[mcjack123] recently entered Chiptune and realized that his initial interest began in 2018, when he used Arduino to turn the TI-84 calculator into a sounder. His latest iteration was a custom designed soundboard, and he introduced its design and construction in a recent article.
This work simulates classic sound generators such as 2a03 or Commodore 64 Sid. There is a simple set of wave generators and modulators to produce various effects. These circuit boards were eventually replaced by FM synthesis equipment such as Yamaha opl2 and OPL3 chips. All of these cards accept commands and generate their own audio. More modern circuit boards make it easier to convert digital data from computers into audio.
The first attempt was to use a raspberry shawl. It works to some extent, but the code is too slow to run multiple channels at the same time. The processor itself is fast, so there may be a way to achieve this, but he decided to go another way.
The final product uses multiple pic chips as generators and uses some analog circuits to mix them together. In order to get the right time, pics uses assembly language. If you like Chiptune, this is an interesting project.
We saw a lot of interesting Chiptune projects. Some of them are quite small.