corrupt Sound Tracker song disks

[Dionysis]

Years ago I transferred my old Amiga 500 diskettes to adf files. Among them many Sound Tracker diskettes with original songs! Unfortunately, two of them do not read. This is what happens: Having loaded Sound Tracker from the original ST00 diskette, I change to the new one (on df0). The song list loads properly, but when I click on a title, instead of starting to load, I get a blank-black channels, and the system hangs. I see at adf opus that the files contain information, they are not 0 bytes. Question is, is there a way to load the files? Maybe trying from pro tracker (can pro tracker load ST songs?) Or, if it's a header/file syntax problem, maybe someone could try to fix it? Please help me restore my childhood memories!

[Vot]

Originally Posted by Dionysis

Years ago I transferred my old Amiga 500 diskettes to adf files. Among them many Sound Tracker diskettes with original songs! Unfortunately, two of them do not read. This is what happens: Having loaded Sound Tracker from the original ST00 diskette, I change to the new one (on df0). The song list loads properly, but when I click on a title, instead of starting to load, I get a blank-black channels, and the system hangs. I see at adf opus that the files contain information, they are not 0 bytes. Question is, is there a way to load the files? Maybe trying from pro tracker (can pro tracker load ST songs?) Or, if it's a header/file syntax problem, maybe someone could try to fix it? Please help me restore my childhood memories!

id suggest uploading the adf’s to your dropbox or something and posting the links to them. I don’t think anyone can even attempt to answer your question without looking at the disk images. Could just be the tracker format of the files, could be they are damaged in some way. But the easiest way is let people have a go with the real files. Someone might find a solution for you.


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[Dionysis]

Here are the disks:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dukr4c9glo...-00e1.adf?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4djaupjq4i...-00e2.adf?dl=0

[BastyCDGS]

Hi Dionysis!

Originally Posted by Dionysis

Or, if it's a header/file syntax problem, maybe someone could try to fix it? Please help me restore my childhood memories!

Well, I just took a look into your two supplied floppies.
All the song files are compressed. They contain the string 'PACK' at offset 0x18 (decimal 24).

Unfortunately, I don't know which packer uses this id string. Someone has an idea?

[Dionysis]

Originally Posted by BastyCDGS

Hi Dionysis!

Well, I just took a look into your two supplied floppies.
All the song files are compressed. They contain the string 'PACK' at offset 0x18 (decimal 24).

Unfortunately, I don't know which packer uses this id string. Someone has an idea?

Would it help if I upload a healthy (albeit different-content) ST-00 disk?

[BastyCDGS]

Hi Dionysis!

Originally Posted by Dionysis

Would it help if I upload a healthy (albeit different-content) ST-00 disk?

Might not harm.

But it would be better to find out the tool which was used to post process the songs.

I have checked out that when you save using the packed format of the various SoundTrackers on your disk it will indeed write a PACK header, but it is at the beginning (offset 0) and not at offset 0x18 as it is with your problematic files.

I even tried to cut of the 24 bytes at the beginning of the problematic files and load them. While the SoundTrackers didn't crash anymore, they didn't load them either.

My guess is therefore you either used a tool which post processed the songs, or a virus infection added those 24 bytes (unlikely).

[Dionysis]

No post-processing. Just the regular "save song" from the Soundtracker menu.
The way of creating new ST song disks was copying the disk and then erasing the songs, to make room for new ones. In that sense, all my song disks were copies of my original ST-00. In that sense, it makes sense to upload that one (see link below).
One thing I remember experimenting with, was trying to save songs as modules (i.e. with the instruments pre-loaded). After the main menu screen (see pic), I clicked at info, went to the second menu screen (see pic) and went for the F5 option, although I never got it to work (or didn't know how).

My original ST-00:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cuox4eifuw...ST-00.rar?dl=0

[BastyCDGS]

Originally Posted by Dionysis

No post-processing. Just the regular "save song" from the Soundtracker menu.

That's strange, as said, I tried this as well with your disk, but the songs I saved for testing are different (PACK at offset 0x0 vs. offset 0x18 problematic files).

So if you didn't do anything special them, it might be caused by a virus (some stupid link virus which doesn't check if it is really executable to infect)?

Maybe I should post a hex dump of the first 24 bytes for further investigation?

EDIT: Attached example screenshot of one problematic song.
EDIT2: Attached example screenshots of one working song.

[BastyCDGS]

Just another thing I noticed.

Offset 0x4 after PACK identifier contains length of compressed stream and
offset 0x8 after PACK seems to contain length of decompressed data.
Offset 0xC starts stream.

That is, with the healthy files, the file size equals to value found at offset 0x4 plus the 12 header bytes.

