Amiga or not ?
 

Hi again guys, it's always me with my stupid questions :D

There's a way to know if a Protracker module was made actually on Amiga ? :rolleyes

Indeed, for what i know, a Protracker module can be created also on other platforms ..... isn't it ? :blased

So, i would like to know if i can know this info about a Protracker module .... thanks ! :cool

No.

I guessed something like that .... a module format is simply a format :o

No possibility from there to know the "original" used platform :rolleyes

Thanks thomas :)

The only thing I would offer is the age of the module. Trackers for the PC didn't come on the scene until, what - the mid 90s? I would guess modules created between say, 1989 and 1992 or '93 might be Amiga only. Might be.

Ok, but the age is not something you can really see for a module :blased

It's not written inside the module itself, i mean :rolleyes

Sure it is, in many of them in fact. Look at either "info" in Protracker or look at the samples. The author often wrote their name, address, month and year the module was written by naming the samples as the text they wanted to impart.

Guitarslinger by Jogeir: He wrote the date in the samples.

Ok .... i missed that :)

No problem. Also, if you use Modexplorer, you can search for mods by date.

One way to identify is whether or not PC made modules use the same "M.K." identifier as Amiga Protracker?

I know there are a couple of other identifiers on Amiga, but were any of the Amiga ones carried over to PC or did that adopt its own identifier?

A hint can be found at offset 1080 ($438) with an hexadecimal editor.

The string "M.K." denotes a standard ProTracker module.

Should you see strings like "6CHN", "8CHN" or "14CH" instead of "M.K."
then it's a .mod file made on PC.

The majority of the PC .mod files I have (dated 1993 - 1996) have those xCHN values.
Still there is a minority with a "M.K." and I know those were made on PC.

There is a more comprehensive list of those strings here : https://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php...le#File_Format

Except PC, some (Pro)tracker modules was created on AtariST(E) too.

Some nonAmiga tracker modules can be detected. Used zero/null repeat length for samples. For Amiga is always 1. I dont remember exactly, but perhaps Delitracker can detect some PC tracker mods.

Funnily enough, those always seem to be in uppercase for the sample names?

I just saved a standard amiga protracker mod in MPP, Openmpt & Milkytracker(pc). They share the same filesize, but a file compare clearly shows differences between the original and the export module.

A few more differences in MPP, not so many differences in Milkytracker or Openmpt though. They all just seem to zero out various bytes in the mods.

Yes, uppercases in sample names, but some Amiga mods used uppercases only too. And maybe even in sample names length, 8 signs dot 3 signs. But i dont remember exactly.

Thank guys for all the replies :)

M.K. was used on PC trackers as well, for 4 channel .MODs. xCHN/xxCH was used if more or less than 4 channels. So in other words, this is not enough to identify where a 4ch .MOD came from.
I've seen 4CHN in the wild, but it's very rare. No idea what tracker that was. Definitely not FT2, as that used M.K. for 4ch.

Delitracker can detect them and play them, but it does not report it to the user.
I've seen several marks of non-Amiga (understand : buggy) modules as well as this one :
- repeat/replen in bytes rather than in words (Delitracker handles them too)
- 4 bytes shorter than should be because coder forgot to count the "M.K." in the module size
- wrong size of 1 word where there is no sample - Milkytracker suspected but needs verification

These are just poor heuristics.... In theory, any .mod saved from any tracker could fall within those criterias if the coder didn't do enough research, and you will never get a guarantee for the identification to be right. This is one of the main reasons why I think this format is a pita to work with when you try to code a good, universal player.

We can't go on date as you would have to have the original, the day it was saved, so many ripped or saved date stamps, or even adjustments by the coder who changed things for certain productions, or compressed mods losing internal data etc.

Internal data as there might not be any, the sheer amount of uncredited work out there is staggering..

Can anyone remember if the PC version of Deliplayer tried to identify which tracker was used. I seem to remember a Tracker column where it would populate the data for 4 channel mods??

Some PC trackers also support more octaves (both lower and upper range) or might not exactly use the original ProTracker period table (certain periods are one value off the original PT table values). This can be used to detect non-Amiga-origin mods, too.