I’ve put together a little utility to make extracting CMC (Chaos Music Composer) music from Atari executables a lot easier. It basically piggybacks off emulator save states to find the data you need.

How to use it:

1. Run the game/program in your emulator until the music is playing.
2. Save the state (usually Alt+Z in most emulators).
3. Extract the state file: Open the resulting .A8S file with a tool like WinRAR and extract the contents.
4. Run CMC MSX Extractor: Fire up my software, click LOAD, and select that extracted file.

(Full disclosure: It takes a few seconds to process the file—sorry about the wait! I’m working on the speed.)

The file content will appear in the text window once loaded. A standard CMC file typically starts with the string _cmc_data_file_. If you select CMC 2.0 and hit Search, the program will list the starting addresses for you.

Sometimes, programmers get clever and overwrite that header with spaces or custom text. In those cases, you’ll need to use the Other option, which makes finding the start of the track a bit more of a manual hunt.

Finding the End of the Track

You’ll also need to identify where the song ends. If you’ve spent enough time looking at these files, the structure becomes pretty obvious (you’ll see repeating character sequences). A CMC song always ends with the hex value FF, which my tool represents with the “^” character.

Final Steps:

1. Set the length once you’ve found the start and end points.
2. Save the file with a .CMC extension.
3. Convert to SAP: Use the utilities found in the “PC Software” (or ASMA) section of this site to turn it into a playable SAP file.

Just a heads-up: the program is in a very “raw” state because I didn’t originally plan on sharing it. If the interface isn’t polished enough for you… well, feel free to code your own! 😉

Download “CmcMsxEx” CmcMsxEx.rar – Downloaded 512 times –