Comments on: Jamin’ to Bach, Commodore 64 style

By: r4v5

r4v5 — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:44:29 +0000

Oh, I see the last comment now. Nevermind.

By: r4v5

r4v5 — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:32:10 +0000

@lis0r: It’s not “emulating” the SID. The reason the SID is hard to emulate is that it basically is an NCO and a numerically controlled analog filter per voice. And each SID sounds slightly different, within the various revisions and versions they’ve done, because the technology for mixed analog/digital CMOS wasn’t fully there. The SID is a pretty amazing hack of a chip to begin with.

But what the AVR is doing is decoding the MIDI stream and turning it into binary data for each voice to pump out *to* the SID.

By: smrl

smrl — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:54:40 +0000

walt:

i’ve experimented with these chips a bit. The 6581 and the 8580/6582 chips are markedly different, 6581 has a much higher noise floor, but it also has very different filtering characteristics. More gritty & warm. 8580 chips sound more digital/harsh/precise.

Comes down to taste I suppose.

By: George

George — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:16:07 +0000

Hey Rob,

Sorry, I am not entirely sure. I think I googled him a while back when I heard an old C64 music track. I think it might have been “Assembly 03″ in Helsinki, Finland but cannot confirm.

Regards,
George.

By: walt

walt — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:55:36 +0000

cool. but why use the 6581? the 8580r5 is the sid professional musicians are using.

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:38:31 +0000

Hey George,

Do you know that the occasion of Rob Hubbard’s talk was, and when? Additional info on YouTube for this series is a little scarce. I see that’s it’s part 1 of 5, but I’d kinda like to know what sort of conference you can hear lectures like that at.

I’ll be listening to Crazy Comets if you need me.

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:30:53 +0000

SID’s aren’t available the way pig pancreases aren’t. Sure, you can’t have someone manufacture you either one — you start with the carcass and removed the desired component.

Now I hope that no (working) C=64 was harmed for this project. Please.

And as to comparing a dedicated microcontroller performing a single task to a softsynth running on a PC under an OS and with a GUI, etc., etc., my dear lis0r . . ., well, that’s exactly what we make uC’s and DSP’s for. Nothing wrong with emulating on a full PC for development or just for the convenience, it’s just not the most efficient way to do it. But we’ve all hammered a nail with a Crescent wrench in a pinch.

By: George

George — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:10:09 +0000

Rob Hubbard, who composed a lot of classic game tunes, especially on the C64 (e.g. Monty on the Run, Commando, Delta, Skate or Die, Crazy Comets and many more), talks about the good old times.

By: AVR Micro

AVR Micro — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:32:06 +0000

Interesting idea! I miss those times.

By: lis0r

lis0r — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:49:27 +0000

Emulate it decently on an atmega? You’ll be lucky – PCs running at hundreds of MHz have trouble getting right, so there’s no way in hell a tiny microcontroller could make a passable job of it.

By: fsphil

fsphil — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:48:30 +0000

Good timing – I just got my C64 working again last night and I’ve been listening to a lot of SID music. It’s not too often I’m glad to see a blue screen ;-)

SYS64738

By: Teksprint

Teksprint — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 06:08:14 +0000

Hurray for Thrashy. He is today a man.

By: Pilotgeek

Pilotgeek — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 06:01:02 +0000

“Long-dead systems”? Really? Tell that to the Commodore 64 and 1541 disk drive sitting on the desk in my room.

“We have no idea where he picked up this obsolete chip” I know a guy who locally sells old computers from the 80′s and 90′s. I’ve never seen so many Apple II’s, Commodores, and TI 99′s. It’s not like computers just vaporize after faster ones come out…

By: damien

damien — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:58:56 +0000

I have about 4 or 5 of the 6581 SID chips laying around, leftover from the many C64s I used to own. Someday I *will* hook them all up. awesome chip.

By: Simakuutio

Simakuutio — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 04:32:48 +0000

One nice resource for C64 music is still unmentioned here even it’s The Source: High Voltage Sid Collection (http://www.hvsc.c64.org). And yes, SID is far from Obsolete. Person who wrote this article, is obviously some young clueless wanna-be nerd who knows little to nothing about these things.