Y8950 The

Yamaha Yamaha may refer to: * Yamaha Corporation, a Japanese company with a wide range of products and services, established in 1887. The company is the largest shareholder of Yamaha Motor Company (below). ** Yamaha Music Foundation, an organization estab ...

Y8950 is a

sound chip A sound chip is an integrated circuit (chip) designed to produce audio signals through digital, analog or mixed-mode electronics. Sound chips are typically fabricated on metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) mixed-signal chips that process ...

, produced in 1984. It is also known as MSX-Audio as it was designed for inclusion in an expansion

cartridge Cartridge may refer to: Objects * Cartridge (firearms), a type of modern ammunition * ROM cartridge, a removable component in an electronic device * Cartridge (respirator), a type of filter used in respirators Other uses * Cartridge (surname) Ca ...

for the MSX personal computer. The Y8950 is essentially a

Yamaha YM3526 The OPL (FM Operator Type-L) series are a family of sound chips developed by Yamaha. The OPL series are low-cost sound chips providing FM synthesis for use in computing, music and video game applications. Internal operation The internal operation ...

with an

ADPCM Adaptive differential pulse-code modulation (ADPCM) is a variant of differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM) that varies the size of the quantization step, to allow further reduction of the required data bandwidth for a given signal-to-noise ratio ...

encoder/decoder added on. It was introduced in three cartridge models: *

Philips NMS-1205 The Philips NMS-1205 was a MSX AUDIO cartridge (without BIOS) using the Yamaha Y8950 chip (released in 1984). NMS-1205 was only sold in Europe for the MSX Personal Computer. This cartridge featured FM sound synthesizer, Sound sampler (ADPC ...

*Toshiba HX-MU900 *Panasonic FS-CA1

Features

*Compatible with the Yamaha YM3526 (OPL) *Nine voices of

FM synthesis Frequency modulation synthesis (or FM synthesis) is a form of sound synthesis whereby the frequency of a waveform is changed by modulating its frequency with a modulator. The frequency of an oscillator is altered "in accordance with the amplitude ...

(using

phase modulation Phase modulation (PM) is a modulation pattern for conditioning communication signals for transmission. It encodes a message signal as variations in the instantaneous phase of a carrier wave. Phase modulation is one of the two principal forms ...

) *Two sound-generation modes available: Simultaneous sounding of nine tones or 6 melodies and five rhythms (Compatible with the Character and Pattern Telephone Access Information Network (C.A.P.T.A.I.N.) system and

teletex Teletex was ITU-T specification F.200 for a text and document communications service that could be provided over telephone lines. It was rapidly superseded by e-mail but the name ''Teletex'' lives on in several of the X.500 standard attributes u ...

). *Built-in vibrato and AM

oscillator Oscillation is the repetitive or periodic variation, typically in time, of some measure about a central value (often a point of equilibrium) or between two or more different states. Familiar examples of oscillation include a swinging pendulum ...

s *Built-in accelerated 4-

bit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communications. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represente ...

speech analysis/synthesis circuits *Possibility of connecting an external 256- kB

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * Ra ...

plus 256- kB

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * R ...

*Built-in 8-bit input/output ports for keyboard scanning *Built-in 4-bit general purpose I/O port *Two built-in general purpose timers *

TTL TTL may refer to: Photography * Through-the-lens metering, a camera feature * Zenit TTL, an SLR film camera named for its TTL metering capability Technology * Time to live, a computer data lifespan-limiting mechanism * Transistor–transistor lo ...

compatible input/output *Si-gate

CMOS Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss", ) is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSFE ...

LSI *5V single power supply *64-pin SDIP encapsulation (the same thing was done on the

V9938 The Yamaha V9938 is a video display processor (VDP) used on the MSX2 home computer, as well as on the Geneve 9640 enhanced TI-99/4A clone and the Tatung Einstein 256. It was also used in a few MSX, MSX1 computers, in a configuration with 16kB VRA ...

)

Software Support

The Y8950 is supported by almost all software which contains music composed in SoundTracker, (Moonblaster, Oracle, Super Music Editor or Magic Music Module Combi, etc.). All these editors support the

sample unit. Other software which makes use of the

sampler such as Trax Player by NOP (a program to play songs (samples) directly from disk, while loading) also supports it. The majority of games made by

Compile In computing, a compiler is a computer program that translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primarily used for programs that ...

on the MSX were MSX-Audio compatible, although they didn't use the ADPCM sampler portion of the sound chip.

References

*The Ultimate MSX FAQ -
MSX-Audio Section
(Retrieved on 2008-01-02).

External links

{{Yamaha soundchips Y8950

Features

Software Support

See also

References

External links