nord stage 4

program file decoder for Mac OS

Making it work on Windows

I've never had any formal software training, and I had never worked with binary files before. My objective when developing ns4decode was to get something working with minimal effort using tools that I already knew, namely unix and Python. Mac OS is unix-based and includes Python, but Windows doesn't. That's why ns4decode doesn't immediately work on Windows.

Even though it doesn't immediately work on Windows, it can be made to work by installing Python for Windows. Detailed instructions are shown below. Thank you to Nord Stage Forum user guyd789 for discovering this and for sharing the instructions!

Detailed instructions

• Download Python from www.python.org/downloads/windows/
• Choose the windows installer that corresponds to your PC/OS (32-bit, 64-bit or ARM). If you don't know, check settings/system/system type (example: windows11 64-bit OS, x-64-based processor)
• Open (execute) the file downloaded (example: python-3.13.1-amd64.exe for a 64-bit OS) and choose "install now"
• Download ns4decode_pkg.zip from ns4decode.netlify.app/downloads.html (this website)
• Create a directory "ns4decode" and extract all the files from ns4decode_pkg.zip in the directory
• To test the installation:
  • Put a Nord program file (.ns4p) into the same directory (example: Boxxx.ns4p)
  • Right click on ns4decode.py and choose "Edit with IDLE" to show you the code of ns4decode
  • Choose Run (in the menu bar) and Run....Customized
  • IDLE Shell will ask you for Command line Arguments
  • Type the name of the .ns4p file that you want to decode (example: Boxxx.ns4p) and click OK
  • ns4decode should answer "Outputs written to the directory..."
  • Close the ns4decode window and the shell window
  • Check that ns4decode has written .csv files in the directory.

Additional steps for using drag-and-drop method

Instead of using IDLE to run ns4decode, it’s also possible to enable drag-and-drop (so you can simply drag the .ns4p file on ns4decode.py). In this case, the .ns4p file can be in a different directory than ns4decode.py, and the output files will be written in the same directory as the input file. To enable this drag-and-drop method, you need to modify the registry. Follow Enable Drag+Drop onto Python files in Windows | py, pyc, pyw | EASY 2024 - YouTube until 1:56 (the rest is not relevant).

Additional steps for older versions of ns4decode

Older versions of ns4decode (version 1.8 or older) use a unix utility called xxd to extract the values of the bits from specified locations in an ns4p file. Windows doesn't include xxd, so if you've already downloaded one of those older versions of ns4decode and don't want to downloaded a newer version, then two additional steps are needed:

• Download xxd for windows from xxd for Windows download | SourceForge.net (example: xxd-1.11_win32(static).zip)
• Extract the file xxd.exe and put the exe in the same directory as ns4decode.py (ns4decode/ns4decode_pkg/)