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2xYM2149

Started by arnoldemu, 14:10, 25 May 10

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arnoldemu

My games. My Games
My website with coding examples: Unofficial Amstrad WWW Resource

Bryce

Do you have two spare YM2149 Chips? Or even 2x AY-8912 lying about?

Bryce.

Gryzor

Cannibalise other systems?

Bryce

Anything old enough to have used a YM2149 or even an AY-8912 is retro as far as I'm concerned, and I'd have a real problem tearing it apart for one chip (which may die during the attempt anyway). I only ever empty a retro system, if it's not save-able due to massive damage or similar electronic problems. That said....

Warning the next comment could get me banned from the CPC Forum forever....

... I do have two SID chips here, and I've been playing around with the idea of building a SID based CPC Soundcard.

Pllleeeeaaaasssseee don't ban me, I wont do it again, I promise :D

Bryce.

Leonie

#4
Quote from: Bryce on 18:24, 25 May 10
... I do have two SID chips here, and I've been playing around with the idea of building a SID based CPC Soundcard.

>:( YOU WILL BE SORRY FOR THAT!  >:(



FOR SURE!
I´ll make you pay for that!
You´ll die tomorrow, ten o´clock.
I´ll eat your foul meat!  :(


Devilmarkus

Quote from: Bryce on 18:24, 25 May 10
... I do have two SID chips here, and I've been playing around with the idea of building a SID based CPC Soundcard.

Great idea! 2 SID are much better. So you could do stereo output :)
Or a mixage of AY and SID together?
Indeed this sounds interesting!

(Who the fuck is Leonie?)
When you put your ear on a hot stove, you can smell how stupid you are ...

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fano

Quote from: Bryce on 18:24, 25 May 10... I do have two SID chips here, and I've been playing around with the idea of building a SID based CPC Soundcard.
OMFG ! burn them !
"NOP" is the perfect program : short , fast and (known) bug free

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mr_lou

Personally I don't see the idea of building advanced soundcards for the CPC. I don't think anyone will ever buy them.

That's why I'm intrigued by the Digiblaster. It seems to be a fair solution for the CPC, and one that everyone can afford or even make themselves. I vote that everyone should invest in a Digiblaster, and hence forth more games and demos could have sampled music.  8)

Leonie

Quote from: Devilmarkus on 18:55, 25 May 10
Who the fuck is Leonie?

Your future cause of death.  >:(

Bryce

Ok, it's already 11:30 here, 10 o'clock has come and gone and I'm still here. So Leonies death threats aren't to be taken seriously. She didn't even eat my meat as promised :D

Anyway, firstly, I didn't intend the SID Soundcard to be a major project for release, I just thought I'd try it out for the fun of it (but if anyone wanted to build it, they could of course have the plans) and secondly, the SID is/was a serious sound chip which had capabilities way more advanced than a digiblaster could offer. But I can still build a few digiblasters if anyone is interested.

Bryce.

Btw Markus, I hadn't intended making a dual SID card, just a single SID would have been enough.

MacDeath

I think it may be better to simply mix 2 CPC/PLUS...
Getting them working like some sort of duo-core computer, synchronised by a common Real-time clock or whatever, and perhaps sharing a common extended RAM banks pool (with a mechanism so you don't have both computers messing with the same bank at the same time.) and perhaps a direct channel too so each CPU can give order to the other or channel Datas or whatever...


But the BankSwitching in a common pool may be great.
need some delay of course because you must per exemple wait the CPU1 write on it, the close it to it and open it to the CPU2...But such a delay may be transcended by the fact you then give a whole 16K or Datas/codes or whatever.

So such thing would need the 2 sound outputs to be put on a common mix...ginving 2x3 stereo channels (and even some DMA if you use some PLUS.


It's an old dream of mine, doing such a dual-core CPC (or PLUS)...


PS : I love it when Leonie 's gone wild, berzerker fury style...

Bryce

Woooaaaa, a dual CPU system based on z80s would be a hardware nightmare. The amount of handshaking required to keep them in sync, not to mention all the firmware / software checks and balances would more or less negate the speed advantages of having two CPUs.

The easy version would be: 1 CPC for Gameplay / graphics and 1 CPC for sampled music / effects. With a few hardware handshakes to let the sound CPC know what music / effect it should be playing. You could put it all in one box of course, to make it appear as one computer :)

Bryce.

Octoate

In the CPCAI I found a hardware project on how to connect a SID chip to the CPC, but I guess it never worked correctly (or was it the self-built speech synthesizer!?). In another book I found a schematic on how to connect a second AY to the CPC. Maybe the schematics could be useful for your project?!
Btw, for a AY replacement you can use the VHDL description from FPGAArcade and for SID emulation you can use the pin compatible SwinSID emulator (based on a microcontroller).

