The Yamaha DX7 is one of the most iconic synthesizers that emerged in the early 1980s, and is still very popular today. That said, with even the newest of these having left the factory back in 1989, the average DX7 can use a bit of tender love and care. In particular the battered DX7 that […]
If hacking on consumer hardware is about figuring out what it can do, and pushing it in directions that the manufacturer never dared to dream, then this is a very fine hack indeed. [Portasynthica3] takes on the Yamaha PSR-E433, a cheap beginner keyboard, discovers a shell baked into it, and takes it from there. [Portasynthinca3] […]
The Commodore 64 was quite a machine in its time, though a modern assessment would say that it’s severely lacking in the graphical department. [Vossi] has whipped up a bit of an upgrade for the C64 and C128, in the form of a graphics expansion card running Yamaha hardware. As you might expect, the expansion […]
If you’ve been kind enough to accompany me on these regular hardware explorations, you’ve likely recognized a trend with regards to the gadgets that go under the knife. Generally speaking, the devices I take apart for your viewing pleasure come to us from the clearance rack of a big box retailer, the thrift store, or […]
[Aidan] is really into FM synthesis chips for creating audio, and one of the most interesting chips from that era is found on the Sega Genesis. Anyone involved in the console wars at that time certainly remembers the classic, unique sound that those video game systems were able to produce, so [Aidan] built a device […]