CHAPTER 1: BEFORE YOU START
1.1 What you need
- A Commodore 64, or a C64 Ultimate / Ultimate 64.
- A disk drive as device 8: a 1541, an SD2IEC, or the Ultimate's drive.
- Optional: a Commodore 1351 mouse (or compatible) in control port 1.
- Optional: a joystick in control port 2. It moves the cursor; FIRE works as SPACE.
- Optional: a RAM Expansion Unit (REU).
SIDJ runs fully without an REU. With an REU you also get:
| REU size | Adds |
|---|---|
| any | a long undo history (without an REU: one step), crash and reset recovery, the drum lane view |
| 512K or more | project slots in the REU: 8 slots with 512K, 24 with 1 MB, 32 with 2 MB or more |
In this manual, features that need an REU are marked (REU).
1.2 How SIDJ is built
A SIDJ project is built in layers:
- The SONG is a list of rows. Each row has one chain per channel. There are 3 channels, one per SID voice.
- A CHAIN is a list of up to 16 phrases.
- A PHRASE is 16 steps. Each step can hold a note, an instrument and a command.
- An INSTRUMENT is a SID sound. It can run a TABLE for drums, arpeggios and sweeps.
- A GROOVE sets how long each step lasts.
All numbers are shown in hexadecimal (00–FF).
1.3 The keys
SIDJ uses four keys in combination:
| Key | Use |
|---|---|
| SPACE | edit |
| C= (the Commodore key) | second edit key |
| CTRL | select and move between screens |
| RETURN | play and stop |
The CRSR keys move the cursor. To move up, hold SHIFT and press CRSR ⇩. To move left, hold SHIFT and press CRSR ⇨. In this manual, UP, DOWN, LEFT and RIGHT mean these four cursor directions.
"SPACE + RIGHT" means: hold SPACE, then press RIGHT. "SPACE, SPACE" means: press SPACE twice, quickly.