Like many people, I like C64 music and the special sound of its SID component. So I looked at the Parasid (Parallel Port SID 6581 Synthesizer Chip Interface) project, as I own a laptop myself, so I won't be able to use HardSID boards, for instance.

Parasid's author is working on an USB interface instead of a parallel port interface, which sounds very nice, as many computers doesn't feature parallel ports (Macs, and newest PCs).

So I decided to give it a try, using the USB FIFO IC already used in many projects, and a VHDL implementation of a SID, to ease up the development process (no board to build/assemble).

I managed to put all that stuff together, and wrote a patch for VICE, and it worked... well, kinda.

Unfortunately, the system suffers from latency issues : although the overall speed of the USB link would be sufficient to meet the requirements, communication suffers from setup time issues. I don't know if it's due to the FIFO IC, or to USB capabilities (I must admit I don't know anything about USB).

I planned to show this project in the VieuMikro meeting which will occur in a few, but obviously, it won't be ready. Well, I need to learn more about USB, and try to find a solution...