Category Archives: Darky

Introducing our latest products

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Meet Robby, our new speech interface for MSX.

Developed by JunSoft, Robby can be your talking companion for hours! Programmable from basic and machine code, this eighties speech chip with additional processors for audio processing can keep you busy for hours. Who needs AI when you can get a real robotic voice? Finally your best friend can talk to you too! Comes with full colour box. Manual is downloadable from the product page.

SoundStar, your offbeat stereo PSG synthesizer & album

SoundStar contains the six channel stereo SAA1099 sound chip developed by Philips during (perhaps for?) the commercial MSX era. It was really ahead of it’s time. Because of the wider frequency range it can produce really great sounds from deep basses to high pitched hihats. Included in the cartridge is a build in replayer developed by Laurent Holst (Grauw) with a selection of the best songs made by composer Dennis Sanders (Pyramex) which called this “probably the most rare format to make an album”. External support for over 300 songs in Roboplay and VGMplay is available.  Get your copy of this rare music album in MSX cartridge format for only 50 euro. (Please buy one so I don’t need to put my angry wife on the next cartridge label! ;). Order here!

Slotexpanders and MIDI-PAC’s

We have a few of our Modulon slotexpanders ready (and parts stocked to build more). Already housed in version 4 of our 3D printed casing. Now for a discounted price! Get your Modulon slotexpander here: Modulon – Supersoniqs

We are also finalising a new batch of MIDI-PAC2 cartridges so don’t hesitate to order one if you want one!

New! Darky Junior. Meow!

Since prices of the AY-8930 sound chips are currently prone to teeth sharp market fluctuations; we now offer our Darky Stereo Sound Card with effects processor and three mixers also with normal PSG processors. For about half the price of a normal Darky you will have all of the functionality. Chips can be swapped later (they are installed on sockets) when good deals come to us again. Full color manual and box included for only 79 euros. Link.

Makoto YM2608 Sound Processor Cartridge

Together with Electric River Hardware we brought the YM2608 Yamaha Sound Processor to MSX. This device, called Makoto has been in development since 2018, originally by Iyatemu. This OPN card features 6 FM channels, a PSG and 4 Bit ADPCM. If you like the music of NEC’s PC-8801/PC-9801, Sega Megadrive and Fujitsu FM-towns games, this card should be part of your collection.

IF-7900 VHD Interface reproduction

Currently available is the IF-7900 VHD-Interface reproduction for MSX. VHD is the Japanese predecessor of the Laserdisc system made by JVC (Victor). A few titles were released on VHD for the MSX. Apart from this you can of course also control other VHD discs or make your own programs in MSX Basic.  Check the promo video of JVC here: VHD Video Disc Promo . SuperSoniqs produced this cartridge together with Heikki (the creator) and we will distribute this cartridge. Order here

Introducing the PlaySoniq Hub

For the PlaySoniq, the Sega Audio Video expander for MSX (Including SCC/SCC+, 16MB memory and Commodore 64 SID) we made a HUB. This way you can easily connect different audio and video cables to the PlaySoniq. For 30 euros you will get the assembled HUB, A 3D printed enclosure, a new isolated connector cable to connect your PlaySoniq and a new RGB to SCART cable. Apart from the audio in port this Hub should also work with our first Sega VDP cartridge “Franky”. Get it here!

Introducing Darky, the stereo ePSG soundcard with effect processor

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Hi all,

You know these questions that start with “What if?”. Here at SuperSoniqs it is all about making our own “What if’s” possible. One of those was of course the lack of stereo sound in any MSX.  A while ago we stumbled upon an AY8930 sound processor. It was designed by General Instruments as an successor of the AY-3-8910 and sold to Microchip Taiwan together with their other chip designs. Microchip actually released it, implementations were made for PC (the infamous Sound Master) and the design was also used in a few arcade systems. The fun thing about the AY8930 is that it has two different operating modes, one is AY-3-8910 compatible, and the other one is the enhanced mode. The enhanced mode of the AY8930 adds separate envelopes for the three channels (as opposed to one shared envelope in the AY-3-8910), variable duty-cycles, more bits of precision for note frequency, volume, and envelope frequency, and a much better configurable noise generator.

darky

But of course the main fact that it was backwards compatible with our MSX PSG made us thinking why not release a cartridge with this soundchip? And why not a cartridge with two new ePSG’s? Since these chips have separate outputs for each PSG-channel (even our MSX PSG has, but few MSX’s actually make use of this), we thought it would be nice to put each channel into a stereo mixer, so that each seperate channel can be mixed and placed into the stereo dept field (stereo panning). Also, the channel mixers used have some more functionality like treble, bass, equalizing and 3d stereo spatializing.

But that’s not all. The audio end result of the mixed channels is fed into a SPIN FX-1 Effect processor, which has fixed effects such as echo, reverb, flange, chorus, etc. and 8 programmable effects. For this a EEprom is also part of the PCB design.

In default mode our new cartridge will start in the MSX PSG compatible mode, with the second PSG on a different clockspeed to create a pseudo stereo effect, usable with all existing MSX software. Registers are being made to access all PSG’s in MSX or ePSG enhanced mode, and to control the mixers and effect processor. An Atmel processor and Philips CLPD are used to control all hardware on this PCB.

The ePSG stereo card has two stereo mini-jack outputs, one line-out and the other one is an amplified headphone output.

Our Darky ePSG stereo card for MSX can be ordered here: https://shop.supersoniqs.com