NesSIDPlay: NES and Master System tunes on your SID

MIDIbox SID
1

Hello,

I was using google for my daily constant find of weird and/or retro stuff when found this nice geek stuff: NesSIDPlay.

I was reading about this small program that runs on the C64, and it’s some kind of PSG emulator for C64 using the SID! The emulation is not “perfect” due to some hardware limitations, but is very good.

When I first discovered MIDIBOX SID my first uses were retrocomputerish ones, but then I discovered a wide variety of possibilities. I think MIDIBOX SID can have even more retro uses.

What about emulating different PSG chips? Mainly in my mind I see Sinclair Spectrum, NES, Gameboy, PCengine and SMS ones. But it can be nice emulating them not only by emulating the sounds for syntheticing retro 8bit sounds, but the possibility of using MIDIBOX side as a tiny box where you can play those songs stored in special files (.NSF, NSFe[/ur], .HES,.GBS, .PSG, .SND, OUT, ZXAY, ZX50, STC, ZXS, ASC, YM, VTX, PSG, STP, PSC, FTC, FLS, PT1, PT2, PT3, SQT…). This thing can consume a lot of time, but can be a long term and low priority goal as some retro contrib, or the future project by someone new in the MIDIBOX scene experimenting with it.

I think with two SID chips is fully possible to do 100% perfect emulation of most PSG chips. Am I correct?

http://web.archive.org/web/20050311094903/http://www.zyx.com/chrisc/nessidplay.html(official site is dead but nicely rescued by web archive ;))

http://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/MIRRORS/utopia.hacktic.nl/pub/c64/Music/NesSidPlay/(some mirror countaining the program)

Here are some specs:

SMS (Sega Master System)

# Sound (PSG): Texas Instruments SN76489

    * 4 channel mono sound

    * 3 sound generators, 4 octaves each, 1 white noise generator

# Sound (FM): Yamaha YM2413

    * 9 channel mono FM sound

    * built into Japanese Master System

    * available as plug-in module for Mark III

    * supported by certain games only

NES

Audio: Five sound channels

    * 2 pulse-wave channels, variable duty cycle (25%, 50%, 75%, 87.5%), 16-level volume control, hardware pitch-bend support, supporting frequencies from 54Hz to 28kHz.

    * 1 triangle-wave channel, fixed volume, supporting frequencies from 27Hz to 56kHz

    * 1 white-noise channel, 16-level volume control, supporting two modes (by adjusting inputs on a linear feedback shift register) at 16 preprogrammed frequencies

    * 1 delta pulse-code modulation (DPCM) channel with 6 bits of range, using 1-bit delta encoding at 16 preprogrammed sample rates from 4.2 kHz to 33.5 kHz, also capable of playing standard PCM sound by writing individual 7-bit values at timed intervals.

The NES has 5 sound channels: 2 square wave, with only 4 selectable duty cycles; 1 triangle wave; 1 noise channel; and 1 DMC sample channel.

Does this mean two SID chips are able to doing a FULL recreation of the Master System and NES’ PSG? Can SID with SMS’ FM? And MIDIBOX FM?

2

Might as well make a dedicated synth out of those chips …