Shepherding electrons

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!

This is part 2 of my ATtiny Mario project - part one is here  -  a Mario-type game I made for the ATtiny85 AVR as a fun way of learning about the chip.  After writing the software, I decided I wanted a nice housing for the mass of wires on my breadboards and thought it would cool to put it into a NES-style controller, which is what this post will discuss.

ATtiny85 Mario Challenge! The ATtiny85 microcontroller is a capable but compact AVR.  However with only 8K of program memory, 512 bytes of EEPROM, 512 of SRAM and only 8 pins (3 of which are dedicated to the usual suspects of Vcc, GND and RESET), it best suited to performing tasks where memory demands are not large, and only a few pins are required for interfacing.