MIDAS Sound System v0.5, special Abduction party release
--------------------------------------------------------

A Sahara Surfers production.

Copyright 1996 Petteri Kangaslampi and Jarno Paananen
(a.k.a. Alfred & Guru / S2)

A last minute note: Special thanks to Jmagic/Complex for the GUS PnP
code. Now you know whom to blame for all the bugs :)

This is a special Abduction party release of MIDAS Sound System. It has
not been very widely spread or publicized, and this has been done
entirely on purpose: this release contains a lot of beta or alpha test
material:
        * We have now included a re-written timer (dostimer.c) that no
          longer should crash Win95.
        * GUS PnP support has been included - it apprently works on at
          least some computers, but we haven't been able to test it
          ourselves.
        * Nothing has been very extensively tested under DOS lately -
          we have been concentrating on NT and Linux support.
        * We have heard some complaints about MIDAS not working
          correctly with Watcom C 10.6. We have not had time to
          investigate this ourselves, and we do not suggest you use
          MIDAS with Watcom C 10.6 until the next release. However, it
          apparently does work if you compile the C portions with 10.6
          as well.

We have still fixed more bugs, and added some new features to the
player, so this release should in many ways be better than m32pre4.
However, use at your own risk (as always) and remember to test anything
using this release very thoroughly. If you are in doubt use m32pre4. A
proper MIDAS Sound System v0.5.0 release should be out in 2-3 weeks or
so.

A full list of recent changes can be found in file "rcslog". Note that
this does not include everything modified since m32pre4, as we haven't
been using RCS all the time since.

However, please test whether everything works on your computer or not,
and let us know. The directory "test" includes a few programs in
executable format that we'd also like you to test.

We have also included a more recent version of MidpNT than the one in
m32pre4. This should work in all ways better than the old release.

Most of the old stuff applies still. Check out DEMO.C - it shows
you how to use MIDAS. We have added code to show what happens under
Win95 when screen synchronization isn't perfect, and how to detect
that. Also, please read "timer.txt" for more information about timer
screen synchronization - we copied the documentation from MIDAS v0.40
release there, plus added some information about the current
implementation.

Remember to read LICENSE.TXT to check out how you are allowed to
use MIDAS. But remember, commercial licenses are available too!
Also, you _MUST_ include proper credits in your program - after
all, you get all this for free.

Comments? Bug reports? Want to send us money? Contact us! E-mail
is naturally preferred, you MIGHT get an answer to a letter as
well, but probably not. If you are serious about developing
software and do not have Internet access yet, do yourself a
favour and get it...

E-Mail:
        Petteri:        pekangas@sci.fi (preferred)
                        petteri.kangaslampi@research.nokia.com
                        k153997@cc.tut.fi (slow)

        Jarno:          p153737@cc.tut.fi
                        jarno.paananen@research.nokia.com

Snail:
        Petteri:        Petteri Kangaslampi
                        Insinoorinkatu 60 A 49
                        FIN-33720 Tampere
                        Finland
                        Europe

        Jarno:          Jarno Paananen
                        Insinoorinkatu 60 A 31
                        FIN-33720 Tampere
                        Finland
                        Europe

You can also call Petteri at +358-31-3172204, between 10.00 and 24.00
Finnish time. I'm usually work during the day though, so best time to
call is probably after 19.00 or so.

The latest version is always available at our WWW site:
"http://kalahari.ton.tut.fi/s2/midas.html". You can also find all MIDP
versions there plus all latest MIDAS related news.