Let's build a SIDKick Pico so our c64's 6581 has a friend to play with! Oh, and is it any good?

SID Chips for the C64 are getting rarer and rarer - does the SIDKick Pico come up with the goods as a suitable replacement?
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www.pcbway.com/project/sharep...
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References & Attributions
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReSID
github.com/frntc/SIDKick-pico...
retrocomp.cz/produkt?id=2
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Tec...
www.nexperia.com/products/ana...

[@philipmccloy180]

The level shifters are for the data lines: 5v on the C64 to ~3v on the Pico. Not for the SID 12v/9v down to 5v.

[@aliismail2962]

Yeah the level shifters have nothing to do with the voltage regulation

[@adriansdigitalbasement]

Indeed, these types of SID replacements don't typically connect to the 9v/12v pin at all. They just use pin 25 (5V) for power. The 9v/12v pin could be used for automatic motherboard type detection to switch emulation modes, if desired.

[@TheRetroShack]

Thanks Adrian (and others) for pointing this out - I’ll pin this so it’s clear.

[@philipmccloy180]

Hello Adrian. Greetings from Scotland. Enjoy watching your retro computing videos, especially the Haribo intermissions (aye, lol) @@adriansdigitalbasement

[@M0UAW_IO83]

Interestingly Eben Upton claimed the Pico inputs could cope with 5V, Hackaday comments September 25th 2022 on the "Pi Pico does PCMCIA" article.

[@horusfalcon]

It amazes me the sheer tenacity of the C64 community. This is several iterations downrange of the original SID chips, and newer and better implementations keep coming out. You've got a winner with the SidKick Pico. Well done!

[@akira808state4]

Nice to see another SID replacement. I found another one a few months ago called BackSID. Fully compatible with the 6581/8580, everything is implemented except for the seldom used audio passthrough.

[@talideon]

So it has analogue components, or is that side emulated digitally?

[@g4z-kb7ct]

The TRUE cost of the SwinSID is about $3. I know because I built some myself, including reversing and re-designing the PCB to have a better layout thus making it easier to build. That amount is with the PCB and all parts. the Atmel is about $1, the remaining parts are just pennies and the PCB is about $1. But yeah the SIDKick obsoletes it completely.

[@chepossofare]

Just a minor thing: Pico (and all of its logic) runs at 3.3v :P I was working on a project like this but i think they surpassed me, good job! It sounds very good!

[@wmcmick]

Yes, Pico and all logic at 3.3V, none of the pins on the Pico is 5V tolerant (unlike the STM32 series that has some 5V tolerant pins, even running at 3.3V).

[@OPdbx]

To get an idea of what a SID chip with more voices could have been like, look into the early Ensoniq synthesizers like the ESQ-1. The same engineers who created the SID chip went on to design those synths.

[@claudioquintanilla1471]

Yeah!!! Bob Yannes was the master mind behind the SIDchip!!!

[@RaymondDay]

@@claudioquintanilla1471 I heard you wanted way more voices just not three I forget how many but it was a lot but they didn't have time.

[@merman1974]

I'm quite impressed by that. The menu looks really good and great to see the Digiboost built in. There were some very subtle differences from the original 6581, but then it's rare to find two 6581 that sound identical (due to the analogue components & how they react to heat). The price is good too, although a group buy may be harder to organise.

[@edgeeffect]

My tip would be: don't use those ghastly female headers to mate the Pi Pico to the SID board... because they're (aesthetically and technically) ghastly... throw them away and get some nice male and female "machine pin" headers... or just accept that you're "sacrificing" the Pi Pico and just use a single male header soldered on to both the Pico and the SID board. :)

[@g4z-kb7ct]

The biggest issue with the armsid is closed source and encrypted firmware. the microcontroller on there has a protected bootblock that is used for firmware updates. it decrypts the firmware internally. they do that so people can't copy it, especially chinese companies ripping off and re-producing stuff for a fraction of the cost. with the pi pico at least it will be possible to make these almost forever at 1/3rd the cost. The biggest issue facing the sidkick is the eventual end-of-production of the pi pico and the new iteration of it that may or may not be 100% compatible, thus requiring an updated sidkick board. But hopefully someone steps up and does it when that happens.

