                               NSF Collection
                               --------------




Prepared by Kevin Horton - khorton@iquest.net

                 NES Fami  Bad  TTl   Released
                -------------------------------
Version 1.00 -   144   47   15  206  12/30/1999  
Version 2.00 -   154   47   10  211  01/05/2000
Version 3.00 -   185   56   10  251  01/09/2000
Version 4.00 -   191   63    9  263  01/18/2000
Version 5.00 -   257  198   11  466  05/28/2000
Version 6.00 -   286  219    2  507  06/28/2000

-

Notes:
------

V1.00- 

First Release.


V2.00-

Added rippers.txt and newrips.txt for your browsing pleasure :-)

V3.00-

I have finished the complete Codemasters/Camerica NSF set!

V4.00-

Thanks to TSR for the whack of path and file changes.  See newrips.txt
for details of what changed and where it went.

V5.00-

Huge update!  NSF spec updated, tons of new tunes added.


V6.00-

Even bigger update- This time however the whole structure of the collection
was modified some in an effort to match up out of place tunes.  Remember
that each tune is put in the directory of who released it; not who made
the game (i.e. Kirby's Adventure is under /Nintendo instead of /Hal since
Nintendo actually released the cart and not Hal).

Also, each NSF has been tested on real NES hardware!  I finished CopyNES
(Details to come) and its associated NSF cartridge.  I thought it would
be a good idea to actually try all the tunes on this cartridge to see if
they indeed work.  Suprisingly, there were a crapload that did not!  Most
of these problems stemmed from improper initialization routines (Assuming
Y is 0 for instance) or the use of SEI/CLI.  All have been fixed.  Also,
two tunes were relocated since RAM usage was not in a very good place (read:
overwriting the stack and other nasty things).  All tunes except some
which use special sound chips have been tested and work fully.  The tunes
that use said chips could crash on the cart since it is RAM-based, and
the tunes write to cart space.  Result: it overwrites the code and you get
a nice big fat crash!

As always, more NSFs have been added to the collection, and a new document
has been added in /Documents.  "extra.txt" lists all the tunes in the 
collection which use extra sound chips to make it easier for you to find
them.

I went on a fixing spree and fixed almost all the bad tunes:

SMB3 has been fixed.  It now functions correctly, and thanks to Quietust,
the missing PCM samples have been found and returned!

Maniac Mansion has been tamed as well.  180K shrunk down to 70K.  Look for
it in /Nintendo/Jaleco.


--

Huge thanks to: 

|tsr for fixing all the text fields and filenames on the
latest release!

And to TNSE for continually modifying NSFTool to make this collection
possible.





Mini-FAQ:
---------

?: So why did you do this collection, anyways?

!: Mainly because of the lack of any order or quality in the NSF supply.
   I don't want what happened with SID files to happen to the NSF files-
   that is, small to medium sized collections of SIDs that have lots of 
   dupes, damaged files, etc.  It took years to get that cleaned up. :-)


?: Why aren't there any sound effects in the files any more?

!: The main reason is there were too darn many of them, and most are
   generic anyways.  Who wants to page through 95 sound effects just to
   get to the tunes?  They were more of a hinderance than a help and
   the general consensus I got from people is that they should go.


?: So what's planned for this collection?

!: Nothing.  I'll keep adding NSFs to it when they are released.  


?: So what exactly did you do to the NSFs in this collection?

!: I have gone over each one with a fine-toothed comb to make sure they
   are clean (no extranious data), removed sound effects, sometimes
   re-ordered the songs, and fixed code if it was broken (writes to ROM,
   invalid start/play addresses, etc).  Many rips had alot of un-used space.
   It wasn't uncommon for rips to shrink from 32K down to 4-7K.  The other
   thing I do is make sure the text fields (auth. / name / copyright) are
   as uniform as possible.


?: Hey! Parodius doesn't work any more?  What gives?!

!: It has been fixed to conform to the NSF spec.  The PAL speed bytes are
   in a different location in the header than the NTSC speed bytes.  Update
   your NSF player. :-)


?: What about tunes that should go in both /famicom and /nintendo?  

!: Instead of duplicating tunes, All tunes for games that were released in
   both Japan and the US will be placed in the /nintendo directory only.
   The only exception to this rule is for games that have changed music
   of course.  /famicom is reserved for true fami-only music.

