PAULA MIDI SYNTH BOX Like SID BOX?

[Iggy]

Fair enough, but my point is that to most C64 programmers, the CPU is more or less just a means to an end. The fun stuff is the VIC-II and the SID. The Amiga community seems to have been very CPU-centric, in comparison.

Well, the 68K was a pretty cool processor during a period when X86s were dreadful, and I've gotten a big kick out of the 6809 and the superset in the Hitachi 6309, but I must admit that with its video and sound capability the C64 would have been successful with just about any processor.

It was probably the only machine of its time that you could write good video games with using BASIC.

And while I've mentioned some MSX sound chips, I didn't really care for the Z-80 either.

[commodorejohn]

I like the Z80 for having an astonishingly large register complement for an 8-bitter, but it just chews up so many cycles per instruction...

Wish the 8086 had evolved from it instead of the 8080, that's for sure.

[Linde]

Well, the 68K was a pretty cool processor during a period when X86s were dreadful, and I've gotten a big kick out of the 6809 and the superset in the Hitachi 6309, but I must admit that with its video and sound capability the C64 would have been successful with just about any processor.

A Hitachi 6309 would have been awesome!

[Linde]

Eh. Unfortunately, by the time Yamaha developed their XG standard, they'd gone entirely into ROMpler territory, playing the same sets of samples from ROM (downsampled to lower rates on the cheaper instruments) on basically everything, sacrificing pretty much any potential for sound creation in the name of "realism." Bleah. Their FM synths (or even their ROMpler/FM hybrid synths like the SY77) were much more interesting.

Again, just to nitpick, this is not entirely true, as there are XG implementations based on OPL3 (look at YMF719). XG is no more of a particular sound than General MIDI is, and implementations vary, although I recognize that most were boring romplers.

[commodorejohn]

Again, just to nitpick, this is not entirely true, as there are XG implementations based on OPL3 (look at YMF719). XG is no more of a particular sound than General MIDI is, and implementations vary, although I recognize that most were boring romplers.

Not really. The YMF719 is a sound-card-in-a-chip combo deal; it only includes the OPL3 for legacy purposes. For its "XG" implementation it's actually got wavetable synthesis capabilities (though I don't know that every YMF719-based sound card used them, since it required external sample memory, and that would've cost money.) By the time the XG standard came around, all of Yamaha's synthesizers were "AWM" (their name for PCM.)

XG isn't an exact particular sound set, yes, but in practice it's even more narrowly confined to certain sounds than GM, which at least sees variation from manufacturer to manufacturer. About the only variation in XG instruments is in overall sound quality (rather than significant differences in actual sound design,) plus a few sounds unique to particular models that they throw in for variety.

(And frankly, GM was really the start of the problem to begin with - while I understand the motives behind it, it turned out to be a disastrous move from MIDI-as-instrument-control to MIDI-as-sound-reproduction, which was never what it was intended to be in the first place.)

[commodorejohn]

And again, for the record: I don't think all ROMplers are boring crap, or that there's anything inherently wrong with the concept. Some of them I quite like; I just got the keyboard version of my E-mu Proteus/1, and I'm on the lookout for a good deal on a Korg X5D to replace the 05/RW I had to sell a while back. But they live or die by the sounds the manufacturer puts in 'em, and more often than not (especially in the age of GM, GS, and XG) that's a collection of maybe technically-quality but character-free samples covering a set of generic bases, and there's rarely much you can do to make that very interesting aside from experimenting with whether or not they sound less bland when layered together. And with the way they've completely dominated the synth landscape for the last 19-20 years, it's been extremely disheartening to realize that the vast majority of the good synths are about as old as I am, or older. (Though we've finally started to see an analog revival gathering steam in the last decade, thank God.)

[freqmax]

Build your own synth(tm) ?

(and run circles around the commercial ones..)

[commodorejohn]

I want to, but I've got a lot of brushing up on low-level electronics to do before I'm ready to try my hand at that

[Iggy]

A Hitachi 6309 would have been awesome!

They are still around.
There is even a PLCC 44 pin square version.
The 3 Mhz version can be clocked anywhere between 3.58 to 5 Mhz.

And there are 20MHz versions of the Z-80 and 8MHz (or higher) 6502 and 6502 derivatives.

[nicholas]

They are still around.
There is even a PLCC 44 pin square version.
The 3 Mhz version can be clocked anywhere between 3.58 to 5 Mhz.

And there are 20MHz versions of the Z-80 and 8MHz (or higher) 6502 and 6502 derivatives.

The eZ80 is very fast and the 32bit Z380 looks rather nice too. Shame it was only ever used in washing machines.

[freqmax]

Usually it's a lot of propietary mess for such applications..

Otoh, one could remove the MCU and wire the I/O pads to the Amiga for that cool gadget function. Different .mod music depending on the washing phase

[Iggy]

The eZ80 is very fast and the 32bit Z380 looks rather nice too. Shame it was only ever used in washing machines.

Z-380, huh?
Never saw that one before.
Neat.

[Linde]

I've worked with the eZ80 professionally, and I say avoid it like the plague if you're planning to use the compiler toolchain.

[nicholas]

I've worked with the eZ80 professionally, and I say avoid it like the plague if you're planning to use the compiler toolchain.

A C compiler or do you mean a cross assembler? I can't imagine compiled C code would be much fun running on such a weak CPU.

[Iggy]

http://hackaday.com/2012/10/18/creating-a-midi-synth-from-a-commodore-sid/

The address says it all.

[bbond007]

I had bought one of these things:

CMS / Game Blaster.

Perhaps the worst sound card ever.... man did SID really blow that thing away...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlPJcWf1DeA

fortunately I returned it and got Adlib