I fixed the name and the manufacturing info.

As far as this board goes, your USSR chips appear to function identically to the 74 series chips contained on the original Innovation boards. Are your chips actually replaceable with the standard logic chips, which the board's traces rely on?

Great Hierophant wrote:

I fixed the name and the manufacturing info.

Thank's for fixes and for the information on the page.

Great Hierophant wrote:

As far as this board goes, your USSR chips appear to function identically to the 74 series chips contained on the original Innovation boards. Are your chips actually replaceable with the standard logic chips, which the board's traces rely on?

Most of those ICs can be replaced with 74-series.

As you can see here:

under every IC there is actually silkscreen with both options.
So, if you'll ever need to repair the replica - you have to remove bad IC and there is help for you right on the board (what IC you have to install). So no need to google anything or search any PDF.

One exception. 74HC192 and 555ИЕ6. As it turned out - ИЕ6 is not the exact copy of HC192, it works a little bit differently.
No big drama though: you can easily replace those IC in both ways, everything will work fine. But you have to pay attention to silkscreen above that IC and to jumpers under it.
Resulting frequency of a SID is dependent both on type of IC (HC192/ИЕ6) and on jumper settings.
And silkscreen tells you everything you need to set the board up correctly. If you want to get some other clocks - look for the information in this thread, I've posted some information about jumper settings.

P.S. Great Hierophant, if you want, you can use any picture from this album in your posts if you want to.

I tried the new version of SIDTEST (TEST6.EXE) and it did not work at all, all I could hear was a low hum, regardless of SID tune tried, including the ones included. I tried the older SIDTEST.EXE (must be run from C:\SIDTEST or it complains it can't find the ROMs) and it worked, although it ran too fast on my P3 600. I was running the program on the same Windows 98SE system. Has something changed between the old and the new programs? I set my SSI-2001 to the proper NTSC frequency.

On the older SIDTEST, I do get the random noise, as if the program forgets to silence the SID as it exits. Also, there appears to be no way to change the song played in a multi-tune SID file.

Great Hierophant wrote:

I tried the new version of SIDTEST (TEST6.EXE) and it did not work at all, all I could hear was a low hum, regardless of SID tune tried, including the ones included. I tried the older SIDTEST.EXE and it worked, although it ran too fast on my P3 600. I was running the program on the same Windows 98SE system. Has something changed between the old and the new programs? I set my SSI-2001 to the proper NTSC frequency.

TEST6 is messing with timer interrupts to adjust playback speed. Older version doesn't have any time sync hence the varied playback speed. I tested both on my Win98SE P4-3066 rig, both in command console and DOS mode.

Great Hierophant wrote:

must be run from C:\SIDTEST or it complains it can't find the ROMs

Bug. FNR.

Great Hierophant wrote:

as if the program forgets to silence the SID as it exits

Yes, you guessed right.

Great Hierophant wrote:

Also, there appears to be no way to change the song played in a multi-tune SID file.

I'll look into it.

I tried TEST6 in both console and real DOS modes and both only produced a hum. I thought that Windows 98SE's hold over the timer may have affected the program's operation, but it does not. SIDTEST worked equally well in both situations. TEST6 does silence the SID upon exit.

I am now in the process of upgrading my SSI-2001 board... Hot air soldering station action. 😎
My testing stand is busy now with some SDRAM memtesting.
When it all will be done, I'll test the software on various platforms.

Btw, almost all boards were sent to buyers, only one is still here.
And I have 4 complete kits left. So if anyone wants one (or assembled board)... Let me know. 😀

Received my kit today 😀 I had fun building it and it sounds really good. I was suprised my old sid chip is still working 😳 It's all good

AlphaC wrote:

Received my kit today 😀 I had fun building it and it sounds really good.

Excellent!

I've tested TEST6 on LS 5MVP3 + K6-2: no sound.
After launch it outputs a string: "_DEBUG: event_frequency: 1000000, scale=2**32 + 829706077".

I have two news.
One is good, in some kind.
I've made "Deluxe" version for myself, using colored connectors and jumpers, with more film capacitors and all headers (pins for daughterboard and C64 joysticks).

Regular board:

"Deluxe" version:

Connectors are taken from Sound Blasters (AWE64 Value and Live!):

Next, bad news.
Yesterday I was dumb enough to solder one board with SID installed in it. After it SID became silent (almost). Dead. 😵 😒
NEVER solder a board with installed SID! 😒

I have in stock 3 kits and one assembled board with all sockets for ICs (my early debug-version).

let's hope it wasn't your 6581 😉

In other news ... I got myself a C128D in mediocre cosmetic condition ... considering to swap its' 6581 with a 8580 and use the 6581 on my SSI-2001

Fagear wrote:

Excellent! […]
Show full quote

AlphaC wrote:

Received my kit today 😀 I had fun building it and it sounds really good.

Excellent!

I've tested TEST6 on LS 5MVP3 + K6-2: no sound.
After launch it outputs a string: "_DEBUG: event_frequency: 1000000, scale=2**32 + 829706077".

I have two news.
One is good, in some kind.
I've made "Deluxe" version for myself, using colored connectors and jumpers, with more film capacitors and all headers (pins for daughterboard and C64 joysticks).

