[sdiy] Farnell (Arrow too?) just diched the LM13600

[Rainer Buchty]

> Just think about how in 30-50 years, people will be scrounging old cell
> phone and PDA chips, trying to find surface-mounted ICs made of SILICON
> to make their fave retro-synths from! "Who sells macroscopic
> electronics anymore? Aren't the nano's good enough?"

There will be methods to deal with those nanos then to make them sound
like good old silicon (after all, the jump from tube to transistors wasn't
the end of audio electronics).

But you don't need to wait 30-50 years. Try repairing the first generation
of Ensoniq synths:

- sound generator: gone, but FPGA replacement possible
- display controller: gone, replacement through rev-eng
- display drivers/shift registers: gone, "hack" possible
- keyboard controller: gone, replacement through rev-eng
- CPU: gone, but FPGA replacement possible
- analog voice processors and VCA: gone, but still available as
  new-old-stock and from "cannibalizers"; could be done discrete if
  all sources dry out

At least the DUART seems to be still available, but also here the question
is "for how long".

Now just look at the following generation of machines and you'll find
highly specialized ASICs where you might get a rough idea what it's doing
but creating a replacement based on common microcontrollers/CPUs/DSPs and
FPGAs is getting hard work. (Microcode of the Ensoniq ESP chip anyone?)

So cannibalizing machines is the only way to get those chips.

Personally, I think all vendors should put at least the register interface
of their special chips together with sufficient explanation on their
websites once they obsolete those chips, so that anyone interested could
create their own second sources for repair purposes. (For example, who has
ever heard of commercial Ensoniq DOC clones, although this chip is one of
the rare examples where you can find in-depth documentation in a data
sheet or the Apple IIGS hardware manual.)

Rainer