ASCIIMath creating images

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Arduino SIDshield: it's ALIVE!!!!

My most recent little project is to make a good ol' Commodore SID chip (6581) be controlled by an Arduino.  The prototype is now functioning:
The breadboard with the Arduino, the SID chip, a couple of shift registers, and a clock buffer.
The complete setup requires a bit more hardware:
Ok, quite a bit of that stuff is redundant...
On the scope you can see the triangular wave I coaxed out of the chip, which was pulled from my first C64, bought back in 1984 or 1985 in Germany.

This weekend I will finalize the schematics, do a board layout and finish the library for the Arduino.  Note that the design is conceptually very similar to the MIDIbox SID module, but then there are only so many ways to attach a SID to a couple of shift registers.

The final version will use a crystal oscillator (replacing the function generator in the picture) for the 1MHz clock, and a DC-DC boost converter to generate the 12V for the SID (currently provided by the adjustable supply).

I will post the schematic, layout and code as soon as I'm done.

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