Hi

I found myself a SYM-1 and its manual in my TAFE college's soldering lab, having been attacked by students for soldering practice. It was missing the keypad, the CPU was dead and the ROM's had been incorrectly replaced with 2732's. I fixed these and it works fine now

Now to make it do something fun.

In Sym-Physis issue 7 there are details for attaching an AY-3-8912 and in the article it says 'Hardware Requirements: 6K RAM, BASIC, Keyboard terminal with at least 40 characters per line and at least 24 lines, AY-3-8912 wired per Table 1'

No Table 1 in sight

Could someone provide me with the schematic? I'd prefer to keep to some sort of set standard rather than making my own so other programs which use the chip (there's a game there) can work without modification.

Thanks.

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Check out my 8080 project: http://kaput.homeunix.org

If it helps, look around for the Mockingboard schematic and code for the Apple 2. PLus a whole bunch of older arcadew games used that sound and port chip.

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"My biggest dream in life? Building black plywood Habitrails"

Well done for rescuing and fixing up that SYM-1! I have one here, too, that was used in education -- but wasn't used for soldering practice.

As for the AY-3-8912, there's an AY sound chip home page here:

http://bulba.at.kz/main_e.htm

maybe there's a circuit on that site?

John Honniball

I've found this. http://www.simandl.cz/stranky/zxs/obrazky/ay_stereo.jpg . I used a similar schematic for my 8080 project (this one's for the Z80).

Looks like I'll have to reverse engineer the BASIC listings, now that I've got BASIC going, to figure out what pin goes where.

If I get it going I'll post the schematic for it.

EDIT: Bah I'm an idiot. There it is... I was looking for a schematic, not a table. It doesn't use any logic at all, it's all done in software. The AY had a very odd pinout for the equally odd CPU it was designed to run on.

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Check out my 8080 project: http://kaput.homeunix.org

Got something going. I noticed some of the connections in the table were unnecessary so I've modified the schematic a little, but it remains software compatible with the software presented in Sym-physis.

http://kaput.homeunix.org/~thrashbarg/ay-3-8912.png

I've made the schematic for the AY-3-8912 which is a 28 pin version of the 8910 and I believe it's more common. Please say if It's not. They can be found in Amstrad CPC's and Spectrum's, if you're willing to sacrifice one. If you've got an 8910 or an 8913 please check the datasheet for the correct pinouts.

One thing I've left out is the clock. I'll leave that up to you. You can use the 1 or 2MHz clock from the 6502. Some datasheets for the AY have a frequency table for a 1.78975MHz clock, or half of the NTSC frequency.

The use of port B on the VIA is unnecessary, but changing it would require the software to be changed. They can easily be attached to CB1 and CB2 of the VIA if you want to keep port B free.

Here's some code, based around the demo in Sym-physis:


Line 1 should be changed to set the base address of the VIA. 40960 for the application connector on the SYM-1.

Lines 1000-1010 initialize the VIA to write to the AY.
Lines 2000-2060 send data DT to register RE of the AY.

The code should make a short beep.

Of course if you wanted REAL sound you could always use a SID

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Check out my 8080 project: http://kaput.homeunix.org

Anyone know of a source for those (besides ripping apart 64s)?

I helped build a time/temp clock for a bank in Philadelphia once, they wanted Westminster chimes so we used a SID chip with the ring modulator bell sound, worked out real nice.