Making sounds for the µLInd
When I woke up this morning I felt an urge to make a footprint for one of the peripherals that is planned for the µLind: the Audio Expansion Card! The final design for µLind has 3 expansion ports: the Video Expansion Port (VEP), the Audio Expansion Port (AEP) and the General Expansion Port (GEP). So I wanted to make a footprint for the AEP so I could start thinking about sound options for the µLind. However when I finally sat down and draw a footprint I could not really stop, so I happend to make a Stereo SID audio board. Go figure!
There is always some kind of feature creep when I sit down to design things ant this time was not any different.
It started with a basic 6581 (the old SID) board, it has 12v power supply so I needed a step up converter.
When I found a small module and saw it had support for both 9v and 12v I realised that with small modifications I could make the board compatible with both kinds of SID chips, just need different power supply and 4 caps with different values.
When that was done I had my son look at my handywork and he, off course, suggested we should make it so the card would support the ARM2SID we had lying.
Said and done I read the documentation and we figured out how to make it possible to use the ARM2SID in tripple SID mode or SID and SFX mode. I even found the connector to connect the ARM2SID direct to the bord and only use a single socket.
So I got so in to it that at 11:30 PM I was finished with a producable board, routed and done!
Sometimes I might get a bit carried away…