
Apple 2 Disk Drive Sound Simulator	Copyright (C) Moose O'Malley, 
-----------------------------------	December 2001.

Apple 2 Disk Drive Sound Simulator for Windows 95 / 98 / ME / 
NT / 2000, etc.

Apple 2 Disk Drive Sound Simulator does just what the title says - 
it simulates the sound of Apple 2 disk drives by playing back
sounds I recorded of my Apple 2 disk drives in action.

In particular, Apple 2 Disk Drive Sound Simulator enables you to :

1. Play back any individual disk drive sounds you select,

2. Play back groups of disk drive sounds for a particular game (such 
   as Apple Panic - a classic Apple 2 game).  For these, the sounds 
   have been grouped and sequenced to roughly simulate how a real
   Apple 2 disk drive sounds when loading the game.

3. Play Apple 2 disk drive sounds continuously at random - to annoy 
   your friends, neighbours, kids, wife, etc !!  ;)
   You could also play this to your parrot and see if you can get it
   to talk like an Apple 2 Disk Drive - now, there's an idea !!!  ;))

4. Or, play a group of sounds associated with numbers you have entered.
   e.g. Entering "0,1,4" in the User Defined Sounds box would
   play Apple_Panic_Start, Beep, and Grunt_Grind_2 sounds in that order.
   Simply click on an individual sound to see what number it is,
   (you can also play this sound on its own) and then enter this 
   number in the User Defined Group box.

This program is FREE software - any person and any company is
welcome to copy it, use it, and distribute it as they see fit,
as long as the EXEcutable and this text file remain intact.

If you find this program useful or funny or think I need 
serious mental help, please visit my WEB page and check out 
some of the other Freeware or $5 dollar shareware programs 
I have on offer there. 

Developed using 32-bit Delphi.

Long Live the Apple ][ !!!


Why is this useful ?  /  Why do this ?
--------------------------------------

This program is not useful at all.  Only insane old Apple 2 
fanatics would ever dream of writing a program like this !! ;)

As far as I know, this is the first program of its type anywhere 
in the world.  (I certainly have never heard of a program like this).

Anybody who saw my posts in the newsgroup comp.emulators.apple2
in 1994 / 1995 may remember that I was planning to "one day" write 
a program like this.  Well, here it is - finally !!  ;)


About the Disk Drive Sounds :
-----------------------------

As people may know from the Apple 2 Emulation section of my WEB pages :

	At the best of times, the Apple 2 disk drive used to make horrible 
	grunting and scrapping sounds as it loaded programs.  When I used to go 
	to the local Burleigh Heads library and used the Apple 2 there, everyone 
	in the library would stop and stare (and sometimes glare !) at us 
	whenever the Apple 2 was reading floppy disks - the grunts and groans 
	from the drive were *that* loud !! 

	N.B. These terrible sounds were perfectly normal for Apple 2 drives, 
	and they were quite loud as well, even when using brand new floppy 
	disks and brand new floppy drives. 

However, people today didn't believe me about the sounds or how loud they 
really were.

So now, a short MP3 of some Apple 2 disk drive sounds is available from my 
WEB page.

And, in addition, I have written this program to simulate some Apple 2 
disk drive sounds.

All of the Apple 2 disk drive sounds were recorded by me on April 10 and 11, 
2000.  To record the sounds, I used a cheap microphone hooked up to my 
Windows 98 PC, which was running Goldwave a good sound editing program.
I placed the microphone at the entrance to the Apple 2 floppy drive, and
then proceeded to record the loading sounds the drive made for a bunch
of games and programs.  (I own an Apple ][c with both internal and 
external drives).

Finally, in December 2001, I again listened carefully to the sounds I recorded
18 months ago, and edited out some of the more common sound bytes.

Then, I wrote a Delphi program to play them back, and compiled all of the 
sounds into a single resource file, which was later compiled and compressed 
into the Executable program.  That is why there are no WAV files accompanying 
this program - they are all contained inside the EXE file !!

The "squeak" was a sound that the disk drive makes very occassionally 
when (I think) it is swinging its read head backwards and forwards 
very quickly and the rubber belt slips - not sure about how it happens 
but it does happen.  It is definitely a sound the drive makes - not
the door on the drive.  I rember it happening on all of the Apple ]['s I
used in the early 1980's and it still happens on my Apple ][c - but it is
very occasional.

