An array of eight SN76489 sound chips playable via USB MIDI | Hacker News Reader

An array of eight SN76489 sound chips playable via USB MIDI

little-scale.blogspot.com

106 pointssohkamyung11 comments

If anybody wants to play an SN76489 in their favourite DAW, I found an open source emulation and turned it into a VST plugin. https://github.com/FigBug/SN76489 Also did a SID (Commodore 64), PAPU (Gameboy) and RP2A03 (NES).

Windows / Linux users can get binaries from my website: www.socalabs.com Linux users can compile themselves.

That's extremely neat. I'd quite like to use it with Ableton. Can it be compiled for OSX?

EDIT: Ignore me, I'm an idiot - just seen you offer Mac binary downloads for all of them. Nice work.

Sorry, that was a typo on my part, I meant Windows / Mac users can get binaries -- Linux users can compile...

Fantastic! I had a need for a SID synth years ago, and only found a 32-bit VST one, which was flaky ... and worked every less well when bridged to 64-bit for Cubase 9.

Any chance of an Atari 2600 one?

I found an emulator here https://github.com/stella-emu/stella, I'll see if it's not too hard to pull the audio code out.

It's been a while since I've heard someone mention the Master System, and especially its sound. There's been a lot of work done to interface or use systems like the C64, the NES and the GameBoy for sound production. Adding a second SID to the C64 is somewhat common, there are several MIDI modules and even (contemporary) software for producing sound on the system. GameBoys seem more prone to be used as output devices, although there are some trackers available that run on it natively (better get some backlight if you want to use it in a DJ set).

I've been looking at this recently, as I thought about doing some computer music and the restraints of both the output and (if actually using such systems for the softwarwe) the input would seem like a good way to constrain the learning experience. Didn't encounter lots of references to the Sega side, though. It seems you can still buy that chip for cheap, as opposed to e.g. the SID or Pokey.

I have a few of these chips in my desk. I was building a slightly less ambitious 2 SN76489 synth using a Teensy LC as the brains.

Some kind of wiring/soldering snafu has me stymied though. Works fine on the breadboard but fails on the strip board

Very inspiring!

I have 8 Oric Atmos machines which I've been collecting for just the purpose of having an 8-voice synth, based on the Orics' sound chip, the venerable General Instrument AY-3-8910 .. and now I've got even less excuses than usual not to get this project rolling. :)

I'm confused by this 'splitting the pitch-range' to create two channels idea. Does this mean that a given channel must stay within that range? (What happens when the playing track goes outside of it?) Is custom software required for this trick, or custom hardware?

I'm not sure about that sequence but the sound of the chip is lovely... nice experiment!

This is also really cool for eurorack and other modular synthesizers!

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