3 ms·
At a guess, it's harder to get your hands on weaker chips in larger quantities. Larger chips are dirt-cheap, while for weaker ones you'd either have to raid NOS
by selfhoster11 5y ago
At a guess, it's harder to get your hands on weaker chips in larger quantities. Larger chips are dirt-cheap, while for weaker ones you'd either have to raid NOS from warehouses, or fab it yourself (which is expensive, and sometimes outright impossible - I don't think we've got the tech to fab a SID chip any more, for instance).
- talideon 5y agoThe SID's major difficulties are due to it being an analogue-digitial hybrid. That's why most of the efforts have went down the emulation route, though there's apparently an FPGA SID replacement in development that's pretty close. The original 6581 is super impractical as each of those is different, but the later 8580 is much more practical to rebuild in FPGA form, even if emulating the analogue side is still awkward.
- selfhoster11 5y agoThat's part of what I was referring to. The analogue-digital hybrid is one of the things that's difficult to replicate with the current manufacturing technology for fabbing new chips.
- chalcolithic 5y agoThat is totally understandable, but do they have to use the whole chip?