Playing Canyon.mid on dual-SID C64

his year I decided to rewrite my music driver. That's going well, and by combining that driver with my 'Knottifier' which allows you to play the SID via a MIDI keyboard or instrument, I've come up with this.

It receives MIDI data via a MIDI cartridge, with up to 16 channels. It allocates a free voice (if there is one), applies whatever sound patch you've chosen for that channel and plays the note. One channel typically carries all of the percussion with each drum being a different note. Some channels such as the piano and guitar here, may play chords, ie more than one note at a time.

Canyon.mid is not my music, in case you don't know it. It's very complex, it has around 10 tracks, with multiple simultaneous notes on many of them. This is well beyond even dual SIDs, so I've taken out a number of the tracks and edited down the remaining ones a little. More work on this particular track and my sound patches could improve this rendition a bit.

Comments

ZX81 reversible internal 16k upgrade

T his post is an upvote for Tynemouth Software's ZX81 reversible Internal 16K RAM upgrade . Their instructions are easy enough for even me to follow and don't involve cutting tracks. This is the ZX81 I've had out on display and used whenever I wanted to. It's an issue 1 and was probably a kit judging by some very untidy assembly. It has a ZX8-CCB composite video mod and an external keyboard fitted. On board it has two 1k x 4-bit chips. The ZX81 originally came with 1k on board. Thanks to a trick with compressing the display in ram, that was enough to type and run a small program but you soon felt the limitations. Back in the early 80s, the solution was a 16k ram pack which plugged into the back[1] and this is the way I've been using this particular machine. These ram packs are notorious for 'ram pack wobble'. Even if fastened into place, you can still randomly find your work disappearing. This is a very reliable solution using a more modern 32k chip (half

Driving NeoPixels with Z80

I 've long been thinking about a version two RC2014 LED matrix module . I've had a matrix with a MAX 7219 on a module. It's a nice enhancement. But there's only so much you can do with a single-colour LED array right? Wouldn't it be cool to have RGB LEDs? At Liverpool MakeFest I saw a wall-sized ping-pong ball NeoPixel display and picked up some NeoPixels with the intention of making one. Possibly driven by my RC2014. I enjoy learning about protocols and have had some SPI devices working with the RC2014 - bit-banging SPI works really well because it doesn't care about timing. NeoPixels really do care about timing though. From Adafruit's web page about their 8x8 NeoPixel matrix: If there's one thing I want to get across in this blog post, it's don't just accept what you're told . Question everything. Learn about what's going on and find out why you're being told something isn't possible. Get creative with workarounds. I'

Making new ROMs for the Vic20 / Vicky Twenty

M y Vicky Twenty is very nearly complete. As things stand, the board and every single component is new*. The processor and VIAs are newly-manufactured (W65C02 and W65C22). Obviously the Vic1 chip isn't manufactured today, but there is 'new old' stock about. I have been able to buy a Vic 1, date code 1987 (which seems very late). It obviously hasn't been in a computer before, passes the acetone test and works. The same goes for two of the ROMs - character and BASIC. But I haven't been able to buy a new-old Kernal ROM (901486-07). I am able to borrow one - all of the boards I have, have this particular ROM socketed. I don't know whether all of this indicates that the Kernal has proved less reliable than the other two. I recently bought a TL866 for another project. Of all the retro-computing hardware things I've had to learn to do, making ROMs has been one of the simplest. So far, everything has been very easy and worked first time. I'm not sure that it&

New Stuff For Old Stuff :: Blog

Search This Blog