Yamaha QY300 Backlight Mod
A while back I did a backlight mod on my Yamaha QY300 sequencer. I upgraded the LCD to the ERM24064SYG-1 by EastRising Technology. It has a yellow-green background with 240x64 pixels. Its RA6963 controller is fully compatible with T6963 used in the original QY300 display. The only real issue was a change in sensitivity of […]
BIGCITY.MID
I stumbled on a familiar sounding Nintendo song file from Famicompo 10, 016_UZPIPS.nsfe. It uses the Namco N163 expansion to emulate the FM piano sound. It turns out this is a cover of BIGCITY.MID, one of these early demo General MIDI files meant to showcase the technology. Check it out on chiptune.app. 016_UZPIPS.nsfeby Xyz16th entry […]
Unlocking the Yamaha DSR-2000
I've been trying to reverse engineer the system exclusive voice dump format of the DSR-2000 keyboard. It is powered by the 4-operator Yamaha YM2414 OPZ chip, similar to the DX11, TX81Z, and a few others. The DSR-2000 is probably the most powerful FM keyboard Yamaha produced with the Portasound label (i.e., marketed to non-musicians), and […]
Fixing messed up VGM tracks from Shining Force
This is Elven Town, from Shining Force II for the Sega Genesis. Here's the beginning of the original track: It sounds kind of janky. Computer, isolate the bass line and slow it down to 65%. Yea, definitely some problem with that high note. The Sega Genesis sound chip (YM2612) has 6 FM channels; these bass […]
MEGAfm Teardown
Here is a look inside the Twisted Electrons MEGAfm. It is a nicely constructed boutique synth built around Sega Genesis sound chips. An upper PCB containing LEDs and audio/MIDI jacks has been removed in these photos. The dual YM2612 chips are clearly visible. The microcontroller is visible in the bottom right. The other ICs on […]
Hotkeys in Chip Player JS
List of super-secret keyboard shortcuts for Chip Player JS: Shortcut Action Media Keys Playback control is fully supported ← (Left Arrow) Seek backward 5 seconds ➔ (Right Arrow) Seek forward 5 seconds ␣ (Space bar) Toggle play/pause - (Minus) Decrease speed 10% = (Equals) Increase speed 10% Shift+- (Underscore) Decrease speed 1% Shift+= (Plus) Increase […]
Chip Player JS
Chip Player JS began in August 2018. Ten years ago, I stopped using Windows and switched to Mac. But I held on to a Windows XP virtual machine – for the sole purpose of playing ancient music formats in Winamp. While I was working at Spotify, Winamp was running in the background. Chip Player JS […]
Flat-Shaded Polygon 3D Games
I've started maintaining a list of flat-shaded 3D games from the 1980s and 1990s over here: Flat-Shaded 3D Polygon Games.