lft/kryo - Hardware Chiptune Project (rebuild)
This is a rebuild of the Hardware Chiptune Project by lft / kryo.
https://www.linusakesson.net/hardware/chiptune.php
This is more or less a one-to-one replica with the only major change being a direct 5 V USB input instead of the original 9V battery input that then gets regulated down to 5 V.
It had been a long-time goal of mine to rebuild it and now in 2023 finally the time has come.
Some quick notes / things I learnt:
- The atmega88 comes with a /8-clock divider enabled by default, it can be disabled with the appropriate lfuse-setting.
- I initally made a mistake and used a resistor array that was not R-2R, so the sound was broken, that part was surprisingly hard to find for order in Germany, but I finally found one on https://tme.eu
(Of course, I could have built it myself, it's just an array of resistors, but I did not agree with the additional workload that it would require.)
- The original design had a 6 pin IDC header for AVR ISP programming. My cheap 1 $ programmer from china did not have a 6 pin adapter, so I adjusted the design for the bigger 10 pin header.
- I did not have any stripboards, but the original design was optimized for a minimal amount of soldering assuming you have one. Well, I did not, so that meant I had to either create long solder bridges or bridge some relevant points with jumper wires. I did both. It was a lot of work. Would not recommend doing it the way I did it.