Why I Cannot Sell These
Click on any picture for a larger view.
Finally, technology has been able to bring me something I've always wanted: A portable SID music player.
Music, as played by SIDMan
 Triplex Extensive use of digi.
Introwave (PRI) Lots of filter action.
Eye to Eye All digi.
Double Sphere Has digi percussion.
Coma Light 8 song #2 (PRI) Good tune.
Coma Light 5 song #4 (PRI) Another excellent tune.
Cave of Echoes (PRI) Somewhat long.
Driven #1 - Dark Beauty By Megmyx (request)
Digital LSD By Megmyx (request)
For these tunes I connected up the SIDMan to my PC and captured the audio. It is not modified other than to "smooth" the ends.
NOTE: I AM TAKING REQUESTS! Please email me if you wish to hear a certain tune as played by SIDMan. Also, to experience the
stereo effects, use headphones when listening.
Pictures of the prototype
Pictures of the final version
Pictures of SIDMan ][ the final-final version :-)
What is it?
SIDman is a portable SID music playing device. If you don't know what SID music is, then get thee to
here now.
The SIDman was an experiment to see if a PIC microcontroller could emulate another processor in real time, and still carry out other functions. It seems to have been a success :-). There are still a couple rough edges here and there, but it seems to handle most tunes fine.
Features
A PIC16F877 was used to emulate a 6510 microprocessor and most of the other hardware required to play SID tunes.
Both PAL and NTSC playback rates are supported, as well as CIA timer rates too. This is 100% automatic and SIDman detects which mode to use based on what the SID tune writes to the CIA regs, and the header bits.
Full CIA interrupt generation is supported.
Digi-sound playback is also supported, using the SID chip's volume register.
Supports full bankswitching with quasi-transparent ROM so it runs all tunes in the HVSIDs collection.
Support of all invalid 6510 opcodes.
512K of battery-backed RAM is used to store the tunes, and to hold the 64K of RAM for the currently-playing SID.
Soft power control through the keypad.
Graceful shutdown saves the currently playing SID tune "instance" along with the SID registers and reloads it all on the next powerup, resuming play at the exact point it left off.
Mono or stereo operation by using 1 or 2 SID chips.
6.5 hour run time for stereo SIDs using 8 NiMh AA cell rechargables.
Digital volume control.
Backlit 16*2 LCD display which can flash to the digi sound triggers.
115.2Kbaud serial interface to a windows host program for downloading of new songs.
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