MODCON
                               
              A freewareprogram by The Octalyser Team
              
                     version 1.0   7 August, -94
              



What is MODCON?

        One day I got a phonecall from one of our registered
        Octalyser users. We discussed a few things and he mentioned
        that FastTracker (the most popular tracker on the PC) and 
        probably no other 8 channel PC-Tracker could load Octalyser
        modules with more than 4 voices. Since he wanted to spread his
        compositions to a broad public this was a big problem since no
        PC-owner could listen to his tunes. That's why I wrote MODCON,
        it's a simpel program that converts an Octalyser module
        (as well as some other module formats) to a FastTracker module.

        
How do I use it?

        When you start MODCON you will be presented with a fileselector
        that asks you to select a module. The module is then converted
        to a FastTracker module in a fraction of a second and the
        fileselector appears again asking you for a new module to convert.
        Selecting cancel will quit the program.
        
        If you find a module that MODCON can't convert, simply load it
        into the Octalyser. If you get it successfully into the Octalyser
        you only have to save it back. MODCON will now recognize it as a
        normal Octalyser module.
        
        If you want to convert the module back to an Octalyser module,
        just load it into the Octalyser and save it. Please notice 
        that the FastTracker format doesn't support different 
        basefrequencies, so if the module is using 20 or 25 kHz base-
        frequency you have to set it back yourself. 
                       
How does it work?

        Nearly all 4,6 and 8 channel modules have their data organized
        identically, there are really no difference in the moduledata,
        except for the header. The header is four bytes, starting from
        offset 1080 and tells what tracker it was written in and how
        many voices the module have.
        
        The problem when loading an Octalyser module into FastTracker is
        that FastTracker doesn't recognize Octalyser's header (CDxy, where
        x is the amount of voices and y states the basefrequency, 0=16 kHz,
        1 = 20 kHz and 2 = 25 kHz). FastTracker then probably assumes that
        the module is an old 4 voice, 16 instruments module, since these
        didn't have any header and could contain any value in these four
        bytes.
        
        If MODCON runs into a header it doesn't recognize, it tells you
        and skips the conversion.
        
system requirements

        Any Ataricomputer with an operatingsystem of version 1.4 or higher
        and at least 3 kb of free memory...  sorry, just had to write it :)

Best wishes

Tord Jansson
THE OCTALYSER TEAM