Synthesizer Cartridge for the Atari 2600 | Hacker News Reader

Synthesizer Cartridge for the Atari 2600

qotile.net

37 pointsharel15 comments

Love this.

There's a sense in which this isn't the most practical choice -- general purpose synths (software or hardware) and libraries available for most runtimes give you all the power you need to create the bleeps and bloops.

But there's also something good about old things and limited things being put to good use, and finding ways for creativity to thrive in constraints.

For the record, the word "qotile" in the domain name is from the game Yars Revenge, one of the most fun (imo) games for the 2600:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yars%27_Revenge

Here is a gift to you, I found this on the Internet Archive. it's a cassette dramataziation of Asteroids and Yar's Revenge. I'm not sure how many other people on earth would care fellow Atari-knower, but it's a wonderful little time capsule. https://archive.org/details/AtariSciFiAdventuresInSound

omg thank you!

Wow! Never knew these existed! Thank you! Hero of the day, you are!

I actually have a 2600 with the cartridge and a midi modification which allows it to act as a synth proper. It's a very distinct sound, and on the break I can play some space invaders

His Cynthcart for the C64 is much better and more versatile, I use it often with a midi keyboard to make chiptunes.

There is also the Mssiah cartridge, it even has a MIDI IN. Totally sick cartdrige. I integrated my C64 into my multi-instrumental MIDI setup driven by Cubase on an Atari ST with this. :-)

Nice, but without any "sync" capabilities unfortunately useless in a multi-instrument context.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm.

At least they didn't complain it wouldn't run their AI music gen models.

Thank you very much for the lordly recognition with ‘they’. You know, "sync" in the context of electronic music hardware is understood as "midi sync" or "pulsed sync signal". How should I should sync the arp of this Atari cartdrige to the tempo and pulse of a song that also includes other instruments? If I can't, it is only usable as a stand-alone instrument, which is of course totally legitimate.

Thank you very much for being the condescending pedant who can't take a joke.

Sorry, I figured everyone knew about the SeaXForDee eurorack module :)

You can add midi to the 2600... Just saying

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