Sycamore Drive
Offline
East Kilbride, Scotland

Funding is already halfway there, and it is essentially a midiNES for $50! Awesome!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jar … scover_rec

I am prototyping, designing and assembling a special cartridge called Chip Maestro which can be used in any Nintendo Entertainment System. This cartridge will accept a MIDI input from any instrument, and by passing the MIDI notes through the NES, the cartridge will make the NES synthesize 8-bits of awesome in true NES squarewavey goodness. See the video for more details!

PLEDGE $50 OR MORE
LIMITED REWARD
Paid pre-order of a limited-run Chip Maestro cartridge! These backers will receive a cartridge from the first batch as soon as they're assembled, hot out of the oven! Backers at this level and above also get their initials (up to 3 letters) silkscreened onto the back of every cartridge that goes into production! Own one of the first of hundreds of Chip Maestros to make their way into the hands of musicians worldwide! Shipping for this reward is included for domestic and Canada, 8$ worldwide.

Last edited by Sycamore Drive (May 10, 2011 10:34 am)

SAMWAVE
Offline
United Kingdom

I love, love, LOVE this!

Defo will be pledging some sort of donation towards this!

calmdownkidder
Offline
Liverpool, UK

Where's the "Delivery may take 1 year - never" disclaimer?

Dot.AY
Offline
Melbtown, Lolstralia

Bro was super quick to reply to my question RE: PAL vs NTSC tuning, he says he can specifically change the note tables for PAL customers if you request it... I'm not getting one but if the guy replies to a question within the hour I would assume he will deliver on promises for now at least

herr_prof
Offline
Unsubscribe

Seems like its a one channel only midi input dealie? Ill need some more beefy specs before id go as far to call it a midines killer.

celsius
Offline
Melbourne, Australia

Yeah, as far as I can tell it's a single channel. I mean, surely you'd demo the other channels in the video if they were supported right?

2PLAYER
Offline
Rhode Island

Did you guys watch the video with sound? It was clearly playing both pulses and tri. Where is the noise though? DCPM support? How versatile is each channel? What kinds of cc commands are there?

herr_prof
Offline
Unsubscribe

MIDI channel Polyphonic mode.  Lets see if supports multimbraility.... and DMC.. THEN we will talk!

akira^8GB
Offline
New York City
2PLAYER wrote:

Did you guys watch the video with sound? It was clearly playing both pulses and tri.

But that can be done with only one MIDI channel too.

2PLAYER
Offline
Rhode Island

Ah yep read that backwards.

jarek
Offline

Hey guys, I'm the designer of the cart, and I'd be happy to answer any and all questions.

Currently Noise support is only available on MIDI Channel 5. Due to the difficulties of manipulating 4 channels with one keyboard, I have, by default, set noise to only play when data is received on channel 5. This will all be configurable, so if you wish to play only triangle and noise waves on a keyboard, you will be able to set it to do so using your MIDI piano (the lowest octave cannot be played on an NES anyway as the clock speed is too low, therefore I am reserving it for settings).

No DPCM support, as I am going for a rock-solid, inexpensive cart. For the same reason, there is no video. In return you get incredibly low latency, and a product that performs reliably.

As for Polyphony, playing on channel 1 will be a userdefinable setting. Currently in the video, my friends are playing it so that the first note hit it a triangle wave, and the two subsequent notes are square wave 1 and square wave 2. If you are hooked up to either 4 pianos or a computer, you can play channels 2-5 simultaneously, for 4 sound polyphony.

CC commands are sparse, as I would like this product to be used with vanilla MIDI keyboards, therefore the lowest octave will be used for setting functions. Currently, you are able to set the duty cycle of each square wave, as well as the order in which channels are played in Piano mode. If you have any other suggestions for things I should implement, let me know! If you would like to take this cart even further, please buy a dev kit, which includes programmers for both chips on-board, as well as soldered programming headers and pull-up/down resistors on the JTAG.

herr_prof
Offline
Unsubscribe

Even though its harder, I would encourage you to take a look at the things ccs control on midines, otherwise musicians will probably get tired of vanilla square wave sounds.. modulating basic settings very quickly is a key component of the chip music sound.

The poly mode is cool, as long as it is an option!

2PLAYER
Offline
Rhode Island

In addition to duty can we get some vibrato and volume CCs? Or pitch control so we can make vibrato? Definitely interested in this.

jarek
Offline

Is there a list of all the MIDI ccs supported by the Midines? The one I have doesn't seem to respond to the more common messages...

Volume is implemented; it is tied to velocity of the key pressed in Piano mode, and can also be manipulated in Tracker mode in the usual way.

I was thinking about vibrato, and doing something similar to how the chipophone does it (making a setting so that when you press two keys, the NES does a vibrato instead of simply playing both) Let me know what you guys think!

nitro2k01
Offline
Sweeeeeeden

Another thing ou might want to look into is allowing code download to RAM via sysex messages. For best use, it would be a good idea to let the code in RAM hook interrupts as well. (Not sure about how you best do that with 6502...)

herr_prof
Offline
Unsubscribe
jarek wrote:

Is there a list of all the MIDI ccs supported by the Midines? The one I have doesn't seem to respond to the more common messages...

Volume is implemented; it is tied to velocity of the key pressed in Piano mode, and can also be manipulated in Tracker mode in the usual way.

I was thinking about vibrato, and doing something similar to how the chipophone does it (making a setting so that when you press two keys, the NES does a vibrato instead of simply playing both) Let me know what you guys think!

http://www.wayfar.net/0xf00000_manual.php#audio_pulse

Why dont you just map vibrato to the modulation wheel? And why not use cc7 for volume? Velocity is cool too...