README.orig

Minicomputer v. 1.41
Industrial Grade Digital Synthesizer

by Malte Steiner

email: steiner@block4.com

Minicomputer is a standalone Linux softwaresynthesizer for
creating experimental electronic sounds as its often used 
in but not limited to Industrial music, Glitch, IDM and other electronic genres.

This may contain some bugs but already worked in studio for my project 'Akustikkoppler' 
and live for 'Notstandskomitee'.

Minicomputer is free open source software under the GPL3 license.

Its split into the engine and an editor.

Dependancies includes:

- Jack
- FLTK
- Alsaseq
- pthreads
- liblo

and 

- Scons for building

Take care, it can be harsh! Use it on your own risk, you have been warnend!

----------------------------- starting Minicomputer ------------------------

after the installation simply type 

minicomputer 

and it will start the editor application and the synthesis core. By closing the editor window the core engine will be stopped too.

Per default both programs communicate via OSC at the port 7770. If you like to have another one or want several instances you can define the port with the -port parameter:

minicomputer -port 434334

It will be shown at the name in QJackctrl so you know which instances belongs together.


----------------------------- building Minicomputer ------------------------

For building Minicomputer just type

scons

Cleaning the buildfiles but the new created programfiles TOO, is done by typing 

scons -c

Installation as root into /usr/local/bin can be done with 

scons install

deinstallation is done as root:

scons -c install


So far the target directory is hardcoded in SConstruct file, its the last two lines.
Data is kept in .miniComputer/ directory in your home folder. For starting you can install the presets with the installpresets.sh script as the user you want to use it later. Be careful this overwrites of course your settings if you have any previous but they are backed up for security.


The buildprocess accept parameters for refining architecture optimization:

 64bit=1
forces a build for 64bit platforms with the -m64 option

 k8=1
optimizes for AMD K8 cpus, giving the compilers the -march=k8 -mtune=k8 settings

 k7=1
optimizes for AMD Athlon XP cpus

 native=1
sets the native target

So a k8 64bit build looks like

scons 64bit=1 k8=1

further optimization can be switched in common.h but its experimental and results vary

TROUBLESHOOTING:

- 'I have library xyz installed but scons complains about not finding xyz'
make sure that you have the developer version of the library installed which comes extra and additionally.Usually looks like libxyz.dev


A word to package maintainers:

I welcome the inclusion of Minicomputer in repositorys. If you encounter any difficulties please contact me at the email address seen above and we work out a solution.