This continues my series looking at hardware emulation of the AY-3-8912/8910: This post picks up with an attempt to rebuild the firmware from source in an attempt to figure out what is going on. Spoilers: At the end of it, it still doesn t work though Warning! I strongly recommend using old or second hand equipment for Continue reading AY-3-8912/8910 Hardware Emulation – Part 3
Having explored how an AVR can be used to emulate the AY-3-8912/8910 in AY-3-8912/8910 Hardware Emulation I wanted to have a go at using the very common ATMega328P to do the same. But rather than wire things up on breadboard, I put together a quick PCB to allow me to do some experiments. Spoilers: This Continue reading AY-3-8912/8910 Hardware Emulation Part 2
Here are the build notes for my PGA2350 Breakout PCB Design. Warning! I strongly recommend using old or second hand equipment for your experiments. I am not responsible for any damage to expensive instruments! If you are new to electronics and microcontrollers, see the Getting Started pages. Bill of Materials Reminder: This board is NOT compatible with Continue reading PGA2350 Breakout PCB Build…
I m wanting to do some experimenting with the Pimoroni PGA2350 which is a really neat, 25x25mm, RP2350 board with all 48 GPIO pins of the larger RP2350B bought out to two rows arranged in a square. But it isn t very breadboard friendly. More recently there are now DIP based breakouts that also support the RP2350B Continue reading PGA2350 Breakout PCB Design
The 40-pin AY-3-8910 devices I ve been playing with are no longer newly available, but they are pretty available if you are happy with a certain questionable quality (more on that here: Arduino and AY-3-8910). But the slightly shorter version (with fewer general purpose I/O pins), the 28 pin AY-3-8912, seems a lot harder to find, Continue reading AY-3-8912/8910 Hardware Emulation
Last year I programmed up an Arduino with my Pi Day MIDI Sequencer to play a short extract from Philip Glass Einstein on the Beach. You can read all about that here: Minimalist Lo-Fi Minimalism. Having spent a fair bit of the time since then playing around with an Arduino and SP0256A-AL2 and finally getting it Continue reading Minimalist Lo-Fi Minimalism Part 2
I ve spent a bit of time looking at the Tester part of the AY driver code for Tim Follin s music archive that I talked about in Z80 and AY-3-8910. This is documenting what I think I ve worked out so far for the tester code. The Sound Tester As previously mentioned, there are essentially three parts Continue reading Z80 and AY-3-8910 Part 2
When I first heard about the Microrack concept, I was still playing around with my own Educational DIY Synth Thing so naturally I was really interested in seeing what it would be about. That was back-end of 2024. It has taken until now to realise that from the original Kickstarter. Now that I have one in Continue reading Microrack First Impressions
Over on my other blog, I spentt a fair bit of time looking at the TD4 4-bit CPU. One of the things I wanted to do with my NAND Oscillators and Logic Sequencer PCB was hook up the address/select pins to something else. And with three select pins, allowing the choice between 8 notes, what better Continue reading TD4 4-bit Sound
I ve had a bit of a play with logic based synthesizes in the past, but not in anger. However I ve recently picked up Make: Electronic Music From Scratch by Kirk Pearson from Dogbotic. It is excellent and a good chunk of that is based on circuits using the CD4093 Quad NAND chip, so I ve started Continue reading NAND Oscillators and Logic Sequencers