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^6                      M U S I C   E N G I N E .

^2                               LPD 79.

^6                          By Paul Townsend.

^1                       Reviewed by Len Tucker.

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^4 MUSIC  ENGINE  is  a  bit  of a misleading title.  True this program
^4allows   you  to  play  MED,  SOUND  TRACKER,  SONIX,  GMC  and  even
^4OCTOMED(!!)  music  modules  without  converting them to AMOS format,
^4which  in  itself  is  an  amazing  acheivement  by  Paul Townsend of
^4Technical Fred Software, but it is the way this program works that is
^4the great breakthrough in programming, but more of that in a moment.

^5 To  my knowledge, there is only one of the above music editors which
^5you  can  play  without  converting  to AMOS format and that is Sound
^5Tracker.   This facility comes to you courtesy of a new music routine
^5from  Europress  (nice  one!).  This is available with the upgrade to
^5AMOS 1.33, available from Sandra at Déjà Vu Software.

^4 It  is  still the case though that most of the popular music editors
^4are  not  suported by AMOS, but now with the release of Music Engine,
^4all this changes - they are all supported.

^5 As  to  the title being misleading, the benefits of this program far
^5exceed  just  playing music with AMOS.  By manipulating Paul's coding
^5in various ways, you will now be able to:-

^4Find out whether a disk is write protected or write enabled.

^5Find  out  if  a disk drive is attached or not.  You might think that
^5`Exist'  does this, but it doesn't!  Try it as follows, take the disk
^5out of DF0:  then go into direct mode and key in

^4 Print Exist (Df0:)

^5 You will see a 0 (not there) printed on the screen - strange, last I
^5heard  Df0:   comes  permanently attached to the Amiga!  Exist simply
^5tells you if a disk is in a drive, not if the drive itself attached.

^4 You can also find the datestamp, comments, length, bytes free on the
^4disk,  bytes  used,  and  read/write  errors.  You can find out which
^4disks  are  mounted and which volumes are available.  You can get the
^4time  that a specific file was written to, how many directories there
^4are,how  many  files  there  are  in the directory and also the total
^4number of bytes used by the files in the directory.  If you wish, you
^4can  do  a  DIR  OPT  A which if you are unfamiliar with CLI displays
^4every   file   and  every  subdirectory  on  the  disk.   Not  really
^4recommended for Hard Drive users unless you need a coffee break!

^5 You  can get a list of the current assigns, also the current devices
^5available eg PRT PAR SER CON NEWCON RAM etc.

^4 You can also pull out a file that is in ascii or hexadecimal format,
^4this means that you can write text editors.  (I agree that this could
^4be  done  using AMOS commands alone, but this method means that it is
^4done automatically)

^5 You can also format a disk, copy a file without using banks, get the
^5date,  even save the date to chip.  If you have the PD program Crunch
^5and  Decrunch, (these are Power Packer's data crunchers) you can even
^5crunch files without using the Squash command.  So even if you do not
^5own  the compiler, you can crunch data and unlike the Squash command,
^5you  can  crunch  bob banks.  You can also install a disk,even copy a
^5disk.   You  can  sort  an  ascii file on disk and no doubt there are
^5dozens more applications for this amazing routine!

^4 You  will NOT be able to do the above simply by buying Music Engine,
^4the coding does have to be manipulated to perform different tasks, to
^4find  out  how,  and  for  technical  help,  give  Paul  a ring, (see
^4TECHNICAL  FRED file in the ADVERTS section) or see if you can figure
^4it out for yourself!

^5 The  program  is  fully  documented with everything you need to know
^5regarding  the  use  of  the  program and the legal side of using the
^5players included on the disk, ie who to contact for permission to use
^5them etc.

^4 As  far  as  I'm  concerned  buy this program, it will be invaluable
^4whatever  you  are  writing  as  it puts all the CLI commands at your
^4disposal.

^2 Thank you Paul for giving us what we've all been waiting far to long
^2for!
^5                                                        L.T.
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