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Post by David Murray on Mar 1, 2007 20:52:09 GMT -5
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Post by expertsetup on Mar 1, 2007 21:24:21 GMT -5
This project sure does look interesting. It seems like a great way to keep machines running that have the classic silence symptom. There is also an interesting SID Player device on the site as well. There are so many cool projects that are based around Micro controllers. I have never programmed any uC's but am looking to start really soon. I have been working on some parallel port hacking to get started. Nothing fancy just LED's. Another interesting SID device seems to be the rather tersely documented Parallel SID project which now has support in Vice 1.20. I hope to build this as my first real PC connected hack device. Here is a link to that project since it is related to this threads main topic: www.asciilifeform.com/parallelsid/parasid.htmlI also use the SID page from Wikipedia to see when new developments happen in the SID world. They list this project under the "Modern developments" section so I thought I would add this link as well: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology_SID
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Post by Golan Klinger on Mar 1, 2007 21:30:21 GMT -5
This is the first I'm hearing of the SwinSID. Pretty neat. There wasn't any information as to whether this was a commercial product or what. Is it for sale? I could use a couple of SIDs and I'm not interested in sacrificing any 64s to get them.
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Post by David Murray on Mar 1, 2007 22:13:22 GMT -5
Yes, sadly.. we'd all have enough SID chips to last for a really long time if we could only salvage all the ones that have been chunked in the trash (along with the rest of the C64 or C128 they were in)
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Post by expertsetup on Mar 1, 2007 23:44:43 GMT -5
I know of a few machines that went to the dumper because of SID silence. I never had a chance to rescue them at that time. I would guess that this project can also save some C=64's from getting gutted for the 6581. It would be neat if people can substitute this SwinSID for the 6581 in he Parallel SID project, that could be a bit of some fun.
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Post by megaboz on Mar 2, 2007 23:11:41 GMT -5
There are so many cool projects that are based around Micro controllers. I have never programmed any uC's but am looking to start really soon. I have been working on some parallel port hacking to get started. Nothing fancy just LED's. Microcontrollers are indeed great - I'm a huge fan of the chips they're using on this project, the Atmel AVR Atmegas. They easy to work with, plus they're just dirt cheap. You can get 16 mhz chips with 32K of flash and 4K of RAM for like 5 bucks - they have ADC built in - with a little C you can make them do pretty much anything you want, and save _a lot_ of headaches moving hardware into firmware.
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Post by Jim Brain on Mar 3, 2007 0:58:12 GMT -5
Having worked with uCs back in 1991-93 (Google for PGSI and my handle for more info), the new uCs are a breeze. Back then, a 68HC11 ran at 2MHz effective, had 2kB of EEPROM, (there was an 8kB EPROM part, but it was way too expensive), was CISC, no C compiler (that I knew of), and it was $22.00 in small lots.
Jim
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Post by David Murray on Mar 3, 2007 8:58:27 GMT -5
With this idea, I suppose one could make a VIC-II chip too, right? Then it would actually be possible to construct a C64 completely from off-the-shelf parts.
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Post by megaboz on Mar 3, 2007 10:56:13 GMT -5
Yeah, the only issue is, depending on the complexity of the chip you're emulating within an MCU, you'll just take a speed hit converting emulated machine code over to native operations. But, seeming as though common MCUs run in the 16-20mhz range, that gives you 20 times the number of cycles to hit the speed of a 1 mhz chip (and thats just assuming 1 cycle per instruction/operation).
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Post by David Murray on Mar 3, 2007 12:19:41 GMT -5
I was wondering about the latency issue. Nobody had mentioned it until now. Even VICE suffers from it to a degree even with the buffer is set to lowest. Some games you can tell a distinct lag period between when the sound should be heard and when it was heard.
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Post by schism on Mar 3, 2007 19:59:35 GMT -5
So if a total laman is following this correctly, you could even prog one of the chips to be a sid chip and create a socket fix and plug and go in the old breadboard?
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Post by sixty4k on Mar 3, 2007 20:38:16 GMT -5
Interesting, but I'm a little turned off by the wavetable synthesis. I was expecting something that was emulating the SID, not a chip that does it 'better' in a very different way. While this is might be great for someone with a silent 64, the folks (like me ) who are using SIDs for music production aren't going to be particularly into it. I have lots of instrument options that are 'better' than a SID, I use 64's and the SIDs in them because of the qualities of the SID, which a wavetable based replacement isn't going to have. I'm also in love with my old commodore, so I'm more into using the entire machine as a sound module rather than extracting SIDs for use in other equipment. m.
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murple
Junior Member
Posts: 56
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Post by murple on Mar 14, 2007 23:59:33 GMT -5
Neat indeed! Looks like a project worth following.
Speaking of replacements though... I have a C128D with a dead SID chip. I have a C64 with other things that don't work, but as far as I know, the SID does. Are the old (6581) and new (8580) SID chips compatible to the point that I could yank the old SID from the broken 64 and stick it in the 128D and expect it to work? The other alternative is to buy some broken C128s off eBay and hope one has a working SID to yank haha... but I'd rather just cannibalize what I already have if possible. I seem to recall that the two SIDs are pin compatible, but I'm not sure HOW compatible they are so I haven't risked it yet.
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Post by Golan Klinger on Mar 15, 2007 1:38:33 GMT -5
Are the old (6581) and new (8580) SID chips compatible to the point that I could yank the old SID from the broken 64 and stick it in the 128D and expect it to work? Yes, they are pin compatible and interchangeable, provided you make a few small mods. The different chips require different amounts of power on pin 28 (the 8580 needs 9 volts and the 6581 needs 12 volts, I think) and if memory serves, you have to change some capacitors too.
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murple
Junior Member
Posts: 56
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Post by murple on Mar 15, 2007 16:48:16 GMT -5
Hmmm... well I'd prefer not to have to solder around on my board just to change a chip. I'll see if I can get the disk drive working in my 128D then either swap the 8580 out of my 128, or find a cheap broken 128 on eBay to pull a SID out of.
It would really be cool if there were more projects like this swinsid to make new versions of Commodore chips (or even just outright clones) since sooner or later original MOS chips will get very rare. I wonder what the cost (and legal issues) would be for a bulk run of some new SID, VIC, etc chips...
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