You're finally hearing SIDburners 7 the way it was meant to be heard. So many tunes were specifically meant for the 8580 and its combined waveform capabilities. However, that Legend Intro was indeed composed on and designed for playback on a 6581. It is very interesting A/B comparing so many SID tunes on the various SIDburners compilations or the HVSC with a C64 Reloaded MK2 board, being able to effortlessly switch between a 6581R4AR and 8580R5 while songs are playing.
I love that you kept all these bad chips Adrian, and that you plan to show the failure modes... you know what i'd actually love to see is a step further. A single concise video quickly showing all the most common failure modes of a C64 back to back and what chip(s) need to be checked/replaced to repair it.
The reason the drums sound differently is probably the sample playback via $D418, which was a bug/feature that was fixed in the 8580. You can do a small mod called "digi fix" by soldering a ~330k resistor from EXT IN to GND. That should probably make the drums sound better/normal.
Tobias Mädel It's not digi in this case, it's the filter differences between new and old sid (Cutoff). (On the old sid chips it can even vary a lot from chip to chip, while it's always the same on new sid chips, but generally the cutoff is lower on the old sid)
yes seen a video of them doing exactly that but there was from what i heard at the end of the production in the 1990s the made it louder guessing from complaints from customers ..
The resistor value varies a lot from machine to machine or sid to sid, but at least on mine, a 680kΩ resistor sounded exactly as loud as the 6581R3 I had in my DualSID on the same machine on the left channel for comparison.
i have the 330k resistor for my 8580 in my 64C but on a switch because there were some later games which the music was obviously composed with 8580. it just gives me flexibility to be able to play both old and new games.
I mostly play newer games so I prefer the new SID, the only thing I don't like of the 8580 is that speech is at very low volume, apparently with the old SIDs you don't have to turn the TV volume up when there are spoken parts in games.
I've avoided the SIDs from AliExpress - they are notorius for having issues. However, I have purchased CIA and VIC(1 - for the VIC-20) chips and had few issues. I did wonder where they were getting these to re-badge them. The 8580 uses 9V btw, not 5v! Both chips use 5v for the "logic" side of the chip, 12v for the 6581 audio section and 9v for the 8580 audio section. The reason the SwinSID works on either is both the 8580 and 6581 take 5v from pin 25 VCC, and the SwinSID uses that. The 12v (for 6581) or 9v (for 8580) goes to pin 28 (VDD) - the SwinSID doesnt connect that pin at all.
@@joshm264 They already exist! The FPGA SID is pretty much 100% accurate from what I understand (I've yet to re-test with the latest firmware). The ARM SID is another "emulation" type replacement, but that is excellent compared to the Nano SwinSID. Theres also a rare enhanced version of the SwinSID called the SwinSID Ultimate - that sounds almost identical to a real SID too imo, but not as good as the FPGA SID with the latest firmware.
I suspect there are some good ones! A few people have bought 10 or more of them from these sellers on Aliexpress and found 4 or 5 that do work, but have questionable filters / sound a little different compared to how they should sound. I wonder if they are rejects from original factory stock, or whether they are reclaimed from scrapped boards or something. I would not expect China to have masses of C64 boards to scrap tbh! Unless somewhere else in the world scraps boards, removes chips and ships them all in bulk to China?
Love the c64 coverage. Long time ago, I wrote an article or two on the c64. Your videos make me nostalgic to go out and buy one again and get back to modding! Thanks!
I grew up with a 6581 in a breadbox, I am a musician with perfect pitch. I’ve spent megamoolahs in the past year dabbling with SIDS, U64’s, and chucking every revision into a Reloaded board? I hear volume differences, the 65’s sound like a vinyl compared to a CD, and the Swinsid Nano is really fkn close. The 85 has a nice “crunch” so it depends on what your ear likes, and what your expectations are. The SWINSID nano actually impressed me, except for the boot up “Bong” I’m working on a C64 (or midi paired) that can do up to 16 SIDs simultaneously, I want 48 voices and 16 sampled all running concurrently. My kitchen table looks like a frickin chip laboratory and wifey is displeased, but if I can even get a PC to drive 16 SIDs via MIDI, I will be a chuffed 43 year old without a Porsche. Anybody who wants to help me with this quest of getting as many SIDs running simultaneously would be a godsend. If you can help with the software, hardware, or even a working SID, Hit me up please. I believe these chips are the best synthesiser chip ever built, and having worked as an audio engineer, sampling is BORING. I know I could sample a SID but that’s about as fun as playing with a MOOG emulator on your onboard sound”card” in your dell. I am currently waiting on some parts from Germany to arrive in Australia, but if you think I should make my own UA-cam channel on this project, or would like to contribute p, you’ll receive full credit. I’m currently about $3000 down the rabbits hole in this project. Thoughts, opinions from people over 35 are welcome.
SID is love, SID is life.. It's been almost 40 years now, and still, that puny little chip sounds better than anything. Without a doubt, one of the great wonders of the 20th century. I hear great things about FPGA SID, that it's pretty much identical to the real chip nowadays. Maybe that's something you could investigate in a future video? :) Lovely video, thank you, and keep being awesome.
to be fair SID was the end of the road for synth chips in the industry. Jay Miner with Pokey and its ...improved version, Paula, showed that the future was going to be different.
Hi Adrian, thank you very much for that nice and interessting video, I immediately downloaded the SIDBurner and tried it on the THEC64 MAXI, works fine, testing on my original C64 (Longboard, SID6581) yet to do... Best wishes from Germany, Michael
A while back, I modified a knock-off Chinese NES controller to be used with the C64. Like you, I even did the jump button as well. Really cool to see somebody else do the same thing :)
I linked a video to someone doing that mod with a new one. Definitely harder due to the blob chip versus the DIP as I just soldered onto the legs of the DIP. But yes, the jump button thing is by far the best thing to do one any 8 bit micro!!!
Absolutely. Trying to jump and move around using a joystick was driving me nuts, so being able to do it with a controller definitely makes things so much easier.
Phew! I was expecting the worst. I am happy this gamble had a happy outcome. I purchased a few 6810 processors from China a couple years ago. I wasn't sure what to expect but was delightfully surprised when they showed up and looked brand new --- and they all worked.
So I stumbled across this video/channel last night and it got me looking up at an old 64c I've had mounted on my wall for years so I cracked it open and sure enough it's a short board with a 8580 installed. So thanks for letting me know I had something somewhat rare on my wall without even knowing it. Cheers
Wow. I'd heard about the difference in sound from the 2 types of SIDs, but as I never heard the newer variant I didn't think much about it. But those drums in the Legend song make it really obvious how much of a difference there can be. Great vid... Glad you got a working SID! I figure the guys at AliExpress were laughing and pulling another broken SID out of their junk drawer when one of them noticed.. "Wait? This is going to Adrian in Oregon? That is the guy from the Digital Basement!!! We need to give him the good SID chip!!" ;-)
Just played through Doc Cosmos today on my Miyoo Mini+, using save states of course. I should program one of the buttons for up, that would help. What a great little game and Simon is a good guy. Love watching his videos when I have time.
The FPGASID is a great replacement Sid, sounds extremely close to the read deal. But my favorite device to listen to sids is with my Ultimate64 with both a real 6581 and an 8580 installed with a direct to sid tap into my audio mixer. The beauty of the Ultimate64 is the ability to switch from PAL to NTSC and SID memory addressing on the fly. Great way to compare sids is swapping channels instantly in my mixer or putting one left and the other right for a stereo effect.
I am a huge fan of the 6581r4. It's usually found in the longboard c64 and early c128. I've also found that the tunes I make with them translate better to both 8580 and 6581r3 with less tweaking. And a comment about failing chips. I've so far only had failed CIA (about 7), one failed CPU and one RAM. Never had any trouble with PLA and SID so far, which seems odd. But I've only repaired about 8 c64s yet.
And about the joypad - I used to make my own for the C64 - some tact switches, protoboard, ribbon cable (reused form FDD cables from PC's) and a DE-9 plug. Super simple, super cool.
It was even worse on the Amiga, IMO. Though it was a newer machine and the game ports supported 3 fire buttons, every joystick for the system supported only one fire button, to be compatible with the Atari 2600 standard. Gamepads for the Amiga were few and far between, and every game used "up" to jump just like in the 8-bit days... for no other reason than tradition. Ugh.
