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A project log for Speak&SID CPC

A Speech Synthesizer, SID Soundcard, and MIDI IN Realtime SID+AY Synthesizer for the Amstrad CPC!

michael-wesselMichael Wessel 12/03/2019 at 17:190 Comments

Was just thinking - why not take advantage of the UART / Serial Port and try to turn this into a real time SID Synthesizer for the CPC? There are inexpensive UART MIDI breakout boards available 

https://www.amazon.com/ubld-it-MIDI-Breakout-Board/dp/B00YDLVLVO/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=midi+breakout+header&qid=1575390754&sr=8-1

I have used that board before for LambdaSpeak 3 and MIDI IN. 

Now, what the Speak&SID hardware and firmware needs to support in order to make this happen is the following: 

So, it seems that the hardware and firmware of Speak&SID already supports almost everything that is required for this! Only a tiny change to the AVR firmware is required (I need to ensure that the SID chip is not turned off while the serial buffer is being read).   

This hence mainly requires CPC software...I alread have a piece of CPC ASM Software that turn the CPC into an AY MIDI real time synthesizer (written for LambdaSpeak 3), and it should not be difficult to use that for the Speak&SID SID MIDI IN Synthesizer.   More soon!

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