[@slowlymakingsmoke]

Well, I must say it sounded better than the Armsid to me, specifically with the digitised audio parts. I just love the Pico, it is super flexible and powerful.

[@Colin_Ames]

Great to see another SID replacement. Listening to this on an iPad, my old ears couldn’t discern a difference, but I’m sure there is. Enjoyable video.

[@Geenimetsuri]

I think the SidKick Pico had a more natural sound compared to the ARMSid, which sounded almost too clean 🤔

[@Nguyen_Phuc08]

Just built one of those, got 9 spare boards. Ordered from PCBWAY

[@perkulant4629]

That pico one sounds better to me than the armsid. Very cool.

[@patrickdeunhouwer5926]

Love them, hope a complete assembled one comes available via a webshop for a good price

[@erwindewit4073]

Cool, nice to see a video again! Is weird, it almost sounded like i prefer the sidkick to the armsid. But i wouldn't complain about any of them .. I'm fortunate to still have 3 out of 3 originals working fine..

[@preferredimage]

Would have been good to run it by some sid tunes that tax it. two games from the early days seems a bit of a cop out. But the project looks amazing and a great cheap way to get sound back for any dead sids.

[@JohnAnderson4242]

I have BackSID and ARMSID and I think they do really well. What is missing for me, in all these replacement SID solutions, and their reviews is a musical inclined person to do the review. I want to see paddles attached, and using software like CynthCART. That would be a true show of these chips/solutions. May be I'll do that.

[@chrisdixon5241]

Great project! I was about to jump into the comments to say I could hear a difference, then I realised it was the ARMSID - to me it sounds cleaner and more digital and maybe a bit louder, especially in the digitised sound samples, but in doing so it loses the charm and warmth of an original SID. In contrast, I thought the SidKick sounded exactly like the 6581 it replaced - what an incredible job those VICE guys did all those years ago!

[@curiousottman]

They all sound great to me!

[@rager1969]

Wow, that's a really good price to have PCBWay fully build five boards.

[@3osufdh4rfg]

Pretty nice, might have to get a few for some homebrew computer projects. One thing about the video, it'd be easier to compare if each SID was shown on the same game next to each other before moving on to the next game as in the video.

[@ridbensdale]

Super video. Love the new SID chips. I’d have tested Turbo OutRun for its mix of samples.

[@TheRetroShack]

Good call!

[@ridbensdale]

I remember how that intro blew me away back in 1990.

[@thorstenoerts]

I wonder if anyone ever created a real analog version of the SID's filter using discrete components. It almost certainly wouldn't fit in as small a footprint as these emulators, but it would be kinda cool, even if you had to have it in an external box.

[@NickT6630]

Im using SwinSIDs and I have an external 8 bit DAC controlling a VCF - analogue low pass voltage controlled filter. It can be used to take out the high frequency noise but also gives additional sound shaping possibilites.

[@frankwhite2072]

That intro is really good.

[@EinChris75]

Wow. The intro notes also got some friends...

[@fallingwater]

Hey - I tried to look for this but couldn't find it, and it seems to confuse Shazam. What's the outro music (at 16:33)?

[@TheRetroShack]

Ah - you won’t find that anywhere else because it’s my own composition :)

[@R.Daneel]

@7:50 Misspoke "VCRs"? Probably VCOs (Voltage Controlled Oscillators).

[@spokehedz]

Never had a C64, but I have no idea what the 32-voice SID would have sounded like... But can you imagine how many more pins it would need? And/or how physically much larger it would have been?

[@Rick_Todd]

Finally someone plays music we all know and love for a real comparison. Are you going to sell 1 or 2 ? I don't mind paying a little extra to help you get the costs back. All the best from Manchester UK.

[@TheRetroShack]

I’ll probably end up using the picos for something else but there’s a link on the SidKick pico GitHub page for somewhere that’s selling these complete and ready to use.

[@Rick_Todd]

@@TheRetroShack Nice 1 Cheers

[@kilianhekhuis]

Would be even better if there was a design that put the RP2040 directly onto the PCB with the level shifters, so it wouldn't look like a big truck instead of a sleek sedan :).

[@carlosbragatto]

Does it emulates the potentiometers in order to use a mouse and paddles?

[@emmettturner9452]

Same question.

[@retrig202]

Yes, he mentioned that in the video.

