racketboy.com

I've got a Genesis Model 2 lying around my apartment taking up space (I recently bought a Model 1) and I'm wanting to modify it to play chip-tune music. However, I have no idea how to go about doing that, and I haven't been able to find any how-to's online. Could someone give me a link, or just point me in the right direction? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

AFAIK, modding is not necessary, and the model 1 "High Definition Graphics" has the best audio output of all of the released model revisions (see youtube model 1 vs 2 vids for verification).

What you should try is a flash cart for Genesis, and some software by a guy named Shiru. He made trackers that can output music in the system's native format (recordings of the control signals for the YM2612 FM and SN76489 PSG sound chips). Most chiptune artists just output their creations on real hardware, or use VOPM to get perfect recordings of their songs using ripped Genesis VGM instruments through a VSTI interface.

Unfortunately, Shiru got fed up with the scene recently (last month?) and took his programs Video Game Music Maker (VGMM) and TFM Music Maker offline. Check the chipmusic.org forums for details.

Probably what you were asking for is that little-scale.com midi interface. They're sold out.

You could go even more complex - using Arduino or FPGA hardware to interface those chips with a home-made MIDI interface to realtime control their sound on a computer or keyboard (The Yamaha YM2612 is similar to Yamaha's YM3812 OPL2 chips used in old sound cards responsible for the FM synth music in old dos games so the groundwork is there already).

I've given you some things to go on, but you didn't look very hard so Google will have more info on all this stuff. I didn't actually try any of it myself. I've been considdering Genesis chipmusic, but I'm still having too much fun with the Gameboy and OPL3 soundcard music. The next chiptune hardware thingy I'm getting is an Arduinoboy midi interface.