Chipophone Plays Video Game Classics

This thrift shop organ gets a new life as an 8-bit music maker. Called the Chipophone, it relies on an ATmega88 to produce sounds that you might associate with classic video gaming. [Linus Akesson] takes us through all of the different sound settings in the video after the break, including performances of your theme music favorites.

The original organ uses transistor logic making it rather easy to patch into the hardware. Thanks to the build log we know that [Linus] used 74HC165 input latches to monitor each of the switches for the 120 inputs. Fifteen of these latches work like a backwards shift register 74HC595, cascading all of the parallel inputs into one serial signal. From there the microcontroller takes over, monitoring the keys, pedals, switches, and potentiometers and outputting the appropriate sounds.

[Thanks 7e]

24 thoughts on “Chipophone Plays Video Game Classics

  1. @Mike Szczys

    There is a thing such as a backwards 74XX595, it is called a 74HC597.

    @article

    Very impressive. I loved how he documented in disassembling the organ. I would love to see some schematics and especially the sound generating code.

    I really like that he added features to enable him to play songs that may be hard to play with two hands. I do not know if the features he implemented are common on a ordinary keyboard.

  2. very cool

    megaman2 music …nice

    so this uses midi control, some knobs and an atmega88, could probably make just a midi input with an arduino and get the same sounds? might be fun to try

  3. The 74HC165 is a parallel input serial output shift register. What is with all this nonsense about it being “backwards” and trying to call it a 595? It isn’t an uncommon part.

    We don’t need these things explained to us, and anyone who doesn’t know would be better off checking Wikipedia or by googling “74HC165 datasheet”

  4. Most people dont keep logic gate chip data in their heads. The “backwards yadayda” bs doesnt help. Nyone with a few hours on the iron knows sipo and a piso.
    Had – dont make shit up. Its not scifi that needs to be explained in cryptic baby terms.

  5. @mre In all fairness the only experience most people here have had with any shift registers is in LED matrix drivers. Few people know the whole set of 74xx part numbers, but a lot of us know more or less what’s available in the series by function.

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