Modder subatomicglue’s MidiboxSID may have started life as a C64, but now it’s nearly unrecognizable thanks to a serious synth rehab. I especially love the backlit reddish-orange potentiometers and LED illumination throughout the box, making this retro synth perfect for cranking out beeps and blips out in a darkened nightclub or concert gig.

This isn’t any old stock C64 either. Subatomicglue embedded 8 SID chips under the covers of this puppy, which lets it generate 4 stereo pairs of sound, and 4 synthesizer “voices” at the same time. The controls expose plenty of flexibility to tune and tweak every nuance of the system’s 8-bit chip sounds, and of course, it can be MIDI controlled for sequencing purposes.

The cool thing is that the specs for building Midibox SID are available for anyone cares to make one for themselves. As a matter of fact, the one featured in this article is based on a reference design by Midibox SID originator “TK” (Thorsten Klose). Here’s a video of TK’s original in action.

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Check out the full worklog to see how it all came together, and learn about building your own C64 Midibox here.

As a result, the trusty C64 has become a popular platform for “circuit bending”, which is hardware hackers’ terminology for taking old technology, applying circuit modifications to output audio or video effects that the original device wasn’t necessarily designed to produce.

Now you can own your own circuit bent C64, without any electronic know-how. The circuit bending wizards from Bighead Electronics have made this extremely limited edition pre-modded C64, appropriately called the Bent64.

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The system comes completely loaded Paul Slocum’s Cynthcart, a custom program which helps the heavily modded Commodore produce a wild cacophony of retro noise as you press keys on the keyboard.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The Bent64 is a ready-to-go electronic musical instrument, capable of cranking out 3-note polyphonic analog sounds, applying effects with a “whammy” tuning knob, and even stereo support if you can wrangle a second sound chip and install it in the provided socket. The Bent64 can even output a psychedelic light show through a composite video output, so you’re ready to rave out of the box.

Oh yeah, it’s still fully functional as a standard C64 with the flip of a switch before you boot up. So you’d better brush up on your Commodore BASIC.

[eBay Auction Page]

Toni Westbrook’s Shredz64 project aims to interface a Playstation GH controller with a C64, then to create a rudimentary version of the rhythm matching game that runs on the classic computer. Plans are to use the system’s retro 8-bit beeps and blips to crank out its tunes.

Thusfar, Westbrook has gotten the controller working with the C64, and started work on the game itself earlier this year. While his initial tests were written in good old Commodore BASIC, he expects to write the final game using C and 6502 assembler language.

Now if only I could get Mass Effect to run on my Atari 400 and Bioshock on my TRS-80, I’d be set.

[via Waxy.org via Kotaku]

The personal media player was announced today at the IFA 2006 consumer electronics show in Berlin. The Gravel in Pocket features playback in a wide variety of audio, video and image formats including: MP3, WMA, WAV, MP4, MPEG, DivX, Xvid, WMV, streaming WMV, JPEG, BMP and GIF. The device only comes with either 1GB and 2GB of onboard flash memory, plus an SD slot for additional storage. A 2.8″ TFT display is on the small side, just a little larger than an iPod 5G’s screen.

Also announced was Gravel in Home, which provides video on demand, DVR and streaming media capabilities, as well as their CommodoreWorld music and video download service. The devices are expected to be available by November in Europe, but I doubt we’ll see these devices stateside any time soon, if ever.

[via BusinessWire via eHomeUpgrade]