Regular board:

"Deluxe" version:

Connectors are taken from Sound Blasters (AWE64 Value and Live!):

Next, bad news.
Yesterday I was dumb enough to solder one board with SID installed in it. After it SID became silent (almost). Dead. 😵 😒
NEVER solder a board with installed SID! 😒

I have in stock 3 kits and one assembled board with all sockets for ICs (my early debug-version).

Any one have spare L-shape 15pin VGA female connector? I want to fix my Diamond Voodoo2 8MB. I bought this card without one connector, everything apart from that seems to be fine so I decided to fix that thing. Thanks

Something like this? http://i01.i.aliimg.com/img/pb/074/176/446/446176074_363.jpg

That's a standard part and can be bought pretty much every where ... it's a subd high density 15 pin connector, print variant.

shock__ wrote:

Something like this? http://i01.i.aliimg.com/img/pb/074/176/446/446176074_363.jpg

That's a standard part and can be bought pretty much every where ... it's a subd high density 15 pin connector, print variant.

Yes this is this, but I wrote it wrong, this is about male connector. but the same shape

Godlike wrote:

Yes this is this, but I wrote it wrong, this is about male connector. but the same shape

Search chinese shops with "DR15 vga pcb". You'll get those on the first page, the easiest way.

shock__ wrote:

let's hope it wasn't your 6581 😉

That was one of my 8580R5... 😢 Defective 6581R4 is still around here. And I've ordered 6581R2 on eBay for its replacement.
But I have to order some more 8580s.

Fagear wrote:

shock__ wrote:

let's hope it wasn't your 6581 😉

That was one of my 8580R5... 😢 Defective 6581R4 is still around here. And I've ordered 6581R2 on eBay for its replacement.
But I have to order some more 8580s.

We might be able to work something out again 😀 Gonna reply to your PM later.
One note ... maybe the SID died when you attached the headers for the joystick potentiometers ... accidentally touching (and statically discharging on) the joystick port is a known way to kill the SID in C64s.

shock__ wrote:

One note ... maybe the SID died when you attached the headers for the joystick potentiometers ... accidentally touching (and statically discharging on) the joystick port is a known way to kill the SID in C64s.

Maybe, but I don't think so. I'm pretty careful with ESD thing.
When I'm going to touch the board: 1) I discharge myself to grounded thing (PC case or just through touching grounding leads inside wall outlet 🤣 ), 2) First I touch something, connected to board's ground: mounting bracket or casing of DB15.

I've assembled those two boards (on the photos above), put SIDs in them, put the boards into PC and tried some SID music.
After that I noticed that output cap on my "deluxe" version is too small (0.47uF film vs. 10uF electrolytic on regular board) - I've noticed bass falloff - and decided to replace it to something even more beefy (47uF electrolytic). So I've got the board back under the soldering iron, removed both output decoupling cap and input decoupling cap, then soldered 0.47uF film into input circuitry and some 47uF to output circuitry.
Next I've returned "deluxe" board back to the PC and started it up. No sound from one card... What the... Turned PC off, swapped SIDs between cards - another one became silent, "Deluxe" started to sound. And at this moment I realized that I forgot to pull SID from "deluxe" board while soldering... Stupid me. 😒

My soldering iron isn't grounded (it is not common in Russia even to have ground connection inside your house, historically... It is turning around slowly, for example year ago I've replaced all wiring at home, and got the ground finally. But according to history, not many devices with power cord have that grounding pin, so doesn't my soldering iron, only 2-pin power plug), so it probably had 110V AC pickup on its tip... SID got killed. 😠

Yay, I received both my cards today, and the SID sounds fantastic! I tested it on Ultima 6 and it works perfectly with the Innovation sound option. The cards look like they just left a factory!

Many thanks to everyone involved in the project, especially the people etched on the back of the card, namely: Fagear (very professional job), borisfox, CodeKiller, and shock__ (especially for starting the thread). And also to bristlehog for continuing it. Amazing project.

PS: Fagear, you have a PM.

Great Hierophant wrote:

Updated my blog entry with information : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/01/s … bedfellows.html

Probably you should note there that I'm not only the VOGONS user, but also phantom.sannata.ru.
And there were plenty of discussions about design of the replica and also there is borisfox, who help with schematics reverse engineering (hidden traces under ICs).
Also you can mention that replica can be fitted with daughterboard (+5V, +9/12V, ground and sound headers and one empty hole on a bracket).

j^aws wrote:

Yay, I received both my cards today, and the SID sounds fantastic! I tested it on Ultima 6 and it works perfectly with the Innovation sound option. The cards look like they just left a factory!

Great! 😎

And I've received 6581(R2) SID today. Also from Germany (from eBay). It works well, filter works as well.
But I found that 1nF filter caps are a little to much for 6581R2: sound has low frequency falloff when filter is used. In C64 there were 470pF (0.47nF) caps. But original SSI-2001 used 1nF, that's why I've put that value by default.
I didn't find 470pF film caps yet, I'll try to replace those with 470pF and test again.

Fagear wrote:

...
I didn't find 470pF film caps yet, I'll try to replace those with 470pF and test again.

Let us know how you get on with the testing - I might try little mods like this in the future. BTW, does this affect both the 6581 and 8580, or just the 6581?

j^aws wrote:

does this affect both the 6581 and 8580, or just the 6581?

Only 6581.
Filter capacitors inside C64 for 6581 were 470pF, for 8580 - 22nF.
For 6581 on original SSI-2001 - 1nF (as it was supplied).

Whats the price for an empty PCB?