AY-3-8912/8910 Hardware Emulation – Part 3

This continues my series looking at hardware emulation of the AY-3-8912/8910: Part 1: Introduces the AVR-AY projects and available boards and how they go about using an AVR microcontroller, usually an ATMega48, to emulate an AY-3-8910 device. It walks through the functionality of the provided firmware. Part 2: My own experimenter PCB based on an overclocked … Continue reading AY-3-8912/8910 Hardware Emulation – Part 3 →

AY-3-8912/8910 Hardware Emulation – Part 2

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 →

PGA2350 Breakout PCB Build Guide

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 PGA2350 Breakout PCB (GitHub link below). Pimoroni … Continue reading PGA2350 Breakout PCB Build Guide →

PGA2350 Breakout PCB Design

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 →

AY-3-8912/8910 Hardware Emulation

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 →

Minimalist Lo-Fi Minimalism – Part 2

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 →

Z80 and AY-3-8910 – 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 →

Microrack – First Impressions

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 →

TD4 4-bit Sound

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 →

NAND Oscillators and Logic Sequencers

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 →