@@Waccoon A pad's directional control is good for 'short bursts' of directions, but having to hold in one direction for a longer time, combined with multiple taps into same direction, or long chains of directional changes without pause, inevitably lead to the thumb slipping from the control, while a hand held Joystick can do any kind of movement endlessly. So for example Turrican clearly is a much better game on Amiga than on the consoles because of the Joystick controls. They practically eliminated most vertical level design on Super turrican, making the game way less open feeling and interesting. The consoles got simpler level designs and less sophisticated jumps, because a pad can't control direction in the way a full size Joystick can. So the thumb slipping from the cross (similar to that horrible analog thumb sticks we got on all modern pads btw) is a major downside that comes with pads. And there's another one: Using only a thumb for directions can be too tiring, depending on the action on the screen. One example of where Pads just can't do the job are those classic 'joystick rocking' sports games; you know, like summer games, where you had to wiggle the stick from left to right faster and faster for an eternally feeling period of time. Not that this was an example of great gameplay, but it's one very obvious example of the limits that a pad has regarding it's directional controls. With a pad normal people can't wiggle nearly as fast as with a stick, and not even to speak of, keep this up for a sufficient amount of time. (Yes, you can try workign around this, by putting index finger and middle finger, or fingers of both hands on the directional controls, but of course that's defeating the purpose of using the pad as a general control in a way that would make playing some games impossible again, similar to the old trick of grabbing a Joystick just by it's head and wiggling the whole base for these games ;) ) So both problems show, that sustainability is a big objective disadvantage that pads have compared to full size Joysticks and of course good games are modelled with these differences in mind. Yes, on the one hand games like Street Fighter and such are better with more fire buttons, but on the other hand, the original arcade still got Joysticks for directional control. Depending on the game one can be better than the other, and clearly the majorityof C64 and Amiga games are optimized towards Joystick controls, and if you really want to succeed, you need to be in optimal control for most, with the pad giving a huge disadvantage. Subjectively I also like the differences that result from games being optimized towards Joysticks. They feel put emphasis on other parts of the gameplay, making them feel more 'serious' to me. The Joystick also contributes to this, by giving a 'more physical' feeling. This means, that when using a pad, I always feel like a guy pushing buttons while standing in fronf of a gaming device. But a good joysticks actually makes me feel a bit more like being inside the game. Hearing the sound of Turrican's metallilc feet slamming onto the ground, after having picked him up towards another platform, by pulling on the Joystick just fits too great! This feeling completely loses it's force with a pad. So Joysticks it's are one of the many things that make computer games more interesting and often authentic to me, than the 'neutral' control feeling that results from using a pad. In my opinion commodore should have shipped the Amiga with a two-button Joystick, though, that would have given enough momentum for the developers to actually support these more often and of course a third party industry delivering to that movement. So there is no general 'Joypad' superiority at all, and I have never experienced one, it's just different, I would never like to change the experience I had with playing Amiga games with a good Joystick :)
@@elmariachi5133 As much as I appreciate your insight, there's a reason why joysticks are now designated to flight sims and thumb sticks are everywhere. Poor input controls plagued early computers, and I'm shocked it took so long for things like DirectInput to show up and get this mess under control. On that note, many modern consoles STILL won't let you remap controls as you like, instead forcing a number of canned options. There's always someone out there trying to design the "optimum" experience, telling you the right or wrong way to do things, instead of letting the player choose for himself. Bad habits (and traditions) die hard! Sorry, but I would have loved to get rid of "up" and replace it with a dedicated action button on most of my Amiga games, and the only reason why I couldn't is because the industry was immature and stubborn, even though the Amiga (and other machines) delivered hardware that was capable of so much more.
@@Waccoon Well, the reason is that industy nowadays is even more stubborn and ignorant than ever before. With very few tech giants controlling their own market, there's no need for producing what people want. When asked, they always say 'because it sells'. But that's no proof that people actually prefer some current technology standard versus hypothetical alternatives - because there are no alternatives being produced and sold. It's the modern standard for industrial behaviour in any possible market - people have no choice. For games in general, you have to choose between some 'modern' standard genres that cover about 5% of the gameplay that once existed on the PC. There are indy-games, but those of course are no industrial thing and usually don't habe any impact on the markt standards. Then there are mobile phones - if you want a device with some sufficient performance and features, there is no choice for having a T9 keyboard for example, you have to use touchscreens, although it has been proven for years that touchscreens are the least efficient way for doing nearly all activities on a mobile device, besides the least important ones, like web browsing. Also there are famous classic examples of technological evolution rarely taking the direct path to an optimal outcome, with the all time number one being "VHS " - that actually was the worst possible technology available for the job, when it started conquering the market. So summarized: A product being the only one of it's kind says nothing about it's reasonability - it's just what industry liked to force upon people. Especiall nowadays this is a problem that affects nearly all products. Industry has optimized itself in a way that mainstreams products before they even come to existence, thus leading to not the people deciding what they want, but managers and product designers. Battles like BluRay vs HD-DVD are a thing of the past, we are in the age of technical monopolism with all it's drawbacks. (like thumb sticks ;) )
I agree. I never liked the "joystick style" of controller and always preferred gamepads. I had a Sega Master System II after the C64 but was never that keen on it's gamepad either but I did like the Sega Mega Drive gamepad. A few years ago I took a Mega Drive/Genesis 3-button gamepad and modified it to work on my C64. I built a small circuit and rigged it up to the start button which toggles between up and button A. When in button A mode the up on the D-pad doesn't work so no risk of accidentally bumping up and jumping, same the other way around. The toggle circuit was built with 2-gates of a 4011 Quad 2-input NAND chip. Button B is the fire button and button C is auto-fire which uses the last 2 NAND gates in the 4011. I adjusted the auto-fire rate to the maximum that the C64 seemed to accept. I love my modded Mega Drive C64 gamepad ❤
I did the samething with my emulator configuration as you did with rewiring up to jump on your controller :-) There's some nice games on the c64 but I could never get used to jumping with "up"! Nice video (as usual) btw!
Adrian, you should get yourself a PAL C64C or at least a PAL 250469 short board for your SID tunes. The PAL timings will make everything sound correct (and will display the cool demo effects correctly). Like you said, the 8580 SID and C64C are what all the demoscene coders use and program for. I'm in the US and have more PAL 64s than NTSC ones. You could use that to make a cool video about building a 50hz clock generator too. I've made a few of these for my PAL boards out of throughole ICs (PCBs on OSH Park) but they're a bit larger than they really need to be. I'm currently working on a really small one made of SMD chips and a version of the switchless kernal switcher similar to yours, but with the addition of using a free IO pin on the arduino to generate a 50hz signal for the TOD clocks as well.
Or an Ultimate 64. Since so many cool demos and games are PAL, I use the Ultimate 64 in PAL to experience them properly here in NTSC land. More expensive, but the other great stuff you get with a U64 is so worth it. HDMI out, USB drive for storage, true 1541 emulation, on board Freeze carts, ethernet, Two sid slots, UltiSid emulated SID for up to 8 SID playback, and most importantly, it is still supported and improved on all the time. There is an onboard wifi chip that is not being used yet, but will eventually.
11:50 The analog filters on the SID chips not only make every chip just a tiny bit different from each other --- but each performance of the same composition on the SAME chip is (just a tiny bit) different too ...
8580 has a different analog section owing to the new process and lower voltages. You'll really hear it in the filters, which is why the percussion and white noise is different. It also has much less of a click when changing the master volume, making a lot of samples too quiet.
I had a 1989 Commodore 64 C and my neighbour back then, had the older breadbin C-64. I remember I noticed a difference in sound, especially in games that have digitized speech, for example Ghostbusters. Mine seemed to say "Ghostbusters" more silently than neighbours older C-64.
There were some 'flaws' with the 6581 SID that were exploited by crafty composers for voice sampling. The 8580 SID revision corrected those 'flaws', creating some issues with some SID compositions.
Where i live in New Zealand (PAL) it was always a mixture of Bread bins and C64Cs. I got my C64C back in the day not long after they first came out because they also sold slightly cheaper. On our local online Auction website (Ebay didnt do well here) you hardly see the C64Cs... because they are so reliable collectors know to hord them. you really only see breadbins most of the time. The C64 series of computers did well here. i was still using mine right up till 1993.. GEOS was great for what it was
Where did the multicart come from? My c64 recently went bad, so I'll need a soldering station to fix it. Luckily I have a working SX 64. I MAY go to the Vintage Computer Show in Seattle in March and bring along a very rare 65 board from the estate of Butterfield.
The short boards were pretty common because there was more iteration of the C64 than the classical breadbin. One model was breadbin with small board and white keyboard, sold for a bargain in ALDI german discount shops. the C64C was sold in Tandy Radio shack shops and wasn't expensive either.
Although I don't have any particular interest in C64, I am fascinated by your testing and troubleshooting methods, which are applicable much more widely. Thanks!
Yeah, that's because solving problems is a thing the human mind is supposed to do. And most people have a lack of this, living in a world where humans mostly concentrate on causing problems or even abusing other's problems for their own selfish advantage.
Looks like this chip was from week 14 of 1989, so it was one of the very last chips that ran off the line. Quite probably a part that was produced for Commodore but installed in a unit that was never delivered, and junked along with all of the other stuff when the factories closed down.
16:36 the lowpassfilter is much more closed on the original 6581 chip than its with the newer 8580R5 chip (im in synths for many many yeahrs and this sounds definitifly like an mid opend lowpass filter to my ears)
I remember getting a C64C and being disappointed with the sound. I don't remember what the exact issue was though. Just that something sounded terrible compared to the bread bin C64s. I eventually got the chance to swap in an older C64 SID and it worked fine. I didn't know anything about the voltages back then. I don't know what happened with The older C64 that got the C64C SID. I don't remember there being any issues with the swap, but this was all nearly 40 years ago.
In 1986, I was 16 years old and I had a C=128. I found a schematic on Compuserve drawn up in ASCII that showed me how to add a SECOND SID chip to my 128 which would give me the ability to play true STEREO music files with three voices per channel. In the parts list, it called for the second sid chip (obviously) as well as a bunch of resistors and caps etc. So I managed to get all the parts then took my 128 to a friends house who had a nice Weller soldering station and I started on it at 11 at night and finished at around 2am ... I took it home and I hooked it up to my stereo and I downloaded a bunch of stereo MIDI files from Compuserve along with the player and I was so happy that it worked perfectly! And it was true 6 voice stereo ... and something about that just sounded amazing to me lol.
I always wanted a 128. Never had one as a kid, only a c64, then went on to IBM clones. Buddy of mine had one though, He has like 2 or 3 128D's now. And I technically have a couple C64s. lol
I bought a 1541 on craigslist that happened to come with an NTSC short-board C64C. It was just my "extra" C64, I never knew it was rare. I guess I'll have to take extra care of it now!
Wow I had no idea how expensive SID chips have become! Back in 2012 after building my x0xb0x Roland 303 clone, I had planned to build one of those open source MIDIbox MB6582 SID synthesizers that uses up to 8 SID chips in a standard synth form factor with built in programming as well as MIDI support. I still have the chips laying around waiting for the day I finally build the thing, so I went and checked my old emails and saw I bought 8 chips, 4 of each type, for only $200! So only $25 a piece. And he even went out of his way to sound match the 12V chips for me (as apparently they differ more in the filter sounds than the 9V chips). Just checked eBay and see SIDs all going for $50 a piece, some even up to $80, and I’m sure they’ll only get more expensive over time. Wow am I glad I hung on to them (and I can’t believe it’s already been 8 years haha!). I searched for the seller’s account that I bought from and it doesn’t even exist anymore. Thanks for reminding me that I had them and reminding me to finally build the damn synth already :) Love your videos!!
@@adriansdigitalbasement I look forward to seeing it when you get a chance! I have an old NES controller with a damaged cable so this would be a perfect mod.
i got a few minutes into your vid,allow me to make a few corrections on what youve said so far upto the vic chip(on short boards) ,the vic is 5 volts only,the 6581 is 12 and 5 volts,the later 8580 is 9 and 5 volts,you want to see what happens when you remove the fuse,short board will boot and have a picture,but have no sound also can be easilly found out with a volt meter its the same pinout as early verion parts but voltages are different
Haha, I had the same idea with the jump button and built myself an arcade-like stick with Seimitsu components in a wooden box a few years ago. I live in Germany and here it's exactly the opposite - the longboards and their components are becoming more and more rare while shortboards from the C64 Cs and Gs are still quite easy to find.
Little fun fact... have you ever tried acquiring a PAL C64? You'll likely find that your screen already supports PAL, because LCDs do all the conversion in software (firmware)... they just plop the same firmware on every model and sell the same model in PAL regions. So you just need to plug it in and you can run PAL-compatible demos. There's a 60Hz (now 50Hz) signal that'll get screwed up - and that only seems to affect baud on the user port (no modems, boo, lol), but video and demos mostly play fine. You can see some amazing things with a PAL C64 and a real disk drive!
As for commodore64 sid chip 6581 i have some in stock and lots of other parts for amiga and for cd32 and are new as I did repair a lot of C64 and C64c I have pla instock
I'm working on a C64 (my second repair) and have isolated to a bad VIC2 chip (6567R8). They are all ridiculously expensive. I've ordered one from AliExpress. Wish me luck! I bought a GAL PLA from ebay and it's working great. Before long I'll get a MiniPro. Maybe I should buy a batch of PCBs and sell them to increase the US supply. Most of these C64 parts and items seem to need to be shipped from Europe or China - too bad there aren't more local sellers.
I did something similar with a master system pad as a kid. Was a real bodge job with a couple wires poking out to re-enable the up direction for those games that needed it. But having button 2 as jump a real game changer 😂
Great Video Adrian! I literally just picked up my first C64 a few days ago. It is a 64c! I still need to open it up to see what board it is running. Thank you for all the info. Already looking into Jiffydos and such. Already ordered a wifi cart as well. Keep up the good work sir!
I suppose you could use the chip in the long board, you just have to use a patch wire to the power pin off the 5 volt rail. So bend the power pin up on the chip, and find a 5 volt source off the mother board or power supply.
Glad you got a working one. I don't know why but once I got my 64C in 87/88 with the 8580 SID I liked the cleaner sound better then the original 6581.. That said, the short board is not rare in the USA it is actually quite common. Most of the 64Cs you find will have a short board. In 1986 when the 64C came out they had an interim board a 1986 board with 6581 SID. You can usually identify them by the keyboard as the original run of 64Cs had the symbols printed on the front of the keys versus the later, what I like to call the "true 64C" where the symbols are printed on the top of the keys. They only made these original longboard 64Cs for a year or so. So they are quite uncommon. When the shortboard was released in 87/88 it had the cost reduced chipset with 85xx chips. It is much more reliable. They sold these from 87/88 all the way until 93/94 even in the USA. At user groups in those days this was quite common and many original 64 owners at the user groups bought into the 64C. It was very popular. At least that is my experience being heavily into the 64 in those days.
interesting, what area of the country are you in? I grew up on the west coast and until i got back into these computers recently, i didn't even know c64s came in this form factor as i hadn't seen them. After our C64 Breadbin, we had a Commodore 128 which came in this newer case, and then went onto other computers after that. Not a lot of people here in 86 or later were still using c64s and certainly weren't buying them at the time. But again, maybe it was a regional thing?
@@brianv2871 SF Bay area. From 86/87 on that is all you seen in the stores here was the 64C model. I know a lot of people moved on by 90/91 but I was a hold out! Well I guess a lot of people in the User Groups were too, and still are. 😉
Very glad your chip is working. Won't buy from AliExpress ever again. As for DOC COSMOS that is a fun game. When I bought the game, I noticed it came with the .bin file. So I made a DOC COSMOS cartridge. Still learning how to make and edit video, so my video wasn't as good as I would like. BUT, I am glad everything did work out for you.
As gadgetUK said the 8580 uses 9v, the vic in the short board uses 5v. It will use the ac power for switching frequency reference but works without, try a short board with no fuse, still has picture but no sound
Some years ago I did the same rewired with a NES clone controller to play Atari 2600 and Atari GS games and yes, is an excellent mod to do. Great video as always.
it is known that the newer SID chips have a cleaner sound but are worse in digi-drums (samples) replay. i.e. they make trance/techno sound a bit better maybe, but sometimes lose when playing older tunes with digi drums. Every 6581 sounds different anyway because they have analogue parts.
I put a link in the description to someone else's video. He did it on a modern USB one. I figured there were many out there but if enough people ask I'll do it.
3:09 isn't it 9 V? 18:54 and shouldn't that be acetone? (And preferably out of the socket if using acetone since acetone attacks the ABS plastic in the socket.)
Assuming you had the mic recording at the same rate, with no autoadjustment settings built into it during your tests I checked out the sounds in a visualizer. after chucking your samples o the intro sound test into my very old and very visual sound editing software, there is deff a difference, in all 3, the 6581 is alot of noise(think everyone talking in a large hall at once kind of noise floor but its static) and it seems to use that noise to generate the wind sounds near the start, and the beats are loud and decent. the 8580 has far less noise and uses it less as an effect and you can hear more of the actual sound, but because it has less of a noise level certain things aren't blown out of proportion, which means the beats are much quieter and on top of that they are a diff waveform, it generates them differently the microcontroller based sid has the least noise of all, but its also set too low in volume, its 5db lower than the other two, its straight up lower volume than the rest. the beat section of the song its waveform matches the 6581 in shape and peaks, and the rest it takes from the 8580 which it matches in waveform, but doesn't quite have the same peaks again volume level(but even amplified its peaks aren't quite high enough), and it absolutely nails the waveform for some of the sounds, and totally fails for others, the others are the ones that make it sound...weird
Great timing with this video as I need to pickup a couple of sid chips. You had luck but looking around it seems really hit and miss if you get a working chip or not. I keep looking at those swinsid nanos on ebay for about £15 but not sure. Might get 1 just to have but I'd prefer the original. Could you maybe do some more comparison between the genuine suds and the various remakes?
I need to get the FPGA SID. It just seems hard to find these things even ... The FPGA one is the way to go though. Apparently so much better than the SwinSID.
A lot of software developers wrote routines that took into account quirks the original sid chips had , try playing The intro to skate or die on an 8580 as one example..
The Skate or Die intro music is hardly a straightforward example of SID tunes going wrong, it can sound fine on an 8580 but it can also sound like utter garbage. Because it's an old-fashioned digitune, which exploits the volume register bug present in the 6581, an original copy of the game always plays the tune correctly on that model SID. However a lot of people played Eaglesoft's cracked NTSC version which runs fine on PAL machines but plays the intro music at PAL speed i.e. too slow. 64s with 8580 SID's are more complicated as they weren't all created equal. Some have an integrated "fix" which brings the volume of digitunes up to 6581 levels, the SoD tune plays fine on these machines as well. However a lot of 64Cs don't have this "fix", consequently the tune doesn't play correctly with the lead guitar being almost completely inaudible. The difference is really obvious and can be simulated easily with VICE or sidplay.
If I remember right, people like to make music with the older chips because a bug in the way the filters are implemented lets them hack sounds from the chip that its designers never intended :)
program that joystick so you can hit select to select between, up for jump, space as use for bombs or whatever, and pin 9 paddle input, some games use it
There used to be a local guy who sold a lot of C64 chips that he got from china presumably but he would always test them and it worked out pretty well. Seems like he no longer sells them but I got a VIC-2 for 10€ which has served me well for over 2 years now. I've had pretty good luck with the 4464 RAM chips from aliexpress, cost pennies per chip compared to a few bucks for one on eBay so I wouldn't mind if half of them didn't work, although when troubleshooting it really helps to have known good chips so it's a bit of a tradeoff
I've also found the SwinSID to give poor results (heavy biases) if you use the noise channel for random number generation, which many games did. My minesweeper game ended up with way more mines showing up in the top half of the screen than on a normal SID chip.
I have two c64c boards and one needs a vic and sid the other has some gfx issues. I can buy them for £15-£20 and all need vic and sid for this price. The Vic are around £10, but all the sid chips are between £30 and £40 in europe - uk. I brought a cheap nano swinsid for testing ect but I don't think it is worth buying the cheaper boards and then spending £50 to replace the two missing chips.
Gee they got the pins pretty pristine 6:29 , because they look like they haven't been used before, ie, no solder blobs, and quite shinny. Yeah the sound of the old chip sounds fuller and has more nuances.
Hmm, if I remember correctly the C128 also uses an 8580, so it should sound the same as the short board one does, also here where I live (Argentina) the 64C was quite popular in the home computer market and I even played with one at a computer museum located in the central part of the city Also the 8580 is a complete redesign of the original 6580, so that's why it sounds so different, but hey I like the two since the difference is only on the filters, the synth is still the same
as i can recall the very early C128 had the 6581 and later 1985 had the 8580 Commodore corrected the Bug on the 8580 but unfortunately Game composers went around this cursed Bug or they Actually took it as a Advantage ... and put it too use making great music .. so when the 8580 came around with out that bug the Game Music played differently and sounded like crap as some of the music had either dead spots or sounded way differntly in laymans terms ITs like someone used a slightly different sound bank to play midis files in todays PC Soundboards
I've always preferred the 6581 as it has a "muddier" sound. I never realised the difference as a kid, despite a neighbour owning a newer C64 (which would have had the 8580). My breadbin definitely had the 6581 though as it was one of the earliest C64 units produced. Sadly, the C64 died many years ago and I gave it away along with the huge game collection :(
Back in the day, i had 3 SID chips (C64s were thrown to garbage back then, i did the same..) and all sounded different. The difference was not subtle but quite drastic.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
You're finally hearing SIDburners 7 the way it was meant to be heard. So many tunes were specifically meant for the 8580 and its combined waveform capabilities. However, that Legend Intro was indeed composed on and designed for playback on a 6581.
It is very interesting A/B comparing so many SID tunes on the various SIDburners compilations or the HVSC with a C64 Reloaded MK2 board, being able to effortlessly switch between a 6581R4AR and 8580R5 while songs are playing.
I love that you kept all these bad chips Adrian, and that you plan to show the failure modes... you know what i'd actually love to see is a step further. A single concise video quickly showing all the most common failure modes of a C64 back to back and what chip(s) need to be checked/replaced to repair it.
The reason the drums sound differently is probably the sample playback via $D418, which was a bug/feature that was fixed in the 8580.
You can do a small mod called "digi fix" by soldering a ~330k resistor from EXT IN to GND. That should probably make the drums sound better/normal.
Tobias Mädel It's not digi in this case, it's the filter differences between new and old sid (Cutoff). (On the old sid chips it can even vary a lot from chip to chip, while it's always the same on new sid chips, but generally the cutoff is lower on the old sid)
yes seen a video of them doing exactly that but there was from what i heard at the end of the production in the 1990s the made it louder guessing from complaints from customers ..
The resistor value varies a lot from machine to machine or sid to sid, but at least on mine, a 680kΩ resistor sounded exactly as loud as the 6581R3 I had in my DualSID on the same machine on the left channel for comparison.
i have the 330k resistor for my 8580 in my 64C but on a switch because there were some later games which the music was obviously composed with 8580. it just gives me flexibility to be able to play both old and new games.
I mostly play newer games so I prefer the new SID, the only thing I don't like of the 8580 is that speech is at very low volume, apparently with the old SIDs you don't have to turn the TV volume up when there are spoken parts in games.
I've avoided the SIDs from AliExpress - they are notorius for having issues. However, I have purchased CIA and VIC(1 - for the VIC-20) chips and had few issues. I did wonder where they were getting these to re-badge them. The 8580 uses 9V btw, not 5v! Both chips use 5v for the "logic" side of the chip, 12v for the 6581 audio section and 9v for the 8580 audio section. The reason the SwinSID works on either is both the 8580 and 6581 take 5v from pin 25 VCC, and the SwinSID uses that. The 12v (for 6581) or 9v (for 8580) goes to pin 28 (VDD) - the SwinSID doesnt connect that pin at all.
Wonder what will happen once accurate clone chips come out for things like the 6581
@@joshm264 They already exist! The FPGA SID is pretty much 100% accurate from what I understand (I've yet to re-test with the latest firmware). The ARM SID is another "emulation" type replacement, but that is excellent compared to the Nano SwinSID. Theres also a rare enhanced version of the SwinSID called the SwinSID Ultimate - that sounds almost identical to a real SID too imo, but not as good as the FPGA SID with the latest firmware.
@@GadgetUK164 saying like some way to recreate the dye inside the chip, making it a 1-1 replica
The FPGA SID replicates it pretty much 1:1!
I suspect there are some good ones! A few people have bought 10 or more of them from these sellers on Aliexpress and found 4 or 5 that do work, but have questionable filters / sound a little different compared to how they should sound. I wonder if they are rejects from original factory stock, or whether they are reclaimed from scrapped boards or something. I would not expect China to have masses of C64 boards to scrap tbh! Unless somewhere else in the world scraps boards, removes chips and ships them all in bulk to China?
Love the c64 coverage. Long time ago, I wrote an article or two on the c64. Your videos make me nostalgic to go out and buy one again and get back to modding! Thanks!
I always enjoy seeing Adrian's elation when his fixes go well! 😊
I grew up with a 6581 in a breadbox, I am a musician with perfect pitch.
I’ve spent megamoolahs in the past year dabbling with SIDS, U64’s, and chucking every revision into a Reloaded board?
I hear volume differences, the 65’s sound like a vinyl compared to a CD, and the Swinsid Nano is really fkn close. The 85 has a nice “crunch” so it depends on what your ear likes, and what your expectations are. The SWINSID nano actually impressed me, except for the boot up “Bong”
I’m working on a C64 (or midi paired) that can do up to 16 SIDs simultaneously, I want 48 voices and 16 sampled all running concurrently. My kitchen table looks like a frickin chip laboratory and wifey is displeased, but if I can even get a PC to drive 16 SIDs via MIDI, I will be a chuffed 43 year old without a Porsche.
Anybody who wants to help me with this quest of getting as many SIDs running simultaneously would be a godsend. If you can help with the software, hardware, or even a working SID, Hit me up please.
I believe these chips are the best synthesiser chip ever built, and having worked as an audio engineer, sampling is BORING. I know I could sample a SID but that’s about as fun as playing with a MOOG emulator on your onboard sound”card” in your dell.
I am currently waiting on some parts from Germany to arrive in Australia, but if you think I should make my own UA-cam channel on this project, or would like to contribute p, you’ll receive full credit.
I’m currently about $3000 down the rabbits hole in this project.
Thoughts, opinions from people over 35 are welcome.
SID is love, SID is life.. It's been almost 40 years now, and still, that puny little chip sounds better than anything. Without a doubt, one of the great wonders of the 20th century.
I hear great things about FPGA SID, that it's pretty much identical to the real chip nowadays. Maybe that's something you could investigate in a future video? :)
Lovely video, thank you, and keep being awesome.
You forgot one.. Sid4Life
to be fair SID was the end of the road for synth chips in the industry. Jay Miner with Pokey and its ...improved version, Paula, showed that the future was going to be different.
Adrian: “Today’s video is going to be a quick one.”
Also Adrian: *Drops 34 minute video.*
JK, keep up the good work.. 🙂
Mine too :)
Soon as the video started I thought the same thing ;)
Yeah, heard that and glanced at the video length with a chuckle. 34 minutes went great with morning coffee.
LOL
😂🤣 comment cracks me up
Hi Adrian, thank you very much for that nice and interessting video, I immediately downloaded the SIDBurner and tried it on the THEC64 MAXI, works fine, testing on my original C64 (Longboard, SID6581) yet to do... Best wishes from Germany, Michael
Really enjoyed this video and the explanation on SIDs. I guess you got lucky with the China SID. Hope to see more soon!
By the way: i actually really like the 8580R5 version of Martijn’s track.
0:38 - "one of my favorite sites that I seem to order from A LOT" - proceeds to hover the condoms… :-) nice.
haha
🤣😂🤣😂 thought the same
I would watch your channel for the random SID tunes I get to hear!
Another great video, about another great leap of faith.
What a great exploration of SID sounds. I, too, would love to see a video about modding an NES controller.
A while back, I modified a knock-off Chinese NES controller to be used with the C64. Like you, I even did the jump button as well. Really cool to see somebody else do the same thing :)
I linked a video to someone doing that mod with a new one. Definitely harder due to the blob chip versus the DIP as I just soldered onto the legs of the DIP. But yes, the jump button thing is by far the best thing to do one any 8 bit micro!!!
Absolutely. Trying to jump and move around using a joystick was driving me nuts, so being able to do it with a controller definitely makes things so much easier.
Your monitor closeups made me clean my own monitor .. to no avail; for it was yours that was filthy!
Phew! I was expecting the worst. I am happy this gamble had a happy outcome. I purchased a few 6810 processors from China a couple years ago. I wasn't sure what to expect but was delightfully surprised when they showed up and looked brand new --- and they all worked.
NES controller on a C64! Mind = Blown. Cool video, thanks again.
Excellent explanations and enjoyable comparisons. Your videos are touching uncommon arguments for nerds. Really appreciate 👍👍👍
So I stumbled across this video/channel last night and it got me looking up at an old 64c I've had mounted on my wall for years so I cracked it open and sure enough it's a short board with a 8580 installed. So thanks for letting me know I had something somewhat rare on my wall without even knowing it. Cheers
Wow. I'd heard about the difference in sound from the 2 types of SIDs, but as I never heard the newer variant I didn't think much about it. But those drums in the Legend song make it really obvious how much of a difference there can be. Great vid... Glad you got a working SID! I figure the guys at AliExpress were laughing and pulling another broken SID out of their junk drawer when one of them noticed.. "Wait? This is going to Adrian in Oregon? That is the guy from the Digital Basement!!! We need to give him the good SID chip!!" ;-)
Just played through Doc Cosmos today on my Miyoo Mini+, using save states of course. I should program one of the buttons for up, that would help. What a great little game and Simon is a good guy. Love watching his videos when I have time.
The FPGASID is a great replacement Sid, sounds extremely close to the read deal. But my favorite device to listen to sids is with my Ultimate64 with both a real 6581 and an 8580 installed with a direct to sid tap into my audio mixer. The beauty of the Ultimate64 is the ability to switch from PAL to NTSC and SID memory addressing on the fly. Great way to compare sids is swapping channels instantly in my mixer or putting one left and the other right for a stereo effect.
I am a huge fan of the 6581r4. It's usually found in the longboard c64 and early c128. I've also found that the tunes I make with them translate better to both 8580 and 6581r3 with less tweaking.
And a comment about failing chips. I've so far only had failed CIA (about 7), one failed CPU and one RAM. Never had any trouble with PLA and SID so far, which seems odd. But I've only repaired about 8 c64s yet.
Awesome video the family computer was a 128 but I just bought a 64 and really loving getting back into the culture. Thanks for doing this!
And about the joypad - I used to make my own for the C64 - some tact switches, protoboard, ribbon cable (reused form FDD cables from PC's) and a DE-9 plug. Super simple, super cool.
"I hate all the joysticks that were on these computers." YES! Finally somebody talks reason!
It was even worse on the Amiga, IMO. Though it was a newer machine and the game ports supported 3 fire buttons, every joystick for the system supported only one fire button, to be compatible with the Atari 2600 standard. Gamepads for the Amiga were few and far between, and every game used "up" to jump just like in the 8-bit days... for no other reason than tradition. Ugh.
@@Waccoon A pad's directional control is good for 'short bursts' of directions, but having to hold in one direction for a longer time, combined with multiple taps into same direction, or long chains of directional changes without pause, inevitably lead to the thumb slipping from the control, while a hand held Joystick can do any kind of movement endlessly. So for example Turrican clearly is a much better game on Amiga than on the consoles because of the Joystick controls. They practically eliminated most vertical level design on Super turrican, making the game way less open feeling and interesting. The consoles got simpler level designs and less sophisticated jumps, because a pad can't control direction in the way a full size Joystick can.
So the thumb slipping from the cross (similar to that horrible analog thumb sticks we got on all modern pads btw) is a major downside that comes with pads.
And there's another one: Using only a thumb for directions can be too tiring, depending on the action on the screen.
One example of where Pads just can't do the job are those classic 'joystick rocking' sports games; you know, like summer games, where you had to wiggle the stick from left to right faster and faster for an eternally feeling period of time. Not that this was an example of great gameplay, but it's one very obvious example of the limits that a pad has regarding it's directional controls. With a pad normal people can't wiggle nearly as fast as with a stick, and not even to speak of, keep this up for a sufficient amount of time. (Yes, you can try workign around this, by putting index finger and middle finger, or fingers of both hands on the directional controls, but of course that's defeating the purpose of using the pad as a general control in a way that would make playing some games impossible again, similar to the old trick of grabbing a Joystick just by it's head and wiggling the whole base for these games ;) )
So both problems show, that sustainability is a big objective disadvantage that pads have compared to full size Joysticks and of course good games are modelled with these differences in mind.
Yes, on the one hand games like Street Fighter and such are better with more fire buttons, but on the other hand, the original arcade still got Joysticks for directional control.
Depending on the game one can be better than the other, and clearly the majorityof C64 and Amiga games are optimized towards Joystick controls, and if you really want to succeed, you need to be in optimal control for most, with the pad giving a huge disadvantage.
Subjectively I also like the differences that result from games being optimized towards Joysticks. They feel put emphasis on other parts of the gameplay, making them feel more 'serious' to me. The Joystick also contributes to this, by giving a 'more physical' feeling. This means, that when using a pad, I always feel like a guy pushing buttons while standing in fronf of a gaming device. But a good joysticks actually makes me feel a bit more like being inside the game. Hearing the sound of Turrican's metallilc feet slamming onto the ground, after having picked him up towards another platform, by pulling on the Joystick just fits too great! This feeling completely loses it's force with a pad.
So Joysticks it's are one of the many things that make computer games more interesting and often authentic to me, than the 'neutral' control feeling that results from using a pad. In my opinion commodore should have shipped the Amiga with a two-button Joystick, though, that would have given enough momentum for the developers to actually support these more often and of course a third party industry delivering to that movement.
So there is no general 'Joypad' superiority at all, and I have never experienced one, it's just different, I would never like to change the experience I had with playing Amiga games with a good Joystick :)
@@elmariachi5133 As much as I appreciate your insight, there's a reason why joysticks are now designated to flight sims and thumb sticks are everywhere. Poor input controls plagued early computers, and I'm shocked it took so long for things like DirectInput to show up and get this mess under control.
On that note, many modern consoles STILL won't let you remap controls as you like, instead forcing a number of canned options. There's always someone out there trying to design the "optimum" experience, telling you the right or wrong way to do things, instead of letting the player choose for himself. Bad habits (and traditions) die hard!
Sorry, but I would have loved to get rid of "up" and replace it with a dedicated action button on most of my Amiga games, and the only reason why I couldn't is because the industry was immature and stubborn, even though the Amiga (and other machines) delivered hardware that was capable of so much more.
@@Waccoon Well, the reason is that industy nowadays is even more stubborn and ignorant than ever before. With very few tech giants controlling their own market, there's no need for producing what people want. When asked, they always say 'because it sells'. But that's no proof that people actually prefer some current technology standard versus hypothetical alternatives - because there are no alternatives being produced and sold.
It's the modern standard for industrial behaviour in any possible market - people have no choice.
For games in general, you have to choose between some 'modern' standard genres that cover about 5% of the gameplay that once existed on the PC. There are indy-games, but those of course are no industrial thing and usually don't habe any impact on the markt standards.
Then there are mobile phones - if you want a device with some sufficient performance and features, there is no choice for having a T9 keyboard for example, you have to use touchscreens, although it has been proven for years that touchscreens are the least efficient way for doing nearly all activities on a mobile device, besides the least important ones, like web browsing.
Also there are famous classic examples of technological evolution rarely taking the direct path to an optimal outcome, with the all time number one being "VHS " - that actually was the worst possible technology available for the job, when it started conquering the market.
So summarized: A product being the only one of it's kind says nothing about it's reasonability - it's just what industry liked to force upon people. Especiall nowadays this is a problem that affects nearly all products. Industry has optimized itself in a way that mainstreams products before they even come to existence, thus leading to not the people deciding what they want, but managers and product designers. Battles like BluRay vs HD-DVD are a thing of the past, we are in the age of technical monopolism with all it's drawbacks. (like thumb sticks ;) )
I agree. I never liked the "joystick style" of controller and always preferred gamepads. I had a Sega Master System II after the C64 but was never that keen on it's gamepad either but I did like the Sega Mega Drive gamepad.
A few years ago I took a Mega Drive/Genesis 3-button gamepad and modified it to work on my C64.
I built a small circuit and rigged it up to the start button which toggles between up and button A.
When in button A mode the up on the D-pad doesn't work so no risk of accidentally bumping up and jumping, same the other way around. The toggle circuit was built with 2-gates of a 4011 Quad 2-input NAND chip.
Button B is the fire button and button C is auto-fire which uses the last 2 NAND gates in the 4011.
I adjusted the auto-fire rate to the maximum that the C64 seemed to accept.
I love my modded Mega Drive C64 gamepad ❤
I did the samething with my emulator configuration as you did with rewiring up to jump on your controller :-) There's some nice games on the c64 but I could never get used to jumping with "up"! Nice video (as usual) btw!
sounding high pitch is a classic sign of running pal tuned on ntsc, just pointing out the obvious.
Adrian, you should get yourself a PAL C64C or at least a PAL 250469 short board for your SID tunes. The PAL timings will make everything sound correct (and will display the cool demo effects correctly). Like you said, the 8580 SID and C64C are what all the demoscene coders use and program for. I'm in the US and have more PAL 64s than NTSC ones. You could use that to make a cool video about building a 50hz clock generator too. I've made a few of these for my PAL boards out of throughole ICs (PCBs on OSH Park) but they're a bit larger than they really need to be. I'm currently working on a really small one made of SMD chips and a version of the switchless kernal switcher similar to yours, but with the addition of using a free IO pin on the arduino to generate a 50hz signal for the TOD clocks as well.
Or an Ultimate 64. Since so many cool demos and games are PAL, I use the Ultimate 64 in PAL to experience them properly here in NTSC land. More expensive, but the other great stuff you get with a U64 is so worth it. HDMI out, USB drive for storage, true 1541 emulation, on board Freeze carts, ethernet, Two sid slots, UltiSid emulated SID for up to 8 SID playback, and most importantly, it is still supported and improved on all the time. There is an onboard wifi chip that is not being used yet, but will eventually.
11:50 The analog filters on the SID chips not only make every chip just a tiny bit different from each other --- but each performance of the same composition on the SAME chip is (just a tiny bit) different too ...
I thought it was a clever trick to garble the intro sound.... then I realized it was my Bluetooth headset :-/ Another great video, thanks Adrian
I love all SID chips, but I do have to admit that my favorite is the 6581 R4AR. Or as I like to call it, "the 6581 Roar!" 🤓
8580 has a different analog section owing to the new process and lower voltages. You'll really hear it in the filters, which is why the percussion and white noise is different. It also has much less of a click when changing the master volume, making a lot of samples too quiet.
It's a real shame the 64C didn't sell as well in the US, it's such a pretty and capable machine. Great video sir, rock on!
I had a 1989 Commodore 64 C and my neighbour back then, had the older breadbin C-64. I remember I noticed a difference in sound, especially in games that have digitized speech, for example Ghostbusters. Mine seemed to say "Ghostbusters" more silently than neighbours older C-64.
There were some 'flaws' with the 6581 SID that were exploited by crafty composers for voice sampling. The 8580 SID revision corrected those 'flaws', creating some issues with some SID compositions.
Where i live in New Zealand (PAL) it was always a mixture of Bread bins and C64Cs. I got my C64C back in the day not long after they first came out because they also sold slightly cheaper. On our local online Auction website (Ebay didnt do well here) you hardly see the C64Cs... because they are so reliable collectors know to hord them. you really only see breadbins most of the time. The C64 series of computers did well here. i was still using mine right up till 1993.. GEOS was great for what it was
If I weren't for the unreliability of the breadbin, I wouldn't have so many repair videos :D
the first song of the Sidburner 7 demo is "Ode to C64" by Jeff Soren
Dang now I want to do the #8bitDanceParty for real. Maybe an outdoor rave somewhere around the California-Oregon border?
Where did the multicart come from? My c64 recently went bad, so I'll need a soldering station to fix it. Luckily I have a working SX 64.
I MAY go to the Vintage Computer Show in Seattle in March and bring along a very rare 65 board from the estate of Butterfield.
I have loved your c64 kick. Never had one but enjoy the content you create thank you
I really should go and find some good demos and modern games now that the 128D is all happy.
Some good examples here I’ll go look at - thanks Adrian.
The short boards were pretty common because there was more iteration of the C64 than the classical breadbin. One model was breadbin with small board and white keyboard, sold for a bargain in ALDI german discount shops. the C64C was sold in Tandy Radio shack shops and wasn't expensive either.
0:37 I was quite worried when you hovered above the durex box. :-)))
Although I don't have any particular interest in C64, I am fascinated by your testing and troubleshooting methods, which are applicable much more widely. Thanks!
Yeah, that's because solving problems is a thing the human mind is supposed to do. And most people have a lack of this, living in a world where humans mostly concentrate on causing problems or even abusing other's problems for their own selfish advantage.
Looks like this chip was from week 14 of 1989, so it was one of the very last chips that ran off the line. Quite probably a part that was produced for Commodore but installed in a unit that was never delivered, and junked along with all of the other stuff when the factories closed down.
13:20 Laxity, AKA Thomas E. Petersen, of the Maniacs of Noise. Dude's a ludicrously prolific composer, with more than 200 entries in the HVSC.
Awesome video like always top quality on everything you do.
16:36 the lowpassfilter is much more closed on the original 6581 chip than its with the newer 8580R5 chip
(im in synths for many many yeahrs and this sounds definitifly like an mid opend lowpass filter to my ears)
I remember getting a C64C and being disappointed with the sound. I don't remember what the exact issue was though. Just that something sounded terrible compared to the bread bin C64s. I eventually got the chance to swap in an older C64 SID and it worked fine. I didn't know anything about the voltages back then. I don't know what happened with The older C64 that got the C64C SID. I don't remember there being any issues with the swap, but this was all nearly 40 years ago.
In 1986, I was 16 years old and I had a C=128. I found a schematic on Compuserve drawn up in ASCII that showed me how to add a SECOND SID chip to my 128 which would give me the ability to play true STEREO music files with three voices per channel. In the parts list, it called for the second sid chip (obviously) as well as a bunch of resistors and caps etc. So I managed to get all the parts then took my 128 to a friends house who had a nice Weller soldering station and I started on it at 11 at night and finished at around 2am ... I took it home and I hooked it up to my stereo and I downloaded a bunch of stereo MIDI files from Compuserve along with the player and I was so happy that it worked perfectly! And it was true 6 voice stereo ... and something about that just sounded amazing to me lol.
I always wanted a 128. Never had one as a kid, only a c64, then went on to IBM clones. Buddy of mine had one though, He has like 2 or 3 128D's now. And I technically have a couple C64s. lol
@@maxxdahl6062I went to PC clones after my 128 ... never looked back ... switched to Mac around 2007 ... never looked back.
Another great C64 project! Can't wait to get started on my own C64 projects.
I bought a 1541 on craigslist that happened to come with an NTSC short-board C64C. It was just my "extra" C64, I never knew it was rare. I guess I'll have to take extra care of it now!
Wow I had no idea how expensive SID chips have become! Back in 2012 after building my x0xb0x Roland 303 clone, I had planned to build one of those open source MIDIbox MB6582 SID synthesizers that uses up to 8 SID chips in a standard synth form factor with built in programming as well as MIDI support.
I still have the chips laying around waiting for the day I finally build the thing, so I went and checked my old emails and saw I bought 8 chips, 4 of each type, for only $200! So only $25 a piece. And he even went out of his way to sound match the 12V chips for me (as apparently they differ more in the filter sounds than the 9V chips).
Just checked eBay and see SIDs all going for $50 a piece, some even up to $80, and I’m sure they’ll only get more expensive over time.
Wow am I glad I hung on to them (and I can’t believe it’s already been 8 years haha!). I searched for the seller’s account that I bought from and it doesn’t even exist anymore. Thanks for reminding me that I had them and reminding me to finally build the damn synth already :)
Love your videos!!
that sidburner music, remind me lot of the early 2000's, and the keygen type cracks.
Please tell me you have a video somewhere going through the process of making that NES controller work with the C64!
Not yet. Lots of people have asked so I can read into that joystick to show the process. (Don't have another NES controller to mod.)
@@adriansdigitalbasement I look forward to seeing it when you get a chance! I have an old NES controller with a damaged cable so this would be a perfect mod.
i got a few minutes into your vid,allow me to make a few corrections on what youve said so far upto the vic chip(on short boards) ,the vic is 5 volts only,the 6581 is 12 and 5 volts,the later 8580 is 9 and 5 volts,you want to see what happens when you remove the fuse,short board will boot and have a picture,but have no sound also can be easilly found out with a volt meter its the same pinout as early verion parts but voltages are different
Haha, I had the same idea with the jump button and built myself an arcade-like stick with Seimitsu components in a wooden box a few years ago. I live in Germany and here it's exactly the opposite - the longboards and their components are becoming more and more rare while shortboards from the C64 Cs and Gs are still quite easy to find.
Little fun fact... have you ever tried acquiring a PAL C64? You'll likely find that your screen already supports PAL, because LCDs do all the conversion in software (firmware)... they just plop the same firmware on every model and sell the same model in PAL regions. So you just need to plug it in and you can run PAL-compatible demos. There's a 60Hz (now 50Hz) signal that'll get screwed up - and that only seems to affect baud on the user port (no modems, boo, lol), but video and demos mostly play fine. You can see some amazing things with a PAL C64 and a real disk drive!
As for commodore64 sid chip 6581 i have some in stock and lots of other parts for amiga and for cd32 and are new as I did repair a lot of C64 and C64c I have pla instock
I'm working on a C64 (my second repair) and have isolated to a bad VIC2 chip (6567R8). They are all ridiculously expensive. I've ordered one from AliExpress. Wish me luck! I bought a GAL PLA from ebay and it's working great. Before long I'll get a MiniPro. Maybe I should buy a batch of PCBs and sell them to increase the US supply. Most of these C64 parts and items seem to need to be shipped from Europe or China - too bad there aren't more local sellers.
I did something similar with a master system pad as a kid. Was a real bodge job with a couple wires poking out to re-enable the up direction for those games that needed it. But having button 2 as jump a real game changer 😂
Great Video Adrian! I literally just picked up my first C64 a few days ago. It is a 64c! I still need to open it up to see what board it is running. Thank you for all the info. Already looking into Jiffydos and such. Already ordered a wifi cart as well. Keep up the good work sir!
I revired also a controler for my ZX Spectrum. Special button for jump and also a special one for down, great for dropping bombs in JET-STORY
I suppose you could use the chip in the long board, you just have to use a patch wire to the power pin off the 5 volt rail. So bend the power pin up on the chip, and find a 5 volt source off the mother board or power supply.
I really enjoyed this video.
Glad you got a working one. I don't know why but once I got my 64C in 87/88 with the 8580 SID I liked the cleaner sound better then the original 6581..
That said, the short board is not rare in the USA it is actually quite common. Most of the 64Cs you find will have a short board. In 1986 when the 64C came out they had an interim board a 1986 board with 6581 SID. You can usually identify them by the keyboard as the original run of 64Cs had the symbols printed on the front of the keys versus the later, what I like to call the "true 64C" where the symbols are printed on the top of the keys. They only made these original longboard 64Cs for a year or so. So they are quite uncommon.
When the shortboard was released in 87/88 it had the cost reduced chipset with 85xx chips. It is much more reliable. They sold these from 87/88 all the way until 93/94 even in the USA. At user groups in those days this was quite common and many original 64 owners at the user groups bought into the 64C. It was very popular. At least that is my experience being heavily into the 64 in those days.
interesting, what area of the country are you in? I grew up on the west coast and until i got back into these computers recently, i didn't even know c64s came in this form factor as i hadn't seen them. After our C64 Breadbin, we had a Commodore 128 which came in this newer case, and then went onto other computers after that. Not a lot of people here in 86 or later were still using c64s and certainly weren't buying them at the time. But again, maybe it was a regional thing?
