MOS Technology SID

The MOS Technology SID ( SID stands for Sound Interface Device, German Sound Interface Device ) is a programmable 3 -voice sound chip, the C64 and C128 came mainly in the home computers from Commodore in the 1980s for use.

He is considered the best sound chip of the 8 - bit era. From Byte Magazine 1995, he was included in a list of the 20 most important chip in computer history. SID was developed by Bob Yannes, who later founded the company Ensoniq. The SID is responsible for the typical polyphonic sounds that characterize the home computer age.

Technical Details

  • Hybrid chip, partly digital, partly analogous
  • 3 independent voices ( oscillators )
  • 4 partly combinable digital waveforms per voice (triangle, sawtooth, pulse with adjustable pulse width, white noise )
  • Fundamental frequencies from 0 to 4 kHz
  • High resolution of the fundamental frequency of 16 bits
  • 3 combinable analog filter ( low pass, high pass, band pass or notch filter with a 11- bittigen cutoff frequency and resonance variable with 4 -bit resolution, each voice individually switchable, 2- pole filters )
  • The voice adjustable digital envelope ( ADSR )
  • Common volume control for all the voices in 16 steps
  • The voice individually switchable digital synchronization of the voice with the next
  • The voice individually switchable digital ring modulation from triangle waves with the next vote
  • Voice 3 suppressed at the output
  • An external analog voice admixed and filterable
  • 2 simple A / D converter

From the SID there are three versions, the older 6581 and the newer HMOS - II versions 8580 and 6582nd The 8580 is characterized mainly by clearer sound with less noise, but does the method often used on the 6581 play of the 4-bit samples via volume register here no longer. Another difference in the filters. While the properties of the filter largely conform to the specifications in the 8580, has the filter of the 6581 strong non-linearities which can also vary from chip to chip. The 6581 was produced in 5 different revisions. The 6582 was never sold in a C64 or C128, but partly used as a replacement for 8580, since, as of 8580, with 9 V voltage runs in contrast to the older 6581, which requires 12V.

Due to the high popularity of the C64 created many compositions for the SID that are now considered classics of computer music. To play this music even on today's computers, the SID file format was created. Player for this format exist for virtually all platforms (Win 95, Win 3.1, Linux, MS- DOS, Mac OS, AmigaOS, Atari Falcon, BeOS, OS / 2, Android, etc.). These are usually an emulator of the processor and sound chip of the C64. Because of the semi -analogous structure of the SID an exact emulation of the sound quality has not yet been reached. Therefore, there are also some hardware synthesizers with real SID chips for sound production. Since the chip is no longer manufactured for decades, resourceful hobbyists have a hardware- based emulator of the SID built based on an Atmel AVR, called SwinSID. In the version of this nano- is not greater than a normal package SID.

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