
Sound Card 2.0 PCB Build
Updated: 5 hours ago
In this running post, I will share the buildout of my sound card for my 65816 PC. Having the PCB in hand, I can say this will be the largest sound card I've ever had. It's a little crazy.


I'm going to build out and test one section of the sound card at a time. I plan to work through it in this order:
65816 "core" (65816, ROM, RAM, PLD, oscillator, CD4078, and 7414).
Dual-port RAM and VIA #2 with an LCD (for testing). At this point, I'll be close to what I had posted in Sound Card 2.0: Breadboard Build.
VIA #1 and #3, programmable sound generators (PSGs), and storage ROM.
Shift registers for SPI and SPI SD card reader.

First Fire Up
I populated the 65816 core, VIA #2, and the LCD. I updated my previous 65816 assembly test code to use VIA #2, port B, for the LCD. All good! As far as clock speed, 12.59 MHz runs great. 14.16 MHz fails. I do not have an oscillator between these two speeds to test. I think I will run the card at 12.00 MHz for the primary clock, as that's a convenient oscillator value.

Population Complete
Bonus: I finally have the bracket mounts and spacing dialed in.

* The lower oscillator is 12 MHz. I guess when I cut the background out of the image, it took out the shiny oscillator, too.
Sound Card Emulator
See Emulator^2 -- Sound Card Emulator.
First Audio Output -- It's Working!
With the card fully populated, I was quite curious if it would fire up and work (without bodge wires). At first, I wasn't getting output as I expected. After a little troubleshooting, I narrowed it down to my assembly code. Somewhere, I was messing up switching between 8-bit and 16-bit registers. Anyways, I resolved the code issue. The hardware appears to be in working order so far. I have not yet tested the ROM, VIA #3, the shift registers, or the SPI card reader.
65816 Sound Card: First Song Playback from Media ROM (rehsdonline.com)
65816 Sound Card: First Song Playback from SD Card (SPI) & Updated Output Schematic
Creating New Music for My 65816 Sound Card
Next Up
More music, sound effects, and integration into the rest of my 65816 system.
More to come!