@Bryce: At least I am always interested in hardware, so you can count me in - at least I will build the device, too :).
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Bryce

#13
The SID idea was really just messing about. The more serious projects at the moment are 1) Low-cost interface for SDCard storage  2) Dktronics Speech synth without an SPO256. When I've finished them, I'll get around to playing with the SID.

Adding a second AY to a CPC shouldn't be difficult, but not many people have a spare AY to use?

But thanks for the encouragement, there'll be more projects to come. So keep the "iron" hot :)

Bryce.

Leonie

Quote from: Bryce on 10:26, 26 May 10
Ok, it's already 11:30 here, 10 o'clock has come and gone and I'm still here.
So Leonies death threats aren't to be taken seriously.
She didn't even eat my meat as promised.

My flight has been canceled.  :'(


Devilmarkus

Quote from: Leonie on 14:07, 26 May 10
My flight has been canceled.  :'(

Don't forget: we are m.e.n.
(masculine engineering noobs)
When you put your ear on a hot stove, you can smell how stupid you are ...

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Bryce

Take the train, we're in the same country :D

Bryce.

MacDeath

Quotehttp://www.seekic.com/newstock/AY-3-8910_A,AY-3-8910A,AY38910A_P.html
Seem that some stocks of AY chips still exist.

Also FPGA can emulate AY/YM if wikipedia is right.

Leonie

Quote from: Gryzor on 15:46, 25 May 10
Cannibalise other systems?

Each Atari ST delivers one AY/YM...

MacDeath

Then cannibilize some Amstrad's Speccies... you may also cannibilize a second Z80... or some memory Chips...

Gryzor

Quote from: Leonie on 17:22, 26 May 10

Each Atari ST delivers one AY/YM...

Don't you touch those sexy STs...

arnoldemu

Quote from: MacDeath on 17:55, 26 May 10
Then cannibilize some Amstrad's Speccies... you may also cannibilize a second Z80... or some memory Chips...
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=27909&highlight=emulation

An alternative?

so can the cpc booster be reprogrammed as a second AY???? Hmmm...
My games. My Games
My website with coding examples: Unofficial Amstrad WWW Resource

MacDeath

#22
Yeah, using the CPC as a Graphic card and adding another Core to do the soun ds and some stuff was what I thought about...
And yeah the problem would be that the duo could be so hard to manage that it would negate the gain, but this would allow too more complex stuff to be managed.

The Sega Megadrive was equipped with a Z80 as a Soundcard, its only job was to manage the sound processor, and also to be used in SegaMasterSystem emulation.

The problem with an amstrad, the Z80 is still struggling to do all the stuff : Graphics, Sounds and the rest...
So if you even add another AY/YM...You would simply be unable to do anything...unless you switch off the video of something like this.
You'll also need at least a 256K RAM computer perhaps.


The point is : if you add another AY/YM, you would probably have to put some sort of co-processor.

Perhaps DMA and VRAM/specific RAM with no need to really pass through the Z80 or only with some simple orders...

I've heard conserning the PLUS that if Amstrad bought/put some specific VRAM, the Video RAM could have been freed from the Z80 as in a MSX but I suppose this need a bit of extra wiring/hardware too ?

Can such features be added in Extension port ? or are we definitly screwed up ?


Also do you know where I can found a book related to those Extensions design on CPC ?

http://cpcrulez.fr/hardwareBOOK_montages_extension_peripheriques_du_CPC_00.htm

this one (in french of course) seem to be the only one I've seen, and it seems uncomplete at CPCrulez...)

Bryce

Adding an extra AY shouldn't overload the CPU that much. Much less than say a Digiblaster.

The expansion port on the CPC doesn't allow any direct manipulation of the internal memory or mapping , so no, I doubt any extension will give you what you need. Adding dedicated VRAM would be almost re-designing the entire architecture and end up with a completely new - non-CPC-compatible 8-Bit computer.

I haven't seen that Book before. Is someone scanning in the rest, or is that all that's available?
There is a very similar book in German, but it doesn't really teach you any amazing CPC tricks, it's more of a "basics of logic guide" (It may even be the same content, just in German).

Bryce.


Octoate

This seems to be a translation of the german book "CPC-464 Hardware-Erweiterungen" by "Data Becker". I understand that they stopped the web conversion of the book, because it is very huge :). Some of those hardware extensions reappeared in the german book "Maschinenspracheprogramme und Hardware-Erweiterungen für den Amstrad CPC".

Btw, it was chapter 18 where they showed how to add a second AY to your CPC...
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