Talk:POKEY

Suggested POKEY music player

I replaced Adept Zap's TMC plug-in with ASAP - Another Slight Atari Player. Rationale:

• Last update for Adept's software was over 2.5 years ago; ASAP's last release was two weeks ago.
• Adept plays TMC (and MPT?) files; ASAP plays the previously mentioned, about seven additional tracker formats, and, most importantly, the standard SAP file type.
• Adept functions on Winamp and XMMS; ASAP includes modules for foobar2000 0.9, GSPlayer, MOC, Winamp, XMMS along with a proprietary Win32 player and command line WAV file generator. Also included are various Java applications.
• The consensus seems to be that ASAP produces the highest quality playback. I've tried most SAP players, and I would agree. The latest releases have resolved previous compatibility and functionality issues--to the extent that all other Atari music players have been rendered obsolete.

While bullet 4 is subjective, bullets 1-3 carry enough weight to warrant the change.

Whelkman 04:13, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

The part number is C012294 not CO12294

Contrary to what is claimed in this edit summary, Atari, Inc. did not have a convention of naming their part with a "CO" (the letter O) prefix - they apparently used "C0" (the number zero) instead. In other words, the prefix is "C" with the zero being part of the number. See the following Atari documents:

• Atari 400/800 Field Service Manual: the document is inconsistent- on page 9-4 POKEY is listed as CO12294, and on page 9-9 as C012294. However most of the parts listed in this document are listed with the C0 prefix - it is probable that the ones listed with CO are typing errors.
• Atari 1200XL Field Service Manual (click on "1200XL FSM.PDF"): Compared to the earlier 400/800 FSM, all typos in the parts list (pp. 5-1 - 5-4) are fixed. All parts on the list, including POKEY, have their part number starting with C0 not CO. Parts that were listed as CO in the 400/800 FSM are listed as C0 here (example: 400/800 FSM p. 9-3 lists "CO10448 CONNECTOR SOLDER RT ANGLE (9 PIN)", 1200XL FSM p. 5-2 lists "C010448 Connector "D" (9 pin male)").
• Atari 800XL Field Service Manual (Feb 1984) (click on "Pobierz"): again all parts, including POKEY, listed as C0, not CO (pp.5-3 - 5-6).
• Atari 5200 Field Service Manual (Jun 1983): all parts, including POKEY, listed as C0 (pp. 7-31 - 8-12).
• Atari chip listing posted by Curt Vendel on the AtariAge forums: Curt Vendel is the creator of the webpage atarimuseum.com, owner of a huge storage of historical material inherited from Atari, Inc., and a co-author of the recently-released book "Atari, Inc. - Business Is Fun". The list posted by him is a copy of an internal Atari e-mail, retrieved from one of Atari's VAX servers that Vendel currently owns. Since the list is in digital form, there is no ambiguity between the O's and the zeros. All parts, including POKEY are listed with a C0 prefix, no part has the CO prefix.

and, most importantly

• Atari Engineering Information System - Item Master List (Jan 1984): while the font used and resolution of the scan make it hard to discern the zeros from the O's, the shape of the letter O is clearly more square and the zero is more rounded. No part numbers, including POKEY (p. 141) have the CO prefix.

There are also numerous other Atari documents that consistently use the C0 naming convention:

• Atari 2600 Field Service Manual: pp. 8-1 - 8-8.
• Atari CX22 Field Service Manual (Nov 1983) (click on "Pobierz"): p. 5-13
• CGIA data sheet (click on "Pobierz")
• FGTIA data sheet (click on "Pobierz")
• ANTIC data sheet (click on "Pobierz") - parts of this document were OCR'ed and the original scan has been replaced by text in a different font (evident for example in the bottom-right corner of Sheet 2 of 45), but other than that, the chip is consistently named "C012296" both on the title page and in the bottom-right corner of all pages.
• FREDDIE data sheet

Now, some documents seem to use the "CO" naming convention. None of them were intended for publication:

• POKEY data sheet: the document is inconsistent. the chip is called CO12294 on the title page and in the bottom-right corner of some pages, but it is clearly written as C012294 in the bottom-right corner of Sheets 15 and 33.
• GTIA data sheet: the document is inconsistent. The chip is called CO14805 in the bottom-right corner of Sheet 1, but it is called C014805 in the title and on other pages, eg. Sheets 5 and 20).
• 1450XLD parts list - curiously, most of the parts in this 1983 document have the CO prefix (some are still left with C0) - even the ones that were listed with the C0 prefix in both the 1200XL FSM and the 800XL FSM (which was released later, in 1984). If anything, this shows that there was confusion within the company itself regarding the naming convention.

Lastly, there is one document that consistently uses the CO prefix:

• Atari 130XE Field Service Manual: uses the CO prefix for all items, including the ones that were labeled with C0 in earlier documents.

The bottom line is, the documents that were actually published outside the company, and the internal Item Master List, quite consistently use the C0 naming convention, and the POKEY part number is quite consistently given as C012294. There was apparently some confusion regarding chip names inside the Atari company, especially evident in internal documents, but it is not a proof at all that the CO prefix was used as a rule.--Krótki (talk) 01:58, 14 December 2012 (UTC)