[@newYorkStories]

I have 2 6581s in my drawer. What should I do with them?

[@randysmith7094]

I wonder if there's a way to avoid using level shifters and make a super cheap version. Maybe float the pico 1.2V above ground with two diodes and also diodes or resistors on the data lines. Might be janky but it might work.

[@ghydda]

No it won't.

[@mudi2000a]

Resid is not the most accurate SID emulation any more, that one is unfortunately hidden inside the Plogue chipsynth C64 software synthesizer, which is a commercial software. Except if Plogue will feed back their code one day to the community.

[@C64sidVSsid]

I'll want it to compare with other sid chip on my channel but it s expansive. I see it's big than Armsid or backsid and other... No problems in case with c64 II ? I have tested nanoswin x-sid backsid fpga sid. For me actually the Armsid or arm2sid is the Best solution for quality price. with the firmware 2.15 compatibility is perfect... No glitchs or bugs detected

[@joopidema]

Great project. It’s a shame the gerber files are not available so I can use my own preferred PCB maker.

[@blitzerblazinoah6838]

Hilarious intro.

[@thebigdavester]

Great voice. Seriously.

[@TheRetroShack]

Thanks very much! :) Always open to offers of voiceover work :)

[@FredBloggs919]

32 voice SID chip back in the day would have been absolutely amazing!

[@stefanweilhartner4415]

yes, but bob yannes knew the limitations. the more interesting features would have been wave tables and maybe an lfo that modulates between two wavetables as well as the adsr function. stereo with 4 bit left and 4 bit right volume. jack trammiel was a complete jerk to him which was the reason why bob yannes left commodore and founded his own sound chip company Ensoniq.

[@FredBloggs919]

@@stefanweilhartner4415 very interesting! Cheers!

[@pixelfrenzy]

@@FredBloggs919 There's a documentary on Commodore somewhere on YT that covers some of this, IIRC

[@RaymondDay]

@@stefanweilhartner4415 I heard that the SID chip was the first synthesizer chip.

[@taakelur]

Is it possible to buy these fully assembled for those of us who are hesitant to solder stuff? It would be worth the extra cost, even if it's twice as much.

[@TheRetroShack]

I think there’s a link on the SidKick GitHub page for somewhere that sells them direct?

[@taakelur]

​@@TheRetroShack I looked, but as far as I can tell, there is nothing

[@thomasandrews9355]

It’s against the license of the pcb.

[@taakelur]

@@thomasandrews9355 The GPL license? I can find no such restrictions in it.

[@thomasandrews9355]

@@taakelur the pcb is not gpl sadly CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 also means: selling for profit on ebay (e.g. indicated by pricing), or running a shop and offering hardware under such license (no matter on which platform) is a violation of the license

[@dominikschutz6300]

Hello, I have an idea: Maybe the SID chip is designed as a voice chip, which can emulate human voices better... Therefore the idea of further development for the Commander X16 would make sense... But a cool project would be a Twitch talking machine which only reads comments who pay a minimum amount of money :)

[@dominikschutz6300]

Or have a specific content which the user can better understand like only technical questions or questions about cooking stuff, where the user can respond to :)

[@SeanChYT]

I would only seriously consider using one of these if they could make a version that was the size and shape of the original SID (and ArmSID). Right now, it doesn't look very good. The actual RP2040 chip on the Pi Pico isn't that big, so I guess it should be doable.

[@OscarSommerbo]

You can cut some height if you fore go the pinheaders and hard solder the Pico to the level shifter board.

[@SeanChYT]

@@OscarSommerbo It will still look bulky and oversized. I am waiting for someone to create a single-PCB version that is the same size as the ArmSID. A standard Pi Pico board is very much larger than it needs to be if you just want the processor, since that PCB is meant to be a breakout board for maker projects and prototypes.

[@chepossofare]

That would be absolutely doable, but it would increase the cost a lot, so i think that would be out of scope :)

[@SeanChYT]

@@chepossofare I don't see how that would be more expensive than this solution. The RP2040 chip costs $1 on LCSC (which is JLCPCB's parts store), so instead of ordering a manufactured PCB that does only level shifting like was shown in this video you could get a single PCB that also had the RP2040 chip on it, and then you didn't have to buy the Pi Pico board at all, the PCB could be smaller, and you could get the SMD parts, including the RP2040 chip, soldered on by the PCB fab. The main issue with this approach is the time it takes for someone to make the PCB design, and they might not want to make the gerbers available for free download. I don't see why they couldn't compete with the ArmSID on price, though, if they wanted to make a commercial product.

