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 →

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 →

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 →

Arduino AY-3-8910 Shield Build Guide

Here are the build notes for my Arduino AY-3-8910 Shield 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 Arduino AY-3-8910 Shield PCB (GitHub link below) … Continue reading Arduino AY-3-8910 Shield Build Guide →

Arduino AY-3-8910 Shield Design

Having build my AY-3-8910 Experimenter PCB I thought a slightly simpler format board would be useful, so I've put together an Uno shield-format PCB that can support one or two AY-3-8910 chips. Arduino AY-3-8910 Shield Build Guide Warning! I strongly recommend using old or second hand equipment for your experiments. I am not responsible for any … Continue reading Arduino AY-3-8910 Shield Design →

Arduino and AY-3-8910 – Part 5

My next bit of messing around with Arduno and AY-3-8910 takes my AY-3-8910 Experimenter PCB Design and adds some simple MIDI reception to create a 12-channel AY-3-8910 tone module. 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 5 →

AY-3-8910 Experimenter PCB Build Guide

Here are the build notes for my AY-3-8910 Experimenter PCB Design. https://makertube.net/w/fULfpG9LNwpb3iCfavVkAp 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 AY-3-8910 Experimenter PCB (GitHub link below) … Continue reading AY-3-8910 Experimenter PCB Build Guide →

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 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 →