For the benefit of anyone not at Console Combat / The Homebrew Coding Geekend, Jason (TMR) captured the following video of Tom's new game:



And yes - the C64 music you hear IS being generated by the BBC Master (thanks to a magical little black box that plugs into the 1Mhz Bus).

Is that SID chip expansion thingy ever going to be sold? I would happily buy it (as long as it was resonably priced), I saw it at the event and thought it was a really good idea.

And how easy is it to use? Is it like on the C64 where you just write to its registers (obviously using ! and ? instead of POKE), or is it more complex (for the time being)? Or (if it is going to be sold) will it come with some software that provides subroutines to deal with it like the Beeb's own sound chip?

This has been discussed, the problem is getting hold of enough working SID chips to make it worthwhile! The only real source I could think of is getting them from C64s, which would involve essentially breaking them.



It's just writing to registers, but at $fce0 instead of $d400 on the 64.

How about a DIY kit? (Buyer sources their own C64 and extracts the SID.)

(Apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere and I've missed it.)

That would be perfect! I have a broken C64 (I don't know why it's broken but it's probably not the SID chip ) that I could cannibalise.

Wahey! Murray's back!

See if you can kick-start the forum back into life like you did last time!

I was just in an internet Cafe at the time. I'm back for real now.


I've recieved your tape leads, thanks! Trouble is, I found out my tape recorder doesn't work properly (it has an unusually loud mains hum, and even on batteries has some sort of (different) hum, both only when recording). At least I can play Zap! now though (playback works fine)

I was reading this and did a bit of googling. I've come across something called reSID - basically a SID emulator done in C++ (and is under GPL). If it could be ported.... not sure how much memory it'd take up mind. Would be much nicer than cannablising innocent C64s

And the other problem would be incorporating it if it did manage to get ported.

Another approach could be sampling the SID music and saving it, and figuring a way to play it back mixed with the game sounds.

Am I reading this right, and you're suggesting porting reSID to the Beeb? reSID needs Pentium 2 level performance to work properly, so no chance!

If I'm wrong, and you're talking about implementing it in an emulator, then that's definitely possible. I did at one point have a version of B-em with BeebSID emulation (using my own SID emulator, nowhere near as good as reSID), if I ever do another release then that's something that can go in.

Any comments on trevj's suggestion, TomW? I'm still interested if it is possible



It just goes to show you how expandable the Beeb really is. I bet you could do a similar thing with the VIC chip if you wanted, then you'd pretty much have a C64 :p

Well I didn't build the board, so I can't comment!

No, but I did so I guess it's time to comment

I realise there's been significant interest in BeebSID and have noted the comments and suggestions but have refrained from responding until Tom had finished assessing the implementation and we were both agreed on the best way forward to share it with the community. I think it's best if I initially switch to the STH hardware forum and start a BeebSID thread and then, when appropriate, Tom can add the musical maestro stuff both here and on STH as appropriate.

The main point I'd like to make here though is that the clever concept of SID on a Beeb (and Master) was 100% Tom's idea, I'm just the grease monkey

Martin

I'd better add that to the FRED I/O addresses list (at the correct address of &FC20).