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 →