[@1337Shockwav3]

Go ahead then. It's not like someone's gonna read this comment and do it for you :) For reasons of looks I only use Commodore made SIDs with the silicon flipped 180°.

[@eliotmansfield]

soldering iron doesn’t look hot enough - solder should flow down the pinhole not sit on top. Try pre-warming the board a bit with a heat gun to get over the heatsink effect.

[@properjob2311]

to my old ears they all sound the same

[@stefanweilhartner4415]

interestingly, making it sound as close to the original one's, does not mean that they will sound better. i am more in the other direction to improve things.

[@user-yv2cz8oj1k]

Fine if you are just into nostalgia, now make something even better, with the SID as an optional selection of yesteryear.

[@CiociariaStorica]

I knew about the 32 voices originally speculated for the SID, but I didn't know they were actually present in the chip. Fantastic! SIDKick Pico is a nice piece of hardware 😊

[@pixelfrenzy]

That's not what he said - the photo of the die shows the logic 3 times over, not 32x.

[@CiociariaStorica]

@@pixelfrenzy 32 x Is 96 😁

[@pixelfrenzy]

it means "32 times" as in 32 voices. @@CiociariaStorica

[@CiociariaStorica]

@@pixelfrenzy 👍🏻

[@104d_3rr0r_vince]

There is no perfect replacement for SID. But yes, thank God there are replacements 😀

[@1337Shockwav3]

Citation needed.

[@manicdataminer]

“All models are wrong, some are useful.” --George Box

[@pyrotas]

The more expensive Armsid fails to align properly the sampled “Ghostbusters!” in the intro soundtrack, something the sidkick does wonderfully instead.

[@tYNS]

The user hits the space bar to trigger the voice sample. It Is not normally in the song itself. You can press the space bar at any time to play the voice sample on the title screen.

[@RaymondDay]

This is grate. Stere SID too. Long ago I hacked some games that I wanted to make in Stereo. I made it so it auto find the 2nd SID chip. I remember looking at a byte were the SID chip is and then poke it and peek it and if it read the right number that a 2nd stereo SID chip was addressed there. I put 2 Videos here on KZbin that show them and a link to download the Stereo games. kzbin.info/www/bejne/gHO8mIilp9qmfKM and kzbin.info/www/bejne/b4HJkol5pLKbldk I want to get one of them but it be nice if some one can test out them games that has stereo with this and see if it auto finds the 2nd SID. -Raymond Day

[@RobA500]

Good to see another SID replacement though it does look a bit cumbersome, ArmSID is the definite aesthetic winner. Real shame you didn't do a direct audio capture your TV speakers didn't do it justice, though I guess you went for the true authentic sound we all heard back in the days.

[@TheRetroShack]

Yes, although you could of course solder the pico to the SidKick PCB without the headers if you were sure you weren’t going to need the pico for anything else in the future. I’ll make one like that and post a picture for comparison.

[@aliismail2962]

You can create a custom PCB with rp2040 and level shifter and it will be if similar size to Armsid

[@chrispybee]

Based on your tests, the SIDKick is way better than the ArmSID. The ghostbusters test definitely shows it off, as the sample ‘Ghostbusters’ in the song doesn’t delay unlike the ArmSID. Cheap as chips, even if you sell them on or a group purchase.

[@eric67361]

The delay was when the spacebar was pressed. Not the armsid itself.

[@surfinbirdzx]

I hope that when no-sid-dark-times will come technology will be so advanced that somebody manage to produce real chips in his garage. Until then - no emulators inside my C64, thanks:)

[@TheRetroShack]

Here’s hoping!

[@6581punk]

FPGA is the way to go. I have an FPGA SID.

[@eobet]

Surveillance cop cpu is dead to me. Let me know when the next alternative arrives.

[@JohnSmith-iu8cj]

What a crappy audio recording

[@the_holy_forestfairy]

Tip: LukHash. He makes Music with C64 and more!!