Collaborate Disseminate
The chiptune scene is dominated by Game Boys and other Nintendo hardware, but one should never forget the gorgeous, beautiful tones that come from the hallowed Commodore 64. [Linus Åkesson] …read more Continue reading The Commodordion Gets a Big Usability Upgrade
Over the years, plenty of work has gone into emulating the Commodore 64 6581 SID chip, but as [SlipperySeal] puts it, nothing beats the real thing. His take on the …read more Continue reading Retro Stereo SID Synth Looks and Sounds Sensational
Old-school rotary telephones aren’t particularly useful for their original intended purpose in this day and age, but they’re great fun to hack into new projects. [Linus Åkesson] has done just …read more Continue reading Dial-a-SID Is a Glorious Chiptune Jukebox
Is the Internet becoming safer or more dangerous? This question is posed by the Safer Internet Day 2020 (SID) event, which calls attention to a subject that should raise more significant concern than it does, especially when it comes to kids and their … Continue reading Safer Internet Day 2020 – ‘Together for a better internet’
The MOS Technologies 6851, popularly known as the SID, is a legendary sound synthesiser integrated circuit from the early 1980s that is most famous for providing the Commodore 54 home computer with its ability to make noise. At the time it was significantly better than what could be found in competitor machines, making it a popular choice for today’s chiptune and demo scene artists.
There’s a snag for a modern-day SID-jockey though, the chip has been out of production for a quarter century and is thus in short supply. Emulation is a choice, but of little use for owners of …read more
When the Commodore 64 was released in 1982, it was a masterpiece of engineering. It had capabilities far outstripping other home computers, and that was all due to two fancy chips inside the C64. The VIC-II, the video chip for the C64, had sprites and scrolling, all stuffed into a single bit of silicon. The SID chip was a complete synthesizer on a chip. These bits of silicon made the C64 the best selling computer of all time, but have also stymied efforts to emulate a complete C64 system on a microcontroller.
[Frank Bösing] has just managed to emulate an …read more
Safer Internet Day is an awareness-raising campaign that started in Europe more than a decade ago and is now celebrated in more than 100 countries. See what you can do to participate.Categories: 101
FYITags: safer internet daySIDSID2017(Read more…) Continue reading Celebrate Safer Internet Day
Here’s a business plan for you, should you ever run into an old silicon fab sitting in a dumpster: build Commodore SID chips. The MOS 6581 and 8580 are synthesizers on a chip, famously used in the demoscene, and even today command prices of up to $40 USD per chip. There’s a market for this, and with the right process, this could conceivably be a viable business plan.
Finding a silicon fab in a dumpster is a longshot, but here’s the next best thing: an FPGASID project. The FPGASID is a project to re-create the now-unobtanium MOS 6581 found in …read more
