[sdiy] Microchip PSG - AY8930

[Eric Brombaugh]

Tom Arnold wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 09:13:03PM -0700, Ben Lincoln wrote:
>> http://www.datasheet4u.com/html/A/Y/8/AY8930_MicrochipTechnology.pdf.html
>> ...
>>
>> If anyone is interested, but not $5 each interested, I got mine in 
>> Jameco's small analogue/linear grab bag the first time and many more in 
>> a large version of the same grab bag a month or two after that.
> 
> On a whim I stopped by Jameco and grabbed some of the grab bags.  Out of two
> bags, I have at least 30 of these things now.  Probably more.
> 
> Gotta think of something to do with'em now...


That brings back memories - back in high school ca. 1980 or so, I hooked 
an AY3-8910 up to my old 6502-based OSI Superboard and wrote a BASIC 
program to simulate seashore sounds. It had noise modulated by a slow 
LFO for waves, periodic foghorns and random seagull cries. I'm sure my 
recollection of it is better than it really sounded, but it was pretty 
cool to play with.

What to do with 30+ of these things? They're designed to hook up to an 
8-bit processor bus - how about a multi-voice MIDI-based synth, kinda 
like a SIDstation? You could probably drive a bunch of them with a cheap 
MCU (PIC, AVR, ARM, etc), but they're basically only PWM waves with 
fairly coarse amplitude modulation & built-in envelopes. Could be fun if 
you like that lo-tec '80s video game sound.

Eric