The Commodore 64 computer is no longer legendary for, er,
performance and power, but it is legendary for its built-in synthesizer
chip, the SID. Lovers of this phat-sounding analog chip will go to
great lengths to feed their nostalgia:
- Butcher an actual C64 and build your own MIDI-capable SID synthesizer (via hack-a-day)
- Add a real SID chip with MIDI control via a PC-compatible PCI card, the HardSID (thanks, Carl Lumma!) or Catweasel Mk4 — apparently both work with Mac, as well, via SidPlay
- Run SidPlay (Mac OS X), straight SID emulation software (both it and the ReSID emulation engine are open source)
- Run an emulator and run original music creation software for the C64 — try CCS64 for Windows or the OS X emulators from emulation.net
Any of you intrepid readers doing synthesis — perhaps even on an original C64? Let us know, and, heck, send tracks!