Building the : SIDBlaster-USB TicTac Edition

One of the many things that I love about the C64 is the music.  I've often looked at the HardSid and wanted to get my hands on one just to play the tunes, but to tell the truth unless I listen to a real Sid next to an emulated one or for that matter a 6581 vs a 8580 I simply can't tell the difference.

In early 2019 I stumbled across the SIDBlaster-USB TicTac Edition and added it to my build list, but more for mundane practical reasons, I'd like to try to program my own emulated SID chip and try it out outside of a C64.

The project is here http://crazy-midi.de/joomla/ and the source code and pcb is here on Github

It's taken me around 7 months to build this project, with COVID-19 about it's actually been a much harder task.

The thing I really like about this project was :

1.  The documentation,  it is quite simply amazing and every little nuance has been recorded.

The things I didn't really like were :

1. The difficulty in sourcing the parts.  Quite a number of them were difficult to source and a one or two items aren't manufactured anymore and are quite expensive (ignoring the SID).
   
2. The number of through hole parts required.
   

Hopefully a new iteration of this project will be updated with more current and readily available parts.

Stealing a boost converter chip for the 9/12 volt supply. 

 

 

Here is the finished result,  I tested it with one of my ARMSID and it works very well.