The "Ghostbusters" digitised speech sound is not a disk drive sound, 
but I thought it would be fun to add this sound in as well to show 
what digitised speech on the Apple ][ sounded like.  Back in the 
early 80's, this speech was state of the art and I remember 
times when people used to crowd around my Apple ][ just to 
hear it say "Ghostbusters" !!


The Future :
------------

In the future, many improvements could be made to this program,
such as :

- Screen shots and a brief history of the games - so you can see screen 
  shots while the sounds are playing.

- More sounds - this program just has some of the Apple 2's disk 
  drive sounds.

- Better recordings.  e.g. 16 bit CD quality would be nice.
  (I need to get a galf-decent microphone as well ...}

- More options - e.g. be able to have multiple user defined groups 
  of sounds, etc.

- Better methods to allow users to define their own sound groups.

- Who knows, one day the sounds may even be included in an Apple ][ 
  emulator ...  If any emulator authors want some sounds recorded, 
  let me know and I'll provide all you need !!

- Improve the playback of sounds : thereis a split second of silence 
  at the end of each sound - which is more noticeable on slower PCs.
  I could stream the sounds together using Direct/X / DirectSound - and this
  would remove the gaps.  At the moment, I am using the standard windows
  function "PlaySound" to play the sounds - which isn't perfect and introduces
  small gaps / delays - even when streaming the sounds direct from memory.
  I may do a DirectSound version ....  someday ...  ;)
  There probably are 3rd party components I can use with Delphi to remove 
  the gaps as well.  I might look into these in the future as well ...

- Anything else ?

If you would like any of these improvements, or would like to
suggest more, please email me and let me know.


Using this Program :
--------------------

To use this program, simply unzip it to a directory (using 
PKUNIP, WinZIP, or similar), and run it.


Freewre Information :
---------------------------

This program is FREE software - any person and any company is
welcome to copy it, use it, and distribute it as they see fit,
as long as the EXEcutable and this text file remain intact.

If you find this program useful or funny or think I need 
serious mental help, please visit my WEB page and check out 
some of the other Freeware or $5 dollar shareware programs 
I have on offer there. 


Special Thanks to :
--------------------

- David Ellsworth for his beautiful Apple ][ emulator : ApplePC.

- Michael O'Brien and Oliver Schmidt for the amazing AppleWin
  Apple 2 emulator.

- All the gang at comp.emulators.apple2 - particularly the old school
  guys and gals who were there in 1994-1996 - god we used to have 
  some laughs and great discussions ....  ;)
  I very rarely post there now - because too many spammers get hold
  of your email address, but I still always check this newsgroup at least
  once every week and have done this since 1994.  These days, I often reply 
  to emails direct to the person - rather than to the newsgroup - as 
  spammers can't get you this way ... ;)

Long Live the Apple ][ !!!


Ammendment History :
--------------------

Vers    Date        Description

1.0   07-Dec-2001   First Public Release.
                    (8,738 lines of code / comments.)

1.1   13-Dec-2001   Had a lot of great feedback about this program already !
                    A MAC version is also under development by Laz ...
                    Add in the "Ghostbusters" digitised speech sound.
                    While this is not a disk drive sound, I thought it would be fun
                    to add this sound in as well to show what digitised speech on the 
                    Apple ][ sounded like.  Back in the early 80's, this speech was
                    state of the art and I remember times when people used to crowd
                    around my Apple ][ just to hear it say "Ghostbusters" !!
                    Improve the user interface : base sounds are now numbered
                    and more user friendly names are displayed - rather than the 
                    "uglier" internal names I used for each sound.
                    Add in details on the "squeak" and "Ghostbusters" sounds
                    to the "About the Disk Drive Sounds" section above.
                    (8,769 lines of code / comments.)


If this program was not downloaded from my Home Page, then
it is possibly an old version.  The latest version of this 
program is available from my WEB page - see below.

 Mike "Moose" O'Malley
________________________________________________________________
 Moose's Shareware & Emulation Valley - Established July, 1996.
 WEB:  http://move.to/moose        Email:  moose@move.to
________________________________________________________________
