NestorPlayer 1.0 user's manual
By Nestor Soriano (Konami Man), july 1998

1. WHAT THE HELL IS NestorPlayer?

NestorPlayer is a simple MoonBlaster 1.4 and Wave 1.05 replayer programmed in 
BASIC, using NestorBASIC. It allows you to brwose trough your drives and 
directories for searching songfiles, and to enable/disable MSX-MUSIC and 
MSX-AUDIO in MB 1.4 stereo songs.

2. WHAT I NEED FOR USING THAT?

System requirements for NestorPlayer are:

- MSX2/2+/tR computer.
- Under DOS 1, 128K of mapped RAM.
- Under DOS 2, 256K of mapped RAM and at least 3 free RAM segments (4 if you 
want to play songs larger than 16K). Two of these segments must be allocated 
in primary mapper.
- 128K VRAM are required only when, under DOS 2, you have only 3 free RAM 
segments.
- Any soundchip would be nice. 8-)

Files needed for run NestorPlayer are:

NBASIC.BIN: The best BASIC extension ever made. At least version 0.07 is 
required.
NPLAYER.BAS: NestorPlayer booting and initialization program. Run it!
NPLAYER.PRG: NestorPlayer main program, executed by NPLAYER.BAS.
NPLAYER.DAT: NestorPlayer data file. Contains operation screen, character 
set, error messages and some other data.

3. OPERATION SCREEN

Once NestorPlayer is running, you will see a nice operation screen with the 
following parts:

- In the upper part, information about name and sample/wavekit of the 
currently loaded song, name of the last sample/wavekit loaded and current 
drive and directory.
- In the middle part, four windows listing MBM, MBK, MWM, and MWK files in 
the current directory. A fifth window shows the available drives and 
subdirectories.
- In the lower center part, some buttons for controlling music replay.
- In the lower left corner, the status of each soundchip (Found or not found, 
ON or OFF) is shown.
- In the lower right corner, current step and position of the music beign 
replayed are shown, as well as NestorPlayer general status.

4. FILES MODE

The files mode, activated by default when NestorPlayer is loaded, enables you 
to browse your drives/directories and to load songs and sample/wavekits. 
Following keys are available for doing this:

- Cursor right/left: change window.
- Cursor up/down: select next/previous song (or drive/directory) in the list.
- CTRL + Cursor up/down: jumps to the 10th next/previous song (or 
drive/directory) in the list.
- HOME: Go to the first song (or drive) in the list.
- SHIFT + HOME: Go to the last song (or drive/directory) in the list.
- SPACE or ENTER: Loads the selected song or sample/wavekit, or changes to 
the selected drive or directory.
- TAB: Changes to the command mode.

The maximum number of displayed files on each window is 1024. For 
directories, it is 600.

When a file or sample/wavekit is loaded, also the appropriate replayer is 
loaded from NBASIC.BIN file if necessary (if the last song or kit was not of 
the same type), so make sure that the file NBASIC.BIN actually can be found 
in its original location! Else you will obtain an error. In such case, just 
insert the disk containing NBASIC.BIN file and play the music (press F1). 
Default replayer when NestorPlayer is loaded is the MoonBlaster 1.4 one.

When a new drive or directory is selected, a new file searching is done, and 
windows are updated. No files will be shown if a disk error occurs. For 
refreshing the current directory, just select the current drive in the 
drives/directories window.

Keys for different commands are also available in this mode. See next 
section.

5. COMMAND MODE

In this mode you can select a button with cursor key and activate it with 
space bar or ENTER key, but you can also do it by just pressing the key 
associated to each button. Available commands are:

- ESC: Stops music, uninstalls NestorBASIC and quits NestorPlayer.
- F1: Begins music replaying or pauses/continues the music beign replayed.
- F2: Stops music beign replayed.
- F3: Switches ON/OFF MSX-MUSIC. Song is stopped and restarted with the new 
soundchips state activated.
- F4: Switches ON/OFF MSX-AUDIO. Song is stopped and restarted with the new 
soundchips state activated.
- F5: Toggles 50Hz/60Hz mode. Don't search for a button for this option 
because there is none! It is a last minute feature! 8-)

Buttons F3 and F4 will have effect only if both soundchips (MSX-MUSIC and 
MSX-AUDIO) are present. Note that you can't switch OFF both soundchips at the 
same time!

6. SOME BULLSHIT

NestorPlayer is the first "serious" sample program I made for promote 
NestorBASIC (how is possible to find so difficult to promote such good and 
free software?! 8-), I will make more sample programs in the future but I 
don't know yet what type of programs. Suggestions?

Memory requirements looks a little strange... let's clear this a little. 
Memory using of NestorPlayer is as follows:

- Segments 0-4 are for BASIC and NestorBASIC own use (refer to NestorBASIC 
manual for more details).
- Segment 5 contains the music replayer code.
- Segment 6 is the first music segment.
- Segment 7 is the second music segment.
- Segment 8 stores NPLAYER.DAT and many variables in the first 8K. The second 
8K part is for storing directory names.
- Segment 9 stores MBM and MBK filenames.
- Segment 10 stores MWM and MWK filenames.

Segments 0 to 6 (or 7) must be RAM segments, so if we discard the 64K TPA 
segments we find the three (or four) required free segments. Under DOS 1, 
with at least 128K RAM, segments 4-7 will be always free RAM, so segments 8 
to 10 can be VRAM segments and therefore 64K VRAM is enough. Under DOS 2 with 
only 3 free segments, segments 7 to 10 will be VRAM segments so 128K VRAM is 
required (but in this case segment 7 remains unused... sorry, this is a 
design failure! (^ ^!))

Don't lose the opportunity to appear in the history books! Become now a 
NestorBASIC beta tester! Thrill and suspense awaits you! (hum, too many 
SD-Snatcher... (- -!)). Seriously, I need your help for debugging 
NestorBASIC. For anything please contact me in <konamiman@geocities.com>. You 
can find the lastest NestorBASIC version here:

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/9797/msx.htm

And finally, consider Mallorca for your next holidays! ;-)

Konami Man, 14-7-98
