c64-2-synth hack

[The Dark force of dance]

Y-ellow Tom 'n' y'all.
	This is something I've been threatening to do for 3 years. Like you say,
as soon as you need one, all the cheap C64s dry up. The trouble is that the
C64 it self is too much of a noisy environment for anything broadcast
standard so I'd pretty much written that idea off. I then looked into
building my own interface for it. On the face of it, the 6581 has an
interface for 2 knobs. Usually used for joysticks. The problem is that
writing to this chip is easy, reading back from it requires the exact
timing of a 6502. And since I have absolutely no intention of using 6502s
it's a bit problematic.

There were a couple of guys from Finland (If I member correctly) who
designed a PC sound card capable of supporting 8 of the things. But they
also used a 6502 on the card to orchestrate the system. I'd be using an
MCS51 derivative since they are my processor of choice. Probably an ATMEL
of some kind since I love those little guys.

But it still remains something of a back-burner project I'm afraid. Things
seem to move far more slowly this side of the equator. I can't seem to get
things done nearly as quickly as I would like. Either that or I'm just
doing too many things at once. :)

But I was thinking of a stand alone box with 3 or 4 6581s (or 5 6582s) in a
box with some  digi-pots so that you can pan/shunt the outputs and a
pre-amp on each one so that you can pass another synth or voice generator
through the inputs. I once had this crazy idea of getting hold of a Yamaha
OPL3 and driving that through a 6581. I'm sure it would sound wicked but I
am yet to acquire any old OPL3s or any usable data on them. But you can do
this kind of ring modulation within the 6581 so it could be very interesting.

But having said all that. Yes I'm very much interested in doing something
with these guys. If I ever clear my increasing backlog of projects I fully
intend to make something happen.

Be absolutely Icebox.

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