I have destroyed way too many SID-chips (the soundchips of the C64) over the years. I developed a severe paranoia where I thought that my body had been intoxicated by electro chaos at a club in Göteborg, when the sound technician killed my C64 by plugging it into a dimmer plug. But then I tried a stun gun (the illegal kind) and the rate of destroyed SID-chips decreased, and about a year ago I started to beta-test this SID-chip protection that Mogwai is building. You put it inbetween the SID and the C64 motherboard, and it stabilizes currents and does other magic. I’ve put it through datahell, and it has worked great so far.
But when I returned home from a few gigs in the UK a couple of months ago, the SID was suddenly very quiet. This is a typical near-death experience. During that tour I also destroyed my disk drive. I thought that my trash-skills had once again won the fight against engineering. At the Nödik Impakt festival last weekend, I brought another C64, which also had a broken SID-chip when I came home. Paranoia. Electro chaos. Datahell.
Enter the troubleshoot. I took the old C64 and removed the SID protection, and connected the SID straight to the motherboard. No sound at all. I opened the other C64 and gave the SID-chip some sweetness. Still no sound. Doctor Matsumoto suggested to change the power supply because there are rumours about bad behaviour of on the right. Doctors never lie, and neither did this one. Indeedio, it worked. Both SIDs were now back to life, back to reality.
SID says: Bad power supplies can make you think that we are dead, but Mogwai SID protection can make you think we are alive anyway.