P L E A S E    R E A D    T H I S !
                    -----------------------------------


1. Opening Words
----------------

                           TO MAKE IT CLEAR :

            The name has nothing to do with the drug Ecstasy!

          We are clean (we even never used it), so please follow us!



2. Introduction
---------------

Hello and welcome to the brand new version of XTC-PLAY.

This version was unlike all other versions not released in a hurry, but
tested for a couple of months. A lot of bugs within the player and
concerning some module types have been fixed, AMD interwave support has
been improved a lot and which is the most striking fact of all :

All users of Soundblaster(tm) compatible cards are now also able to
enjoy all the advantages of our cute player.

Soundblaster support means support for ALL Cards, which are able to
emulate either SB16, SBPRO or SB-MONO.

Support for WSS,ESS and AWE-32 will follow in the future, if we are
enabled to get the right information and to test it with the right
soundcards.

Beside this, all nice screens which were included in the early 0.70 release
are now improved, i.e. that you are now able to choose between different
resolutions in the plasma screen or different colors in water or or or...

Loading UNIVBE 5.x will increase the number of resolutions and also
dramatically improves the speed of all screens if a linear framebuffer
is enabled.


3. Important Updates
--------------------

- Vesa 2.0 support

- Soundblaster support

- DMF support

- IT support

- MMCMP support

- MPEG1/2 layer 1,2,3 support

- Diskwriter


For a detailed description of all updates, you'll have to take
a look inside whatsnew.txt


4. Known bugs
-------------

Matrox Millenium VESA error, if you have it, send me a message and describe
what happens. (long startup time when FIRST starting it is ok, this is a due
a bug in the vesa kernel of the Millenium).


5. Distribution-Sites
---------------------

This part has been taken out of this document, because it got too long,
so please take a look into the file named SITES.XTC.

If  you have an InterNet account you can always get the latest version at:

                           << ftp.cdrom.com >>

6. Credits
----------

Real Credits:

- coding : Kilroy

- code for tunnel : Cohnen (no, he wasn't on drugs)

- minor proposals, beta testing and fixes : Bee-Man

- Ansi-design : Blacknight, Metal & Matrix


Greetings and thanx are flying to our BETA testers:

             o Vamp
             o Tammo Hinrichs
             o Maz
             o Moritz Grimm
             o Sanders van Leuwen
             o Nyphton
             o Holger Mense
             o Manuel Hartl
             o Heiko Helmle
             o Speedy/Funk!

Special thanx go to :

             o   Daredevil for his good support on Pmode and other
                 coding questions

             o   Tony Romero (AMD) for giving the interwave manual

             o   Cohnen^Sanction for the beautiful tunnel screen

             o   MikMak for the first idea to write a player

             o   Michael Hipp/Oliver Fromme for basic MPEG routines

             +   All other guys who supported us by sending along
                 bug-reports or modules and I did forget, sorry :-I


X3M thanx fly to :

             o   Sipiyou /NortherPain who supported us with lots of
                 information on the Interwave, difficult coding-problems,
                 most of the bugreports and many inventions
                 Without him, some things would habe been impossible

             o   TMB/Daze who helped us extensively to improve the
                 soundblaster mixingroutins during all 4 days of Mekka97


7. Final Words
--------------

Disclaimer:

We're not responsible for any possible damage to  your soft- and hardware.
The  only  thing  we guarantee is that  XTC-Play  will take some of your
disk-space, nothing more - nothing less.

XTC-Play is distributed as  moduleware, this means if you think this little
piece of art is useful and if you're connected to the  FIDO-NET, send some
of your  best  modules to Mautschi's Castle (2:2454/524 / +49-2632-949119).
Either via fileattach or simply upload them :-)                      k


                        That's all for now, folks!

                            And don't forget:

                   <--- Drugs are only for losers! --->

         ----> There are better ways to have A LOT OF phun ! <----