This is a drop-in replacement of the original SID (Sound Interface Device) sound chip of the C64. The SID was legendary in its day and played circles around its competition. The SID was an extraordinary chip for its day and for a home computer.

The SID, while an awesome piece of hardware, doesn't last forever and the original chips are getting harder to find and more expensive. We are talking about 40+-year-old semiconductors. On top of that, there are two versions of the chip, one for the older C64 boards and one that was introduced with the C64C, the wedge-shaped 64. These chips run different voltages and are not interchangeable.

This is where the SIDKick Pico comes into play. This is a fully compatible chip based on a Raspberry Pi Pico that does all the heavy lifting. There are several different replacements for the SID out there and the SIDKick is one of the better solutions. It is capable of emulating two SID chips for stereo sound, can emulate the 6581 and the 8580 versions of the SID and has a connector for a DAC add-on board and an external sound jack.

The original SID is an analog and digital device, which makes it hard to reverse engineer. Hence, all replacements are based on emulations of the original. What makes this one special is simply that it offers enough computing power to emulate two SIDs at the same time, is true to the original sound as possible and is reasonably cheap to build, all things considered.

Once installed, power up your C64 and type SYS54301. This will open a little configuration utility where you can set the SID type, whether it is a dual SID setup, the volume and which emulation to use.

If your SID chip isn't socketed, I recommend unsoldering the chip and replacing it with a 28-pin socket rather than soldering the SIDKick onto the motherboard directly. This will allow for easy installation and removal if necessary.