HardSID

A family of PC cards and later USB boxes that carry real sid chips, so a PC tracker or player can drive a genuine 6581/8580 instead of an emulation. The wiki knows the line through sidin's news pages (2003–2010) and as output hardware of goattracker, vice and the SID players around them (sources: s-sidin-news-digest, s-goattracker-readme).

Facts#

• Models in SIDin's news: the Quattro PCI was on sale by 2003-06-21, with 32-bit WDM MIDI drivers for XP/2000; a single-chip HardSID PCI followed on 2003-10-15; the USB HardSID 4U (by 2008-05-24) was announced as "the most powerful SID synthesizer since the legendary C64!" — two CPUs, a "VSTi interface with 8000Hz update rate on all SID registers", "up to four SID chips (6581/8580/6582 in any combination)", Vista drivers, and a Studio Edition with the SIDs physically separated from the USB circuits; the bus-powered Uno (one SID of any version) and UPlay ("one old 6581 + one new 8580/6582", switched from the player software) came by 2010, for Windows XP/Vista/7 with "Cycle-accurate playback" (source: s-sidin-news-digest).
• One chip per card at first: the original HardSID "only supports one sid chip" — Stefano Tognon's reason for trying the two-socket catweasel Mk4 in 2005 instead, while calling the four-chip HardSID "a dream card" (source: s-sidin08-catweasel-mk4).
• GoatTracker: the readme presents GT2 as driving reSID emulation "or HardSID hardware", and its warning is the standard advice — "the reSID emulation is in some cases quite far from the output of a real SID. Especially if filters are in use"; test on a C64 or HardSID, "every SID tends to sound different" (source: s-goattracker-readme). Dated support: Raf's GT 1.53 stereo build for HardSID in November 2006; 2.66beta "Initial cycle-exact HardSID support (Win32 only)" and 2.67 with a configurable HardSID buffer (/T, /U command-line options), 2007–08 (source: s-sidin-news-digest).
• In practice, 2006: Tognon's GoatTracker 2 review asked for output on his newer card — the MK3 support "did not produce sound on his MK4", so he exported .sid files to hear the real chip; the summary notes that reading "MK4" as the HardSID MK4 is its own inference from the article's wording (source: s-sidin10-goattracker-2).
• Players with HardSID output (from the same news pages): ACID 64 (Wilfred Bos, from 2003-07-30) "emulates the MOS 6510 micro processor to run the code of a SID tune and controls the cards for playing the music on a real 6581 or 8580", with HardSID 4U response-time work in 2.2–2.4 (June 2008); SIDPLAY for Mac OS X 3.3 (2004-08-17) added HardSID support (Teli Sandor); the Fap player had experimental HardSID output in 2006 (source: s-sidin-news-digest).
• In VICE: the SID engine choice in Settings > SID Settings also takes a HardSID or Catweasel card, if owned, in place of the FastSID/ReSID/reSID-fp emulations (source: s-chipmusic-c64-music-for-dummies).
• Editors do not get it for free: when cheesecutter's 2026 maintainer was asked to support USBSID-Pico, a newer board of the same kind (real SIDs driven over USB), the answer was that it is "not a quick afternoon hack" — playing through real hardware means matching the editor's timing to the device, not just routing audio (source: s-cheesecutter-repo-and-releases).
• Name collision worth knowing: Simon White's Linux kernel driver for the Catweasel Mk4 is itself called hardsid (hardsid.sf.net; "HardSID Driver v0.17-dev", /proc/hardsid) — driver messages mentioning HardSID do not imply the card (source: s-sidin08-catweasel-mk4).

Related#

sid · catweasel · goattracker · vice · commodore-64 · sidin · swinsid · cheesecutter

Sources#

s-sidin-news-digest · s-sidin08-catweasel-mk4 · s-goattracker-readme · s-sidin10-goattracker-2 · s-chipmusic-c64-music-for-dummies · s-cheesecutter-repo-and-releases