Misc Does anyone have experience with boards to solder FM chips on ?

Pikachuk

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Hi
As I know composing, programming and I love music using the YM2608 chip. I wanted to get an actual one and use it for some music.
However as it's a chip meant to be soldered on a board, i couldn't easily use it on PC.
That's why I'm looking for infos on how I could get it soldered to a board that would allow me to use it on PC. I already did some soldering in the past like replacing the battery of a dreamcast by a battery slot and co. the thing i'm wondering the most is what type of board i should get. from what i could read, it's a DIP 64 so i guess the board should have a slot for it

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this is the FM chip i'm interested in soldering to a board
 
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FAST6191

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You could solder it. Most however would suggest you get a socket instead, and suitable pliers (Can you use some screwdrivers? Sure. You will eventually bend the pins though and your vintage chip is going to need a very annoying repair or more likely replacement.) if there is no ZIF (zero insertion force, usually socket with a lever or something to hold it down and allow easy release later). That however is probably the least of your problems here.

There are also some emulations of the chip in FPGAs and such like (saw some even aiming at replacing those in sound cards, old "home computers" and such like) but that might be a different topic, though I will note FPGA to emulate (or perhaps more accurately simulate) the baseline chip that they sold to plebs vs FPGA to emulate the same line of chip but way fancier they used in their fanciest of fancy digital audio workstations (say you find/simulate a YMF288 instead, though that might be a downgrade) is not a great difference usually and you can colour outside the lines a bit (maybe allow it to use 16 bit 44KHz samples rather than 8bit low rate stuff of the stock device).

As far as using it on a PC then I would be more worried about the software side of things for this one -- having it on PC is one thing but if your only program to speak to it is custom then having your DAW or sequencer or whatever speak to it might be tricky depending upon your programming skills and how amenable to plugins said programs are (open source stuff tends to be fine with them/welcome them, professional gear less so). If you have to write serious drivers then that is even more fun.
FM chips being synthesisers rather than analogue wave fumbling fun (though it looks like this has some basic sampling options) means the obvious choice would be to see if there is any kind of midi controller (while some pro stuff is not about the plugins they will tend to have midi support) adapter and that would be a bit more reasonable. You will probably find yourself back with a programmable chip (though nothing so annoying as an FPGA unless you need some kind of serious low latency) to take the PC input and possibly even output (assuming the FM does not export something you can/care to take back in via a line in or other such things).

It is noted for its use in the NEC-PC?801 lines of computers which in turn brings us the big in Japan problem -- if this was the Amiga, C64 SID or something like that then there are a few things here (though nothing I am particularly inclined to reference for the purposes of adaptation) but what exists for this might be Japanese for Japanese speaking people. Indeed even most searches for a datasheet seem to spit back some not so nicely scanned Japanese at me but recognisable with block diagrams and clearly decent data or a basic pinout in English ( http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=YM2608 probably having more than most other datasheets as far as specs and seemingly http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/images/d/de/YM2608_Manual_(Translated).pdf as a just about readable translated version)
 

Pikachuk

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You could solder it. Most however would suggest you get a socket instead, and suitable pliers (Can you use some screwdrivers? Sure. You will eventually bend the pins though and your vintage chip is going to need a very annoying repair or more likely replacement.) if there is no ZIF (zero insertion force, usually socket with a lever or something to hold it down and allow easy release later). That however is probably the least of your problems here.

There are also some emulations of the chip in FPGAs and such like (saw some even aiming at replacing those in sound cards, old "home computers" and such like) but that might be a different topic, though I will note FPGA to emulate (or perhaps more accurately simulate) the baseline chip that they sold to plebs vs FPGA to emulate the same line of chip but way fancier they used in their fanciest of fancy digital audio workstations (say you find/simulate a YMF288 instead, though that might be a downgrade) is not a great difference usually and you can colour outside the lines a bit (maybe allow it to use 16 bit 44KHz samples rather than 8bit low rate stuff of the stock device).

As far as using it on a PC then I would be more worried about the software side of things for this one -- having it on PC is one thing but if your only program to speak to it is custom then having your DAW or sequencer or whatever speak to it might be tricky depending upon your programming skills and how amenable to plugins said programs are (open source stuff tends to be fine with them/welcome them, professional gear less so). If you have to write serious drivers then that is even more fun.
FM chips being synthesisers rather than analogue wave fumbling fun (though it looks like this has some basic sampling options) means the obvious choice would be to see if there is any kind of midi controller (while some pro stuff is not about the plugins they will tend to have midi support) adapter and that would be a bit more reasonable. You will probably find yourself back with a programmable chip (though nothing so annoying as an FPGA unless you need some kind of serious low latency) to take the PC input and possibly even output (assuming the FM does not export something you can/care to take back in via a line in or other such things).

It is noted for its use in the NEC-PC?801 lines of computers which in turn brings us the big in Japan problem -- if this was the Amiga, C64 SID or something like that then there are a few things here (though nothing I am particularly inclined to reference for the purposes of adaptation) but what exists for this might be Japanese for Japanese speaking people. Indeed even most searches for a datasheet seem to spit back some not so nicely scanned Japanese at me but recognisable with block diagrams and clearly decent data or a basic pinout in English ( http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=YM2608 probably having more than most other datasheets as far as specs and seemingly http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/images/d/de/YM2608_Manual_(Translated).pdf as a just about readable translated version)
well for the computer side of things I thought I could basically modify the source of bambootracker which is a tracker meant for the ym2608 in order to make it speak to the chip

for the hardware side of things though yeah from what i've seen i should probably more use a slot
 

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