SN76489 Arduino MIDI player
I've been thinking about retro 8-bit computers recently and came across the audio chip SN76489 ( datasheet ), which has been used in the BBC Micro , Sega Genesis and Master System (among many others ). The chips are capable of generating 3 independent frequencies simultaneously, as well as a 4th channel for noise. They seemed easy enough to interact with, using a write pulse to load commands into the chip in a parallel-fashion. I thought it would be fun to hook one up to an Arduino and play some retro game MIDI files through them! It would be easy to take a few and make a MIDI synthesizer out of them too. All code for this project can be found at my Github here: https://github.com/shepherdingelectrons/SN76489_player It's easy to pick up a few cheaply from the usual sort of places, so I bought a pack of 5, and then had a read through the datasheet , which is always fun!