Windows/Linux/macOS releases: driver v517, AIASS 1.0, ASID Player 1.1, SIDBlasterTool 2.0
New releases across the board, all now available for Windows, Linux & macOS. AIASS-VST 1.0 now comes with proper Linux & macOS installers too, alongside Windows. SIDBlasterTool now has its own first release (2.0), plus a "play test tone" option to quickly check a device is working.
No new features this round - mostly an AI-assisted (Claude) code review/bug hunt pass, turning up and fixing a handful of real bugs (stale bundled driver versions, a broken input-handling edge case, a couple of others). Side effect: the driver's dispatcher thread used to burn CPU busy-spinning instead of properly sleeping between commands, fixed a couple of versions back - playback (e.g. in ASID Player) subjectively feels cleaner/smoother for it since, no more occasional stutter. Not a measured benchmark, just what it feels like listening to it.
All installers in the download area, plain binaries and source on GitHub.
New PCB: exSID / SIDBlaster switchable
There's also a fully designed new PCB on GitHub with a jumper allowing either exSID or SIDBlaster operation on the same board - never produced or tested yet, but the design is out there for anyone curious
libsidplayfp fork (work in progress)
Also patched (not released yet, just pushed to the fork): a libsidplayfp fork with a new sidblaster-builder backend, so any libsidplayfp-based player - like sidplayfp itself - could eventually play SID tunes through real SIDBlaster-USB hardware via hardsid, on both Windows and Unix (via dlopen). Same idea as AIASS/ASID Player, just for the reference sidplayfp player instead of a standalone app. No binaries yet, source only for now.
SIDBlaster NG (announcement)
Also in the works: SIDBlaster NG, a from-scratch firmware + driver stack built on the exSID protocol - for the existing SIDBlaster-USB hardware people already bought, not a new board. No more cutting traces or soldering jumpers like the old exSIDBlaster conversion needed. Personally I don't think the original SIDBlaster hardware is obsolete in the music/VST segment, even though RP2040-based SID-USB devices on the market (like USBSID-Pico) obviously own the present and future of the mainstream segment. The SIDBlaster Tic Tac was designed robust and for studio use from the very start. And thanks to the original developer's foresight, a trace was already prepared for this back then, which I've always carried over too, even though it was never used - except for the exSIDBlaster hack. What SIDBlaster has always had going for it is scalability - exactly what music applications like AIASS-VST want. NG is being built around that from the start - proper multi-device handling, hotplug, resource management. Up to 8 devices at once are meant to be supported. Future AIASS versions with multi-instance VST support will benefit directly from that - or think different applications entirely, e.g. two VICE instances each driving their own SIDBlaster at the same time.
For a long time I hoped other developers would eventually pick up ideas like this. Now, with AI assistance, I can actually build the things myself that I never had the time or the skills for before - and honestly, that's reason enough for me, whether or not anyone else cares.