A Fox Consulting & Design

SID-Shield For Arduino

(SID-Shield shown mounted on
an Arduino Uno board)

The SID-Shield is a prototype board that allows an Arduino-based system to utilize the old MOS Technologies 6581/8580 SID chips found in old Commodore computers. The SID chip supports 3 voices, 4 waveforms (triangle, sawtooth, square and noise), and some advanced features such as ring modulation. The SID chip has gained a sizeable nostalgic following over the years due to the chip's versatile and robust sound capabilities, and the chips themselves have become progressively harder to come by.

The board provices an I2C interface to the SID chip via a MCP23017 16-bit I/O expander. An on-board audio amplifier is also included via a MC34119 1/4 watt audio amplifierto drive a speaker.

The board uses only 4 of the Arduino's I/O lines: two for the I2C communications, and digital pins 8 and 9 for ~WR and clock signals.

It is strongly recommended that only a +9VDC power supply is used to power the Arduino when using the SID-SHIELD as SID chips can become very hot which could lead to failure of the chip if higher voltage is applied.


(Schematic)

Arduino Sample Code
MP3 recording of the sample code


This product is currently in a prototyping phase and not available for purchase.


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