This is however, not the case with the problematic files where the PACK string starts at offset 0x18:
If I remove the first 24 bytes so PACK starts at offset 0x0 as well, file size still does NOT match the above constraint, it looks like the problematic files are to small.
And it seems that is, with the problematic files, the file size equals to value found at offset 0x4 minus(!) the 12 header bytes after cutting of the first 24 bytes before the PACK identifier.

[Dionysis]

What about other songs from the same corrupt disk? Do they exhibit the same behavior?
And what about the other corrupt disk I uploaded?
Maybe a comparison could shed some light.
Thank you for taking the time to help me with this.

[BastyCDGS]

Originally Posted by Dionysis

What about other songs from the same corrupt disk? Do they exhibit the same behavior?

Yes, they exhibit the same behaviour.

And what about the other corrupt disk I uploaded?

I only picked one/two songs randomly on the other corrupt disk and they also shown the same behaviour.

Maybe a comparison could shed some light.
Thank you for taking the time to help me with this.

Do you have source code which is able to unpack the PACK format? This way, I can try to write a small Asm tool which extracts as much as possible from the defective files. This way we can recover most of the song data, if the last 24 bytes are actually missing.

Please also try hard to remember if you did some special to the two defective disks. Maybe you used some program to prepare the songs for inline asm playback or something like that?

Do you remember playing around with tools which create object files of songs? I ask because your ST-00 disks contain some of those tools including SEKA assembler. However the tools on disk seem to produce a different format than the defective songs.

[Dionysis]

Originally Posted by BastyCDGS

Do you have source code which is able to unpack the PACK format?

You mean the method that was used to transform the actual diskettes to adf files? If so, I can get in touch with the guy that did the transfer, I hope he remembers what he used.

No tweaking was done whatsoever back in the day with the diskettes, apart what I have already explained, concerning the F5 menu option of "looking for modules". Main menu > Info > Second menu screen > F5 (forgot to attach screenshots last time, I can do it now, although you can see what I mean by booting the healthy ST-00 disk).

[BastyCDGS]

Originally Posted by Dionysis

You mean the method that was used to transform the actual diskettes to adf files? If so, I can get in touch with the guy that did the transfer, I hope he remembers what he used.

No I mean source code like this (a0 points to ST compressed song containing 'PACK' identifier string at this address):

lea STSongCompressed,a0
lea STSongUnpackBuffer,a1
movea.l a1,a5

jsr UnpackSTSong
...

After executing this, the uncompressed ST song can be analysed in a5, i.e. source code of "UnpackSTSong" function, so the packed data can be converted to normal ST song file.

But redoing the ADF transfer again might be worth a try.

No tweaking was done whatsoever back in the day with the diskettes, apart what I have already explained, concerning the F5 menu option of "looking for modules". Main menu > Info > Second menu screen > F5 (forgot to attach screenshots last time, I can do it now, although you can see what I mean by booting the healthy ST-00 disk).

The disks look altered, e.g. many of the function keys are not mapped as shown in the info and help.

[Toni Wilen]

Moved from support.WinUAE.

[Dionysis]

Originally Posted by BastyCDGS

Do you have source code which is able to unpack the PACK format?

Not sure what this is or how I can find it...
Does it have to do with the specific copy/version of Sound Tracker?

[BastyCDGS]

Originally Posted by Dionysis

Not sure what this is or how I can find it...
Does it have to do with the specific copy/version of Sound Tracker?

Yes, two of the three SoundTrackers on your disk are capable of saving songs in compressed PACK format.

In order to be able to repair them, I need the source code of the decompressor. If you can't provide it, I either have to extract it from SoundTracker, which requires a lot of work or to find another source.

Maybe someone else knows where to find source code for the decompression routine.

[Dionysis]

Originally Posted by BastyCDGS

Maybe someone else knows where to find source code for the decompression routine.

I hope they do...

[BastyCDGS]

Originally Posted by Dionysis

I hope they do...

I have another idea!
Do you know of any players which are able to playback your songs from your supplied working disk, e.g. HippoPlayer?

If yes, try that player on the two bad disks, as well (see screenshot above with hex dump, the one where 'PACK' starts at offset 0x0).

Also there are some players which are OpenSource and if they can play your songs, they also can unpack it, so I can grab the code from there...

[Dionysis]

Originally Posted by BastyCDGS

Do you know of any players which are able to playback your songs from your supplied working disk, e.g. HippoPlayer?

No idea...
One thing I had thought was if Pro Tracker were able to open the files, but I don't know if it was compatible with Sound Tracker files.

[a4k-oerx]

Originally Posted by BastyCDGS

Maybe someone else knows where to find source code for the decompression routine.

Did you try this yet?

http://aminet.net/package/mus/misc/Pro-Wizard_220