MidiJoy - PCBs Schematics Available Soon

Phobotron has announced that he will be publishing Gerber files for his MidiJoy interface soon. There's currently also a limited amount of PCBs available. You can contact Freetz/Phobotron through Atariage.

I posted about this earlier, but in case you haven't heard about this exiting new Atari 800/XL/XE MIDI interface yet, check it out on the project page linked above.

MidiJoy, A MIDI Interface for POKEY

Phobotron aka Frederik Holst is working on an exiting new MIDI interface for Atari 8-bit computers. Based on littlescale's A26F interface for the Atari VCS, it will be the first MIDI interface to actually make external controlling of the POKEY soundchip possible. Furthermore, the interface will also work with the SID chip, though this isn't one of the primary development goals.

Check out the details on the project page.

Sources, firmware et al. will be published end of October this year. Before that, the project is running in this year's ABBUC hardware contest. The author has vowed to publish everything for free in case his entry ends up among the top 3.

Daily Dosis: Death Rides Upon A Pale Horse Through The Mountains Of The North by 9999HP

Kerberos - Upcoming New C64 MIDI Interface

A fundraiser is currently underway for an exiting new C64 MIDI interface. At a target price of 50 EUR, this thing will be well worth your money.

Developed by German C64 coder and hardware expert Frank Buß, the cartridge will feature not only full MIDI in, out, and thru support, but also a possibility to directly transfer PRG files from PC via USB. It comes with SIDWizard and Steinberg Pro 16 pre-installed. The design and firmware will be open source, so you can build this beast yourself as well, if you're feeling lucky.

Even if you're not interested, you gotta love the guy's thick Colognian accent ;)

Read up on the details on the fundraiser site and preorder the cartridge or donate a few bucks to the project!

The Lowest Resolution: Exogenesis by Wavesitter

A new contender for the lowest resolution demo ever? Matt Westcott aka Gasman recently released this crazy production under his new moniker Wavesitter (a lovely play on the German word for budgie, "Wellensittich").

The demo is intended for use with a Novation Launchpad MIDI controller hooked up to a Raspberry Pi (or pretty much anything else that can run Python and has an USB port).

Visuals on a 9 by 9 pixel display? Now that's hardcore. The music, made by Paul Turrell aka Hoopshank, and the visuals were synchronized by hand.

So is it really the lowest resolution demo ever? Technically it would be possible to beat 9x9, think segmented displays or small-scale LED installations. I'll do another article on this subject once I've dug up some more substantial information on the matter. If you have any pointers for me please leave a comment below.

Lowest resolution demo or not, Exogenesis came in first in this years' Wild Compo at Sundown all the same. Fair enough, I'd say.