In her latest Intersil “Academy of Analog Pinball Wizardry” video, Jeri Ellsworth replaces an HC55564 Continuous Variable Slope Delta (CVSD) codec chip with one she reversed engineered into an FPGA. What in blue-blazes is a CVSD modulator? Watch the vid and find out — as usual, Jeri does a great job of showing how it works, how she reversed engineered it, and what the results are. As some have pointed out, you can still scare these chips up online, but this was more about proving and showing than just about fixing.
8 thoughts on “Jeri Reverse Engineers an HC55564 Chip from an Old Pinball Machine”
Comments are closed.
ADVERTISEMENT
Join Make: Community Today
Wow, amazing job Jeri! (as always). I would love to see more of the actual process that you use to get this information.
Good point, John. I had the same thought, watching the vid. I understand enough to know, conceptually, how this sort of thing works, but I have no idea how you actually go about getting the information on how the chip functions out of the chip itself(?). I assume all of this was not from data sheets and info found online. I’ll try and get Jeri over here to give us some clues.
Grammar police: “… and what the result is” (not are). Or “results are”, take your pick.
Otherwise excellent!
Oops. Yes. Typo. Missed the “s.” Fixed.