The Yamaha YMZ280B, also known as PCMD8, is a sound chip produced by
Yamaha Corporation
is a Japanese multinational corporation and conglomerate with a very wide range of products and services. It is one of the constituents of Nikkei 225 and is the world's largest musical instrument manufacturing company. The former motorcycle div ...
. It is an eight-channel
PCM
Pulse-code modulation (PCM) is a method used to digitally represent sampled analog signals. It is the standard form of digital audio in computers, compact discs, digital telephony and other digital audio applications. In a PCM stream, the amp ...
sample-based synthesizer
Sample-based synthesis is a form of audio synthesis that can be contrasted to either subtractive synthesis or additive synthesis. The principal difference with sample-based synthesis is that the seed waveforms are sampled sounds or instruments i ...
designed for use with video game machines, packaged in a 64-pin
QFP
A quad flat package (QFP) is a surface-mounted integrated circuit package with "gull wing" leads extending from each of the four sides. Socketing such packages is rare and through-hole mounting is not possible. Versions ranging from 32 to 304 ...
.
Features
* Up to 8 simultaneous sounds (voices)
* Waveform data lengths of 4 (ADPCM), 8, 16 bits (PCM)
* Stereo output (with a 4-bit/16-level pan for each voice)
* Up to 16 MB of external memory for wave data
* External
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 ...
or SRAM memory.
The YMZ280B can either use an internal crystal oscillator running at 16.9344 MHz or be connected to a master clock line. The chip can be connected to up to 16 MB of external memory to provide the voice data for sound reproduction. The sound data can be encoded as 4-bit ADPCM, 8-bit PCM, or 16-bit PCM, played back in a wide range of frequencies (up to 256 steps), and then mixed together and output as a two's complementMSB-first digital data stream meant to be connected to a complementing DAC chip like the YAC513. The YMZ280B can also be connected to a YSS225 effects processor (EP), allowing two of the 8 channels to be processed further.DATASHEET /ref>
Products
Per its design, the YMZ280B found significant use in arcade machines from the late 1990s. The first generation of video games from
Cave
A cave or cavern is a natural void in the ground, specifically a space large enough for a human to enter. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. The word ''cave'' can refer to smaller openings such as sea ...
were among the first to employ the chip. Later games from Data East and