@@brianv2871 SF Bay area. From 86/87 on that is all you seen in the stores here was the 64C model. I know a lot of people moved on by 90/91 but I was a hold out! Well I guess a lot of people in the User Groups were too, and still are. 😉
@@RacerX- ahh, Los Angeles area here, which Adrian was also... but yeah, i guess we started early and moved on by then. 😁
Very glad your chip is working. Won't buy from AliExpress ever again. As for DOC COSMOS that is a fun game. When I bought the game, I noticed it came with the .bin file. So I made a DOC COSMOS cartridge. Still learning how to make and edit video, so my video wasn't as good as I would like. BUT, I am glad everything did work out for you.
As gadgetUK said the 8580 uses 9v, the vic in the short board uses 5v. It will use the ac power for switching frequency reference but works without, try a short board with no fuse, still has picture but no sound
6581 have a more crude bass sound,the new revisions are more polished but less analog and not as rough
Some years ago I did the same rewired with a NES clone controller to play Atari 2600 and Atari GS games and yes, is an excellent mod to do.
Great video as always.
it is known that the newer SID chips have a cleaner sound but are worse in digi-drums (samples) replay. i.e. they make trance/techno sound a bit better maybe, but sometimes lose when playing older tunes with digi drums. Every 6581 sounds different anyway because they have analogue parts.
The filter cutoff seems to go higher in the spectrum. That mostly creates the different sound.
"Today's gonna be a quick one".
34:15 long video. :)
I was just about to comment on that! Haha
My C64 (Breadbin) has the short board under the hood.
Same here.
Any chance for a tutorial on how to make that nes c64 controller? I really want to make one of those.
I put a link in the description to someone else's video. He did it on a modern USB one. I figured there were many out there but if enough people ask I'll do it.
3:09 isn't it 9 V? 18:54 and shouldn't that be acetone? (And preferably out of the socket if using acetone since acetone attacks the ABS plastic in the socket.)
Assuming you had the mic recording at the same rate, with no autoadjustment settings built into it during your tests I checked out the sounds in a visualizer.
after chucking your samples o the intro sound test into my very old and very visual sound editing software, there is deff a difference, in all 3, the 6581 is alot of noise(think everyone talking in a large hall at once kind of noise floor but its static) and it seems to use that noise to generate the wind sounds near the start, and the beats are loud and decent. the 8580 has far less noise and uses it less as an effect and you can hear more of the actual sound, but because it has less of a noise level certain things aren't blown out of proportion, which means the beats are much quieter and on top of that they are a diff waveform, it generates them differently
the microcontroller based sid has the least noise of all, but its also set too low in volume, its 5db lower than the other two, its straight up lower volume than the rest. the beat section of the song its waveform matches the 6581 in shape and peaks, and the rest it takes from the 8580 which it matches in waveform, but doesn't quite have the same peaks again volume level(but even amplified its peaks aren't quite high enough), and it absolutely nails the waveform for some of the sounds, and totally fails for others, the others are the ones that make it sound...weird
Great timing with this video as I need to pickup a couple of sid chips. You had luck but looking around it seems really hit and miss if you get a working chip or not.
I keep looking at those swinsid nanos on ebay for about £15 but not sure. Might get 1 just to have but I'd prefer the original. Could you maybe do some more comparison between the genuine suds and the various remakes?
I need to get the FPGA SID. It just seems hard to find these things even ... The FPGA one is the way to go though. Apparently so much better than the SwinSID.
I wonder if the Durex listed on the front page at the beginning of the video are of similar quality to their chips?
I don't know why I never considered mapping up to a button for game that use up to jump. I'm going to do that more from now on.
A lot of software developers wrote routines that took into account quirks the original sid chips had , try playing The intro to skate or die on an 8580 as one example..
The Skate or Die intro music is hardly a straightforward example of SID tunes going wrong, it can sound fine on an 8580 but it can also sound like utter garbage.
Because it's an old-fashioned digitune, which exploits the volume register bug present in the 6581, an original copy of the game always plays the tune correctly on that model SID. However a lot of people played Eaglesoft's cracked NTSC version which runs fine on PAL machines but plays the intro music at PAL speed i.e. too slow.
64s with 8580 SID's are more complicated as they weren't all created equal. Some have an integrated "fix" which brings the volume of digitunes up to 6581 levels, the SoD tune plays fine on these machines as well. However a lot of 64Cs don't have this "fix", consequently the tune doesn't play correctly with the lead guitar being almost completely inaudible. The difference is really obvious and can be simulated easily with VICE or sidplay.
If I remember right, people like to make music with the older chips because a bug in the way the filters are implemented lets them hack sounds from the chip that its designers never intended :)
program that joystick so you can hit select to select between, up for jump, space as use for bombs or whatever, and pin 9 paddle input, some games use it
There used to be a local guy who sold a lot of C64 chips that he got from china presumably but he would always test them and it worked out pretty well. Seems like he no longer sells them but I got a VIC-2 for 10€ which has served me well for over 2 years now. I've had pretty good luck with the 4464 RAM chips from aliexpress, cost pennies per chip compared to a few bucks for one on eBay so I wouldn't mind if half of them didn't work, although when troubleshooting it really helps to have known good chips so it's a bit of a tradeoff
I've owned probably 20 C64s, had every one of them open, and I've never seen a "short board" like that. Must indeed be rare.
I've also found the SwinSID to give poor results (heavy biases) if you use the noise channel for random number generation, which many games did. My minesweeper game ended up with way more mines showing up in the top half of the screen than on a normal SID chip.
I have two c64c boards and one needs a vic and sid the other has some gfx issues. I can buy them for £15-£20 and all need vic and sid for this price. The Vic are around £10, but all the sid chips are between £30 and £40 in europe - uk. I brought a cheap nano swinsid for testing ect but I don't think it is worth buying the cheaper boards and then spending £50 to replace the two missing chips.
You just have to manually make a subtraction to the filtercutoffvalue and it will sound closer to the original 6581 😀
You might want to try to install the digifix for your 8580.
That NES mod is brilliant. +1 for the D-pad over a joystick.
Gee they got the pins pretty pristine 6:29 , because they look like they haven't been used before, ie, no solder blobs, and quite shinny.
Yeah the sound of the old chip sounds fuller and has more nuances.
They must have a factory that processes these old chips to make them look good again. I'd be curious what their exact process it...
Love your intro, especially the gibberish typed at 0:28 🤣
Hmm, if I remember correctly the C128 also uses an 8580, so it should sound the same as the short board one does, also here where I live (Argentina) the 64C was quite popular in the home computer market and I even played with one at a computer museum located in the central part of the city
Also the 8580 is a complete redesign of the original 6580, so that's why it sounds so different, but hey I like the two since the difference is only on the filters, the synth is still the same
as i can recall the very early C128 had the 6581 and later 1985 had the 8580 Commodore corrected the Bug on the 8580 but unfortunately Game composers went around this cursed Bug or they Actually took it as a Advantage ... and put it too use making great music .. so when the 8580 came around with out that bug the Game Music played differently and sounded like crap as some of the music had either dead spots or sounded way differntly in laymans terms ITs like someone used a slightly different sound bank to play midis files in todays PC Soundboards
I've always preferred the 6581 as it has a "muddier" sound. I never realised the difference as a kid, despite a neighbour owning a newer C64 (which would have had the 8580). My breadbin definitely had the 6581 though as it was one of the earliest C64 units produced. Sadly, the C64 died many years ago and I gave it away along with the huge game collection :(
I got a C64C and it has a 6581 r4 in it , so your neighbor might had the same sound chip
Could've called this episode the China SIDrome.
Brilliant!
I see a picture of a Moog synth as you desktop image in the back. Are you a synth-head as well?
Compare Rob Hubbards' lightforce between the 2 SIDs. It's very different in the second half.
Nothing to remind you not to fall asleep to UA-cam like 30 minutes of C64 test tones.
Back in the day, i had 3 SID chips (C64s were thrown to garbage back then, i did the same..) and all sounded different. The difference was not subtle but quite drastic.