exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

(Read this post on Facebook recently - very interesting!)

"Atari Museum - John Foust

The fabled AMY sound chip! I worked at Sight & Sound / VentureDyne, as we tried to develop products using the AMY. I was emailing with Curt Vendel just before his passing, as he tried to research the history of the chip. S&S was a small company, around a half-dozen of us. Most are still alive. I've tried to have other S&S people tell their story about the AMY, but they're afraid of litigation from the VentureDyne guy. Frankly I don't remember if I signed an NDA or what it said.

Yes, unicorns do exist!!!

Just so everyone knows. This was not my find, this was donated to me and the Atari Museum by John Hardie of the National Videogame Museum down in Frisco, TX. John and I have both been helping one another with finds and information and all the credit goes to John on this one."

What actually is it then ?

Just imagine..

Could have been an amazing sound chip.

According to Wikipedia it was sold by Atari and eventually ended up in pro synths*

*EDIT
Well nearly did

Apologies, I meant to put that link in the original post:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_AMY

It was capable of telephone quality voice audio at 2400 baud. It could have started some kind of trend :-)

Looks like a awesome chip. But why did Atari sue if they sold the design anyway :shrug:

exxos wrote: 13 Jul 2024 23:57 Looks like a awesome chip. But why did Atari sue if they sold the design anyway :shrug:

Yes that puzzled me. Sour grapes? Realised they'd let go of something good perhaps?

exxos wrote: 13 Jul 2024 23:57 Looks like a awesome chip. But why did Atari sue if they sold the design anyway :shrug:

maybe because the Atari had still the rights to the Amy design?

AMY story is very interesting but also sad.
The AMY development team was paid by Warner and then Tramiel for over that two years. During that time, they could build a new fancy computer, but they couldn't delivery a single working AMY chip.
But when Tramiel fired them, they quickly prepared twice as good and working AMY chip for the new company.

The last bits of a project are always the most time consuming...