USBSID-Pico

About

USBSID-Pico is a RPi Pico/PicoW (RP2040) & Pico2 (RP2350) based board for interfacing one or two MOS SID chips and/or hardware SID emulators over (WEB)USB with your computer, phone, ASID supporting player or USB midi controller.

Get in contact on Discord here: https://discord.gg/zG2rxXuT2g

View active Github discussions here: https://github.com/LouDnl/USBSID-Pico/discussions

Visit the Github page for more information: https://github.com/LouDnl/USBSID-Pico

Features

SID Playing

USBSID-Pico supports various ways of playing SID files.

Out-of-the box playing is supported by using Deepsid by Chordian

by selecting WebUSB (Hermit) as player in the pulldown menu or

by selecting ASID (MIDI) as player in the pulldown menu.

SidBerry is a command line SID file player for Linux with up to 4 SIDs supported.

Unofficial support is added to a fork of Vice, up to 3 SIDs are supported in vsid and up to 4 in xs64.

Unofficial support is added to a fork of RetroDebugger, up to 4 SIDs are supported.

C64 Music trackers

When using Vice or RetroDebugger you can freely use applications like SID-Wizard for music creation.

Midi

USBSID-Pico acts as Midi device and supports basic Midi in ~ note that Midi is still in development and in Beta phase.

Supported platforms

In development

• Linux: Vice, RetroDebugger, SidBerry, JSidplay2, USB Midi, ASID (in webbrowser) SID Play
• Windows: Vice
• Windows/Android: USB Midi, ASID (in webbrowser) SID Play

PCB Features ~ v1.0

• Supports all MOS SID chips e.g. MOS6581, MOS6582 & MOS8580
• Supports SID chip replacements e.g. SIDKick-Pico, SwinSID, ARMSID (untested), FPGASID (untested)
• 1 MHz oscillator (external optional, enabled via jumper pad)
• if no external clock is detected USBSID-Pico will generate a 1 MHz square wave using pio
• clock speed is configurable
• if an external clock is detected will read the external clock signal
• Power via USB
• 5v stepup for clean 5v VCC to both SID chips
• 12v or 9v stepup for clean VDD to both SID chips
• 12v/9v jumper, defautls to 12v ~ inspired by SIDBlaster-Nano design
• Audio out filter as in the C64 schematics
• With optional 6581 resistor, solder the 6581 (mislabeled 8580!) jumper pad in each audio circuit for this.
• Audio jumper
• SID1 audio left & right
• SID1 audio left & SID2 audio right
• Optional EXT-IN pulldown resistor as filter bypass to reduce filter noise for Digiplay on 8580 SID's

Disclaimer

I do this stuff in my free time for my enjoyment. Since I like to share my joy in creating this with everyone I try my best to provide a working PCB and Firmware. I am in no way an electronics engineer and can give no guarantee that this stuff does not break or damage your hardware, computer, phone, or whatever you try to hook it up to. Be sure to take great care when inserting any real MOS SID chips into the board. While everything has been tested with real chips, this is in no way a guarantee that nothing could go wrong. Use of this board and firmware at your own risk! I am in no way responsible for your damaged hardware. That being said, have fun!