building and testing

• Compiling/building
  • MSX parts (MSX-DOS player)
  • PC parts (XM-to-LTM converter)
• Testing
  • Selecting a song for testing
  • Running in an emulator

Compiling/building

The Makefile is supposed to contain logic for building both the MSX and PC executables and .dsk disk images. Here's a list of stuff you'll most likely need.

MSX parts (MSX-DOS player)

To compile the parts that run on MSX computers, you'll need

• SDCC 2.9
• msxdos.sys and command.com from MSX-DOS, by default in the main source directory's parent directory (..)
• the wrdsk tool by Arnold Metselaar, for writing .dsk disk images

Building the MSX-DOS player msp.com and a disk file msp.dsk containing the player should be done with

make all

PC parts (XM-to-LTM converter)

To compile the parts that run on PC computers, you'll need

• gcc

"make all" builds the xm2ltm converter.

Testing

For testing in an emulator, I have used the OpenMSX emulator via a script called "om". For emulator testing, the Makefile builds the disk file msp.dsk. The om script might look like this

1 2	#!/bin/bash openmsx -machine msxfast -ext moonsound -ext Sony_HBD-F1 -diska $1 $2 $3 $4 $5 $6 $7 $8 $9

For testing on real MSX devices, I have the Nowind USB interface cartridge and the "nwhostapp" command line tool. For Nowind-based testing, the Makefile builds the disk file mspnowind.dsk. The MSX utility 50.com is there for testing on e.g. Japanese MSX computers which start in 60 Hz video mode by default. My main target has been European 50 Hz PAL machines.

Selecting a song for testing

To run the player and actually hear something, you'll need an LTM song file and the accompanying .SMP sample files on your MSX disk. By default the Makefile script copies a file called "testi.ltm" and all .smp files from the test_songs subdirectory onto the msp.dsk disk image. To make your own test songs you'll need the xm2ltm converter. Because the converter will place the .SMP samples files in the current directory, and the Makefile assumes that the testi.ltm file and the sample files are in the test_songs subdirectory, do the conversion for example like this:

cd test_songs
../xm2ltm aekrus_moonsound.xm testi.ltm > aekrus_moonsound.log
cd ..
make run

You can also get started by taking a pre-made reference test file set from the test_songs/reference_versions directory. For example like this:

cp test_songs/reference_versions/arpsyntest04/* test_songs

Running in an emulator

When you have a test song in the test_songs directory, you can start the OpenMSX emulator with

make run

This will also build the msp.com and msp.dsk files.