[Mcjack123] Lately entering ChipTune and realizing that his real interest started in 2018 when he used an Arduino to turn a TI-84 calculator into a sound machine. His latest iteration is a custom-designed soundboard and he took us through its design and construction in a recent post.
Working models include classic sound generators such as 2A03 or Commodore 64 SID. You have a bunch of simple waveform generators with filters and modulators to create different effects. These boards have finally given way to FM synthesis devices like the Yamaha OPL2 and OPL3 chips. All of these cards take commands and create their own audio. More modern boards are more likely to convert digital data from computers to audio.
The first attempt was with a raspberry pie pico. It worked to some degree, but the code was too slow to run multiple channels at once. The processor itself is quite fast, so there may be a way to get there, but instead, he decided to go a different way.
The final product is blended together using multiple PIC chips and some analog circuitry as generators. To get the exact time, PICs use assembly language. A fun project if you enjoy ChipTunes.
We see a lot of fun ChipTune projects. Some of them are quite small.