[sdiy] Re: Bottom Ten ICs

[John L Marshall]

The TI9900 and later the TI99000 could multitask very fast. Change the 
memory pointer to change all of the registers.

Take care,
John

Pacific Northwest Synth Meeting September 25, 2004
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Wentk" <richard at skydancer.com>
To: <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2004 6:25 PM
Subject: Re: [sdiy] Re: Bottom Ten ICs


> Not enough geek cred to remember some of the exact numbers but:
>
> Any chip used to play cheap and horrible squarewave tunes in greetings 
> cards. Aaargh.
>
> The big version of same with extra sound effects made by TI which some of 
> you guys seem to think is cool but I always thought was stupid and 
> pointless.
>
> The 8088. Damn you to hell, Mr Grove.
>
> That TI processor from the late 70s which kept could only ever keep 
> internal registers in external memory. Duh.
>
> The 555. Somehow it's always seemed just plain ugly.
>
> High end SHARC DSP chips, because I always wanted to build something that 
> used a bunch of them and could never afford to.
>
> AVR anything. We had the elegant and sleek 68000 back in the mid 80s, so 
> why hype a mediocre 8-bit sort of an architecture today?
>
> LM301. Ick.
>
> Antique TDAx series poweramps with THDs that always seemed to be >1% in 
> real life applications.
>
> 8038. So much promise. So little delivery.
>
> Top:
> CEM/SSM. Almost all of them. Very cool.
>
> 68000. Very neat.
>
> Z80. Another classic. The 6809 was cool too.
>
> 4017. Instant sequencer.
>
> AMD Opteron range. Still with the x86 idea, but at least they're beginning 
> to be fast enough to be useful as drop-in DSP substitutes.
>
> 6850. Not the best UART in the world, but many people's first into to MIDI 
> hardware.
>
> NE5532. An opamp with a decently sweet sound. Hurrah!
>
> 74382. I never did anything with one of these, but I always thought they 
> looked fun.
>
> Richard
>
>