Ay-3-8910

Rickharris

Senior Member
I have come into the possession of one of these "old" sound effect chips - It looks from the data sheet as if it will be picaxe drivable has anyone done this?

Do I need a separate clock for the 8910?
 

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
That takes me back. That should make for a fine sound synthesiser or cacophony generator ;-)

www.speccy.org/hardware/datasheet/ay38910.pdf

Seems you need a clock at 1MHz-2MHZ, that can be from PWMOUT or an oscillator module if you need good accuracy.

Note that Write Data Pulse width is stated as a maximum of 10,000ns (10us) but should be achievable with PULSOUT, especially at 8MHz upwards.

With a PICAXE-X1 or X2 you should be able to create a MIDI synth - if you have a MIDI keyboard that may even be usable :)
 

Rickharris

Senior Member
Stage 1 - build an Amp for it.
Stage 2 get some sound out
Stage 3 Who knows.

Why did this and chips like them get phased out was it because so much was generated on board the main micro?
 

Dippy

Moderator
Or was it because big manuf's used custom stuff and they only sold 3 in the previous years....? I'll call Fox Mulder.
Same applies to quite a few chips. A while ago it was difficult to get a TBA2800 but they are resurfacing now. The Plessey version died out years ago but was a better chip technically. So many mysteries... so little time.
 

fernando_g

Senior Member
An interesting sideline is that General Instrument Semiconductor's division is the predecessor to Microchip.

GI corpororation spun off its semiconductor division in the late 1980's, which was acquired by investors and then renamed Microchip.

So this is like a marriage between distant cousins.
 

cactusface

Senior Member
Hi,
I too used this Ay-3-8910 chip back in the 90's to add sound to a home build Z80 system. It also contains an (or was it 2) 8 bit I/O port giving you more ins/outs, I used it for a joystick. If I remember it is register driven, the first byte is the register address, the next the data.

I have just got my first working picaxe buggy working, its simple! First pic project for years. Hope to post some details soon, but will have to look up how to upload pictures, etc
Regards
Mel
 

Andrew Cowan

Senior Member
To post pictures:
- Hit 'post reply'
- Scroll down to 'manage Attachements'
- Click that
- Attach the files

Looking foward to seeing pictures of your buggy.

A
 
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