory. To setup EMS memory, use the following lines in your CONFIG.SYS file: DEVICE=\HIMEM.SYS DEVICE=\EMM386.EXE RAM H=255 Do *NOT* have "NOEMS" or "FRAME=NONE" on the same line as EMM386.EXE Please do NOT use QEMM with IT - beta testers of IT have found that QEMM causes IT to be very unstable. Also shove these lines in, if they're not already there: DOS=HIGH,UMB <--- just to get yourself a little more memory STACKS=0,0 <--- Some computers require this to prevent crashing I recommend that you also devicehigh and Load-high (LH) as many possible drivers, so that you have more conventional memory to play around with. ----------- Win95 Users ----------- If you are a Win95 user, you're probably best off not having HIMEM.SYS *OR* EMM386.EXE in your CONFIG.SYS file. If you *do* have EMM386, make sure you do NOT have "noems" as a parameter. Win95's internal EMS handling routines *DO* automatically provide the optimum environment for IT, so you can ignore the settings given above. 1.2 Insufficient memory messages If you get Insufficient Memory messages at the soundcard initialisation, read section 1.3 If you do not have enough conventional memory, the program will exit to DOS almost immediately. If you *JUST* have enough conventional memory, then there may not be enough memory left over to load the sound driver(s) ( -> No sound card detected ) 1.3 "Mix Data not allocated" messages All non-wavetable cards require extra *conventional* memory to be allocated in order for them to run appropriately. The amount requires differs between the drivers and depends also on the mixing speed (the higher the mix speed, the more memory required). If you get this message, try to free up some conventional memory. 1.4 Video character's scrambled Some video cards (esp Matrox cards) did not follow the VGA register standard correctly. Impulse Tracker tries to detecting whether you have such a card, but if this is not successful, run IT /v2 for Matrox compatibility mode. 1.5 Impulse Tracker often hangs Impulse Tracker may not operate securely in anything other than DOS and Windows 95 (these are the two systems that IT has been extensively tested on) - QEMM/Command shells (eg 4DOS/NDOS) have been known to cause errors in many situations. Aside from these, if Impulse Tracker hangs on you, please write to me immediately, with a full description of what happens/how you can make it happen. (Including the version of IT that you use!) If you get a blank screen when you run Impulse Tracker, try using command line parameters to specify your soundcard and port/irq/dma. The autodetect procedures seem pretty reliable, but there's a chance that they may be interfering/interacting with unexpected hardware. 1.6 Files won't load/take a long time to load! Some music modules are actually compressed with a program called MMCMP. Under normal conditions, these files can be decompressed automatically, under the following situations, they _cannot_: 1) You do NOT have EMM386 loaded - the decompression routines require EMS memory, so if you do not have EMS, you cannot load these files. 2) You are running Impulse Tracker through Windows 3.xx - Windows 3.xx prevents programs from doing certain things... including the setup routines that the decompressor requires to run - so these files cannot be loaded under Windows 3.xx These files will take longer to load, as they are compressed and are decompressed to disk first. 1.7 Impulse Tracker doesn't support my soundcard! There may be two reasons for this: 1) Impulse Tracker really doesn't support your soundcard. 2) Impulse Tracker supposedly does support your soundcard but you can't get it to work. 1) Solution: Convince your soundcard manufacturer to send me a sound card to play with AS WELL AS all the programming information. Alternatively, find a soundcard that Impulse Tracker *DOES* support - you can pick up some decent soundcards really cheaply. 2) First of all, check that you have enough memory. If you have a low amount of FreeMem once you load Impulse Tracker, it probably means that there wasn't enough memory to load the sound driver file which will automatically cause a detect failure. Unfortunately, not all 100% compatible (esp "100% SBPro compatible") soundcards are REALLY 100% compatible. If the drivers do not detect your soundcard, then try specifying full command line parameters. If it still doesn't work, then I'm sorry - there's nothing I can do about this. Hassle your sound card manufacturer to make decent eqiupment. Impulse Tracker uses SB cards in a different *MODE* of playback from most programs so that they are more efficient and also so that they can operate in the background of Windows 95. So just because your soundcard works in another program, it doesn't mean that it's 100% compatible. (this is for all of you who may think "But this card works in other programs, why doesn't it work in IT?") For Sound Blaster cards, make sure you have the BLASTER environment variable set in order for IT to detect your card reliably (SB16/AWE32 excluded, as these use hardware routines). 