OK I downloaded openmsx.6.1 and made a log.psg now how do I make sense out of the file? Is it documented somewhere?
Yes:
*.psg format (used in emulators like x128, very-very old version of fMSX, Z80Stealth and some other)
Header:
+0 4 Signature #50 #53 #47 #1A ('PSG' and byte #1A)
+4 1 Version number
+5 1 Interrupts freq. (50/60)
+6 10 Unused
Note: only signature is necessary, many emulators just fill other bytes by zero.
Data stream:
#00..#FC - register number, followed by data byte (value for that register)
#FD - EOF (usually not used in real logs)
#FE - number of interrupts (followed byte with number of interrupts/4, usually not used)
#FF - single interrupt
O_o ?
Relax, J-War. Just go to http://www.komkon.org/~dekogel/fmsx.html and grab PSG2MID. Some another converters also exists. But all of them will work acceptable only with simple music, anyway.
NO I WON'T RELAX !
by the way psg2mid sux, but thanks for the info
You can also try http://www.siemens-club.org/download.php?id=412 then. This tool has russian interface, but I think, you can use it (words 'psg' and 'mid' in english anyway).
Anyway, it's not problem of psg2mid or other converters, it's problem of way, how synth chips work. They not deal with any musical data, but with frequencies (or dividers of clock frequency), volumes, and other parameters instead. They even don't know, that data which computer give to them is music. Misc. music programs (trackers, sequencers, and so on) has different freq. tables, sometime very approximated; misc. version of computers has different clock frequency to synth chip (produced notes depends on it); chips with very limited polyphony (like PSG) drive composers to use many tricks with channels multiplexing based on psychoacoustic, etc.. So it's almost impossible to create PSG to midi converter, which can give clean and readable midi as result.
And for that reason, we could benefit from emulators that can diskwrite each possible channel to seprate wave files -in one go!-. Then we can inspect all notes and odd things just by listening to it..
Wolf, not everyone can write down notes while listening to music...
And just a midifile isn't always useful. I'd say: do both. Offer log2mid, and offer simultanious multichannel diskwriting.
For the former, you can use the PSG logger and use psg2mid, for the latter, someone should do some work... (It's in our feature requeste tracker, I think.) But seriously: it takes quite some work, also on architecture to separate channels of individual chips, so it may take a while before this is done.