Let's build a SIDKick Pico so our c64's 6581 has a friend to play with! Oh, and is it any good?

The level shifters are for the data lines: 5v on the C64 to ~3v on the Pico. Not for the SID 12v/9v down to 5v.

It amazes me the sheer tenacity of the C64 community. This is several iterations downrange of the original SID chips, and newer and better implementations keep coming out. You've got a winner with the SidKick Pico. Well done!

Nice to see another SID replacement. I found another one a few months ago called BackSID. Fully compatible with the 6581/8580, everything is implemented except for the seldom used audio passthrough.

Just a minor thing: Pico (and all of its logic) runs at 3.3v :P I was working on a project like this but i think they surpassed me, good job! It sounds very good!

Great to see another SID replacement. Listening to this on an iPad, my old ears couldn’t discern a difference, but I’m sure there is. Enjoyable video.

I'm quite impressed by that. The menu looks really good and great to see the Digiboost built in. There were some very subtle differences from the original 6581, but then it's rare to find two 6581 that sound identical (due to the analogue components & how they react to heat). The price is good too, although a group buy may be harder to organise.

The TRUE cost of the SwinSID is about $3. I know because I built some myself, including reversing and re-designing the PCB to have a better layout thus making it easier to build. That amount is with the PCB and all parts. the Atmel is about $1, the remaining parts are just pennies and the PCB is about $1. But yeah the SIDKick obsoletes it completely.

To get an idea of what a SID chip with more voices could have been like, look into the early Ensoniq synthesizers like the ESQ-1. The same engineers who created the SID chip went on to design those synths.

The biggest issue with the armsid is closed source and encrypted firmware. the microcontroller on there has a protected bootblock that is used for firmware updates. it decrypts the firmware internally. they do that so people can't copy it, especially chinese companies ripping off and re-producing stuff for a fraction of the cost. with the pi pico at least it will be possible to make these almost forever at 1/3rd the cost. The biggest issue facing the sidkick is the eventual end-of-production of the pi pico and the new iteration of it that may or may not be 100% compatible, thus requiring an updated sidkick board. But hopefully someone steps up and does it when that happens.

Well, I must say it sounded better than the Armsid to me, specifically with the digitised audio parts. I just love the Pico, it is super flexible and powerful.

My tip would be: don't use those ghastly female headers to mate the Pi Pico to the SID board... because they're (aesthetically and technically) ghastly... throw them away and get some nice male and female "machine pin" headers... or just accept that you're "sacrificing" the Pi Pico and just use a single male header soldered on to both the Pico and the SID board. :)

Just built one of those, got 9 spare boards. Ordered from PCBWAY

That pico one sounds better to me than the armsid. Very cool.

I think the SidKick Pico had a more natural sound compared to the ARMSid, which sounded almost too clean 🤔

Super video. Love the new SID chips. I’d have tested Turbo OutRun for its mix of samples.

Would have been good to run it by some sid tunes that tax it. two games from the early days seems a bit of a cop out. But the project looks amazing and a great cheap way to get sound back for any dead sids.

Wow, that's a really good price to have PCBWay fully build five boards.

They all sound great to me!

Love them, hope a complete assembled one comes available via a webshop for a good price

I have BackSID and ARMSID and I think they do really well. What is missing for me, in all these replacement SID solutions, and their reviews is a musical inclined person to do the review. I want to see paddles attached, and using software like CynthCART. That would be a true show of these chips/solutions. May be I'll do that.