The SID chip is the sound heart of the Commodore 64, and for chiptune fans it remains irreplaceable. USBSID-Pico, a project by LouD, brings it to modern devices: the board hosts a Raspberry Pi Pico and two original MOS SID chips, acting as a bridge to computers, phones and media players.
The board connects over USB and presents itself to the computer in several ways: as a CDC serial port, via WebUSB and WebSerial, as a MIDI device and, with the ASID protocol, as a source that streams SID register data over MIDI. The project is described as compatible with Raspberry Pi Pico and Pico W boards based on RP2040, and also Pico 2 and Pico 2 W based on RP2350, and it can drive hardware SID emulators as well as original chips.
Image: GitHub
Some ask what the point is, since cycle-accurate software emulation already runs on the RP2040. For some enthusiasts, however, the imperfections of the real chip produce a sonic character that emulation does not reproduce, much like the distortion of tube amplifiers. The project does not take sides in that debate, but it offers a concrete way to make real chips sound on recent hardware.
The project has also been entered in the retro-modern category of Hackaday's 2026 Retrocomputing Challenge. The developers warn that PAL and NTSC differences affect how the old chips behave, so users must account for them. The project's pages also state that the hardware is certified as Open Source Hardware under certification NL000045, a detail reported by a single source and not independently verified. The project dates back years: version 1.0 came in 2024 and version 1.3 in 2025, with parts priced between 5 and 30 euros depending on the supplier.
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