When did the AY-3-8910 go out of production? I am thinking early 1990s.
Just curious because there are two listings on a popular auction site selling ay-3-8910 with year 2000 and 2004 date codes, could those ICs be relabeled 40 pin DIPs?

Not sure. A good place to get them is scrapped arcade game motherboards which used them a lot. The most used ojn a single board would be Gyruss which used 5 of them. (you have to unsolder them though). Better bet is an MCR game which has 2 of them socketed.

A place to get them pretty cheap if you need a bunch, www.eldoradogames.com

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

Interesting to note that according to the wiki there's an equivalent written in VHDL somewhere.

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65Org16:https://github.com/ElEctric-EyE/verilog-6502

Here it is. The YM2149. Same IC as the AY-3-8910, just produced by Yahama under license according to the wiki.
Mike J. has it in his library, just in case anyone else is interested. I've just skimmed it over, but it looks like it has an 8-bit output meant to be hooked up to a DAC.

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65Org16:https://github.com/ElEctric-EyE/verilog-6502

I was looking to get more original ay-3-8910 and just did not want to get ripped off with counterfeits.

Links below; I was under the impression General Instrument sold off their IC manufacturing division in 1987 to Microchip. Check out the date codes on the ICs 2000/2004 and still GI, suspicious?

http://cgi.ebay.com/1-AY-3-8910-8910A-YM2149F-AY38910A-Sound-Generator-IC-/360363014602?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item53e74f39ca

http://cgi.ebay.com/Qty-10-Vintage-AY-3-8910-Sound-Generator-AY38910-New-/230652838123?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item35b3fb00eb

The first one definately looks counterfeit. Not that the IC's wouldn't work, but the date codes are very suspicious to me. The GI emblem probably is under another company (the counterfeit company?) assuming they are date codes... Who knows what goes on in the wafer fabs over there. Like I said, it probably works just going by the sellers rating alone. But where is your money going? and to support what?
I would say the second link is legit. Much more information on what you are actually buying.

Just my 2 cents worth...

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65Org16:https://github.com/ElEctric-EyE/verilog-6502

In that case, go for videogame pulls. Game companies tended to use the real things, unless they were bootleg companies...

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

FYI, a few days after I read this post I ordered two of these for less than $20. They arrived about a week ago and are legit. Cheaper than any other source I could find.

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Bill

Okay, for what it's worth, I did a little digging.

When GI, inc. finally broke up in 1997, one of the successors, General Semiconductor, Inc. inherited the rights to the AY-3-8910, amongst other technology not already dished out to Microchip (who also got rights to produce the AY-3-8910). In 1999 - 2000 GSI made some plans to lighten up and simplify operations in order to become attractive as a takeover candidate and indeed succeeded in 2001 when bought by Vishay.

In the mean time, another large chunk of the original GI, which started life in 1997 as NextLevel Systems (I did some work for these folks back when), changed its name to General Instrument, Corp. in 1998. Two years later in 2000 they were acquired by Motorola. Motorola also took advantage of the fire-sale over at GSI and acquired some of their older GI LSI technology, including presumably, the AY-3-8910. Now they had the name and the technology and began manufacturing some of these chips under the GI label in their Taiwan facility for a while (now Freescale Semiconductor).

Apparently this is the division that was recently acquired by Nokia (the broadband business, not Freescale).

This is all put together from hearsay, some personal experience, some WEB research and some string. A little less than absolutely air tight, but offered on a 'take it or leave it' basis.


(Edit: Corrected the ON Semi error to Freescale....)

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Bill

Good digging!

Hello,

how are they branded - GI or Microchip? I've experimented with the Microchip AY ic's from 2008 (!) recently... These chips work extremely well, however - the quality of the plastic (original GI-shape, but laser engraved) package and pins is discussable... Maybe someone is repacking the chinese AY's clones (e.g. KC89C72)?

There are also lot of "new" 8912's on the ebay... hm...

They have the GI logo on them. They look and work fine.

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Bill