X68000

The SID (Sound Interface Device) was made by MOS Technology (a subsidary of Commodore) and is best known for its use inside the Commodore 64 and 128. Compared to its competitors back in the days, the SID was a very advanced soundchip, and still has a large userbase today.

The name on the Chip is MOS Technologies 6581.

Technical Specifications

• Channels: 3
• Channels 1-3: Synthesizes one or more out of 4 waveforms (Square, Triangle, Sawtooth and pseudo-random Noise)
• Variable Duty Cycle for the Squarewave
• ADSR Envelope for every channel
• Global Volume with 16 Steps
• Filters available for every channel (Lowpass, Highpass and Bandpass)
• additional external Audio Signal could be mixed in and filtered

Outrun on the C64

Used in

Homecomputers

• Commodore 64
• Commodore 65
• Commodore 128
• Commodore MAX Machine

Videogame Consoles

• Commodore 64 Games System

Sound Cards

• HardSID (IBM-PC)
• Innovation SSI-2001 (IBM-PC, uses the 6582 SID)

Special Applications

• Commodore 65 | Uses 2x the SID (8580 Version). It was never released though, only a few hundred Prototypes are known to exist.
• HardSID | The HardSID can support up to 4 SID Chips at once, which is helpful when you intend to make music with it.

Variants

• MOS Technologies 6581
• MOS Technologies 8580 (later version, missing some features, “cleaner” sound)
• MOS Technologies 6582 (used to replace broken 8580)

Emulation

The SID File Format

• A Format to emulate the SID Tunes is the .SID Format. SID Files contain the 6501 CPU Code and Data thats needed to play the song. The largest Song Archive is the High Voltage SID Collection (HVSC).

Music Creation

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