(If emulators are off-limits, feel free to remove this post- I don't want to cause trouble)
Bluebox is a machine emulation of the legendary 224XL reverb. Rather than model how a 224XL sounds via impulse responses or mimicking algorithms, Bluebox emulates the 224XL's Intel 8080 SBC along with the discrete ARU card (fixed-point DSP), processing all audio with the original firmware. It can run version 8.21 of the 224XL's ROMs - I haven't tested other ROM variants as I do not physically possess them. You'll need to supply your own roms.
Release: https://github.com/jimbattin/bluebox/releases/tag/v1.0
Repository: https://github.com/jimbattin/bluebox
How to get started:
0) Acquire the 11 necessary ROM dumps of the 8.21 firmware (3 for the i8080 SBC, 8 for NVS). Can't help you here. Don't copy that floppy.
1) Flash your pedal with lex224.bin from the release linked above (or build your own from source)
2) Plug your daisy seed into your machine via USB and use the release's editor.html in Chrome (also: grant permissions) to upload the 11 ROM images required for operation. These are saved to Flash and persist (the only get wiped during a dfu erase)
3) Enjoy!
Mono vs Quad:
The 224XL is a quadraphonic system, but Terrarium is mono. To cope with this, I added the ability to choose how you want your inputs mixed to outputs on the editor. I tried to omit the ones that didn't make sense and gave the presets sensible defaults here, trying to balance accuracy to the original against practical use on a pedal board. These are set per-preset and are remembered across power cycle (other preset changes however are not. This is really just a glorified tech demo).
How This Was Made:
This project is a byproduct of me exploring Anthropic's latest models (Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5) on my Claude Pro plan, trying to see how effective it is as reverse engineering vintage computers (verdict: pretty darn good!). Most of the code was created agentically - so most carries no copyright or license outside of terrarium.h which I vendored. I wanted to see if there was enough publicly available information to build an emulation, as I do not have access to a full physical machine (just the ROMs, which I imaged during development). So it works, but I make no guarantees how its fidelity compares to a real unit.
Editor:
Bluebox is a machine emulation of the legendary 224XL reverb. Rather than model how a 224XL sounds via impulse responses or mimicking algorithms, Bluebox emulates the 224XL's Intel 8080 SBC along with the discrete ARU card (fixed-point DSP), processing all audio with the original firmware. It can run version 8.21 of the 224XL's ROMs - I haven't tested other ROM variants as I do not physically possess them. You'll need to supply your own roms.
Release: https://github.com/jimbattin/bluebox/releases/tag/v1.0
Repository: https://github.com/jimbattin/bluebox
How to get started:
0) Acquire the 11 necessary ROM dumps of the 8.21 firmware (3 for the i8080 SBC, 8 for NVS). Can't help you here. Don't copy that floppy.
1) Flash your pedal with lex224.bin from the release linked above (or build your own from source)
2) Plug your daisy seed into your machine via USB and use the release's editor.html in Chrome (also: grant permissions) to upload the 11 ROM images required for operation. These are saved to Flash and persist (the only get wiped during a dfu erase)
3) Enjoy!
Mono vs Quad:
The 224XL is a quadraphonic system, but Terrarium is mono. To cope with this, I added the ability to choose how you want your inputs mixed to outputs on the editor. I tried to omit the ones that didn't make sense and gave the presets sensible defaults here, trying to balance accuracy to the original against practical use on a pedal board. These are set per-preset and are remembered across power cycle (other preset changes however are not. This is really just a glorified tech demo).
How This Was Made:
This project is a byproduct of me exploring Anthropic's latest models (Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5) on my Claude Pro plan, trying to see how effective it is as reverse engineering vintage computers (verdict: pretty darn good!). Most of the code was created agentically - so most carries no copyright or license outside of terrarium.h which I vendored. I wanted to see if there was enough publicly available information to build an emulation, as I do not have access to a full physical machine (just the ROMs, which I imaged during development). So it works, but I make no guarantees how its fidelity compares to a real unit.
Editor:
