Z80 and AY-3-8910

Finally starting to look at the Arduino and AY-3-8910 was triggered by a couple of things recently. First getting an RC2014 and playing with AY-3-8910 based sound on that. But also, having visiting RetroFest in Swindon this year, talking to Dean Belfield about the methods he used to develop for the ZX Spectrum and how … Continue reading Z80 and AY-3-8910 →

Arduino with Multiple Displays – Part 2

As I mentioned in my last post on Arduino with Multiple Displays I'm going to look at other microcontrollers too. This post takes a wander through my Waveshare Zero and similar format boards that each support one of the RP2040, ESP32-C3 or ESP32-S3. Warning! I strongly recommend using old or second hand equipment for your experiments. … Continue reading Arduino with Multiple Displays – Part 2 →

Arduino with Multiple Displays

A while back I tried to use several SSD1306 displays with an Arduino (see OLED MIDI Display – Part 2) and got into trouble with memory. I have another need for multiple displays coming up, so thought I'd revisit the idea to see what could be done. This shows use to use several cheap SPI-based displays … Continue reading Arduino with Multiple Displays →

Other SAM2695 Synths

After my experiments with the XIAO ESP32-C3 MIDI Synthesizer and in particular, after looking in detail at some different SAM2695 synth modules in XIAO ESP32-C3 MIDI Synthesizer – Part 3, I've also found a few other neat modules that I thought worth a mention. Warning! I strongly recommend using old or second hand equipment for your experiments. … Continue reading Other SAM2695 Synths →

Arduino and AY-3-8910 – Part 4

After Part 3 I started to go back and add MIDI, and changed the waveform on the touch of a button, and then started to wonder if I could add envelopes and so on. And then it occurred to me, I didn't really need to re-implement my own synthesis library, I could probably write a custom … Continue reading Arduino and AY-3-8910 – Part 4 →

Arduino and AY-3-8910 – Part 3

I suggested in Part 2 that it might be possible to do some simple modulation of the amplitude of the AY-3-8910 channels rather than drive frequencies directly. This is taking a look at the possibilities of some kind of lo-fi direct digital synthesis using that as a basis. Part 1 - Getting started and looking at … Continue reading Arduino and AY-3-8910 – Part 3 →

Arduino and AY-3-8910 – Part 2

Following on from my initial experiments in Arduino and AY-3-8910 this post looks at the sound generation capabilities in a little more detail and adds some basic MIDI control. Part 1 - Getting started and looking at playing YM files. Part 2 - Adding basic MIDI control. Part 3 - Basic experiments with direct digital synthesis. Part 4 … Continue reading Arduino and AY-3-8910 – Part 2 →

Diagnosing and attempting to fix a Yamaha DX100 – Part 4

I decided to have one more look at the data pins, largely inspired by this oscilloscope trace from part 3. I figured if the address and select pins were working (yellow, cyan and purple) what could I do to try to work out what is driving the data pins (darker blue) wobbly... And no, after … Continue reading Diagnosing and attempting to fix a Yamaha DX100 – Part 4 →

Arduino and AY-3-8910

I've had some AY-3-8910 programmable sound generators for a while and planned to do something with them, but they've sat in the "to think about" box for a while. But recently getting hold of the WhyEm sound card for the RC2014 has re-awakened my interest. This is some "first looks" experiments with the AY-3-8910 and … Continue reading Arduino and AY-3-8910 →

XIAO ESP32-C3 MIDI Synthesizer – Part 6

Expanding on my previous posts, I thought it might be interesting to see how I might be able to add some additional IO to the MIDI Synth. This is an exploration of some options there. Part 1 - Getting started and getting code running. Part 2 - Swapping the ESP32-C3 for a SAMD21 to get USB … Continue reading XIAO ESP32-C3 MIDI Synthesizer – Part 6 →