MB-6582
The sound chip from my first computer, eight times over.
Builder
- 8
- SID chips
- 4× PIC18F
- Microcontrollers
- EVO64
- Same silicon as
One SID chip gave the Commodore 64 its voice. I wanted to hear eight of them together in an instrument I'd built myself.
Finding the chips
The MB-6582 hardware is Jason “Wilba” Williams' design, built on Thorsten Klose's MidiBox platform and firmware. My part was sourcing and assembling it.
Finding the eight SID chips and four PIC18F4685 microcontrollers was a project in itself. I bought parts from eBay and AliExpress, then programmed the PICs with a PicKit 3.
A lot of soldering
The base board holds the SID sockets, microcontrollers, EEPROMs, and shift registers. Above it sits a control surface full of encoders, switches, and more than a hundred LEDs. The backlit encoder rings needed some particularly fiddly SMD work.
I brought it up on a bench supply and worked through the voltages before hearing all eight chips together. Eventually I also started sourcing and programming chip sets for other MidiBox builders. Once you've done the hunting, it's nice to save someone else the trouble.
A closer look
On the parts list