1.8 The sound breaks up/computer slows down when playing songs! (This section only deals with software mixed cards, ie. almost every soundcard except native GUS, Interwave and EMU8000) Sound output from the computer requires HEAVY computation - up to 64 thousand calculations per second PER NOTE playing. If your computer is unable to keep up with this, the sound will have very obvious chunks in it and your computer will slow down noticeably. Solutions: 1) If you're running Impulse Tracker under windows, you may find that running it from a DOS bootup provides a SIGNIFICANT increase the capabilities of your computer in this respect (3x faster in DOS than Win95 for me) 2) Limit the number of notes you can have simultaneously via the command line (/Lxx) - eg. "IT /L32" will limit playback to 32 simultaneous notes maximum. 3) Lower the number of calculations required per second per note. This is done by changing the "mixing speed" via the command line: eg: "IT /m32000" will cause 32000 calculations per second per note to be made. "IT /m22000" will cause 22000 calculations per second per note to be made. Check drivers.txt to find the range of mixing speed values that your soundcard can manage. 4) Get a faster computer :) 1.9 Microsoft Windows and Impulse Tracker Microsoft Windows 3.xx and Impulse Tracker is a definite no-no. I do NOT guarantee ANYTHING under this configuration. I probably also will not fixup any problems that occur in Impulse Tracker that only occur under Windows 3.xx Microsft Windows '95 and Impulse Tracker *SHOULD* work fine. If no sound card can be detected under Windows '95, check first that you have no other program using your soundcard (or another DOS window still open that used your soundcard). Only certain soundcards can play in the background of Windows '95 for technical reasons. Please read the relevant section of DRIVERS.DOC for your soundcard. Some people have found that Impulse Tracker will hang after a few minutes under Windows '95. Disabling virtual memory may solve this problem. To disable Virtual Memory, right click on My Computer, Properties, Performance, Virtual Memory and check the "disable" box. 2.1 Loading external samples To load in another sample so that you can use it in your composition, go to the sample-list page (F3), then press "Enter". You will be taken to the "load sample" screen, where you can test out and select samples from a wide variety of formats. This includes: .IFF, .WAV, .S3I, .ITS, .RAW, and TX Wave .Wxx formats. You can even load samples DIRECTLY OUT of other modules. In the sample loader, navigate to a drive/directory which contains modules, and you will see that they can opened as 'libraries.' So far, support for external sample loading from modules is available for: .MOD, .MTM, .S3M, .XM, .669, .PTM, .FAR and of course, .IT .PAT and .KRZ instruments can also be loaded as sample libraries at the moment. 3.1 What are these CACHE.ITS and CACHE.ITI files? Whenever you load a sample or instrument, Impulse Tracker has to load all the files to find out their contents, to determine parameters such as sample format, bit fields, etc. CACHE.ITS and CACHE.ITI are files created by Impulse Tracker so that on subsequent usage, this information can be loaded almost instantaneously from a single file, rather than having to reload all the information again. These may be deleted without disrupting program usage, but they will be recreated when you attempt to load samples/instruments from the directory. 3.2 Distribution Sites To get the latest versions of IT on the web, check out: 1) http://www.citenet.net/noise/it - American homepage 2) http://huizen.dds.nl/~im-pulse - European homepage 3) http://www.cin-net.demon.co.uk - UK homepage. Please don't write to me to become a distribution site - the sites above should be sufficient, and I don't think it is necessary to have BBS distributions since the use of the internet has become so widespread.