The AY8930 is an enhanced AY-3-8910/YM2149(F). It adds major enhancements such as separate envelopes for all three PSG channels (as opposed to one shared envelope), various duty cycles, 5-bit PCM (as opposed to 4-bit PCM on the AYM), more volume registers, and a much more configurable noise generator. I believe these enhancements make this chip worthy of receiving its own format here on Battle of the Bits. We should honour this major upgrade of the beloved AYM.

This chip may have been in obscure sound cards such as the Covox Sound Master, but it never ended up in mainstream computers of the time. It really should have been included in the Atari STe. The file format for the AY8930 could be a .fur module from Furnace.

so just furnace modules? honestly i feel like there needs to be some other options here before this is viable. besides, no hardware playback via furnace, and i don’t think it’s supported by VGM, so…

i agree with retrokid's comment. after all, this is battle of the bits, not battle of the furnaces

this is my furnace hat

Now I wonder what crazy stuff Trackers for the ST would have if it had the AY8930. But really it could be a Furnace Battle but you use the 8930 (at least how I see it).

To be fair, .fur is a valid file type for the OPL2 and OPL3 chip formats. Those formats has no .vgm file type allowed, according to the Lyceum. Why should the AY8930 be any different? What do you all think about this?

Not to hijack, but I'll still always bring up the idea of an STe format when it comes up. It definitely has to do with the bias of what I pay attention to, but I think STe tracking is one of the cooler chiptune scenes around nowadays with a lot of good stuff always coming out of atari parties like sillyventure. Musicmon and ttrak are both great, and maxYMiser is one of the coolest and best-maintained trackers around for my money, with updates that always push the sound capabilities to wild places. So many unique tricks that don't belong in AYM. If we can have 700 NES categories, I can make this my obnoxious pet issue.? :) In sum, an STe already IS an upgraded 2149, but also a popular chiptune platform, and one which can be used for other botb formats as a bonus

.fur for adlib is a concession at best, bit like mp3 for gameboy
The idea of hardware playback for a variety of pcs, knock off cards, and multiple file formats from multiple tracker options lended itself to it. Meanwhile other formats are more standardised (e.g nsf). I don't think you could say the same for your chip proposed given its very specific use case

while i'm a furnace hater and i agree with the hardware playback sentiment, the actual question here should be "what kind of hardware is this supposed to be played on?"

what is the most common hardware configuration someone with this chip would have? if the most notable appearance of the chip is a niche PC ISA sound card, then surely register spamming is not much of a concern and a hw compatible player could be developed even for furnace modules.

the other notable usage i can find is a 3rd party expansion for MSX from 2016, which obviously is a more restrictive platform, but also, the expansion has two chips. this seems like a zx spectrum turbosound situation, albeit more niche, i.e. seems more like a domain of MSX enthusiasts than random chiptuners who just care about the sound chip

if there's no agreed on hw configuration, it's probably easier and more accessible to just drive the chip with a cheap microcontroller... the development of such device is merely a matter of interest.

speaking of interest: if the chip is so niche, does it really warrant a separate format on botb? if the agreed-on format accepts just furnace modules, why not host furnace batols with bitpack restriction for AY8930?

furnace ended up being allowed for adlib formats because furnace *can* export vgm for those chips, so there is hardware playback capability, and it's nicer to have the submission be a source module rather than a register write dump

i agree that at the very least a hardware playback option needs to be identified for this to be its own format

If the AY8930 were to get its own format, it could get AYM veterans to try out a new sound chip similar to it with the added enhancements. Imagine all of the new entries you would see from AYM BotBrs when they use the AY8930 to its fullest. One example of an expansion-based format here is the NES/Famicom with expansion sound chips and those sound chips were only available in Japan. They were not necessarily mainstream, similar to the AY8930's situation.

sounds to me like a good furnace format bitpack (or vgm format I suppose). in its present state I wouldn't be jazzed about a new format whose only filetype was .fur and no other tooling existed for. others have expanded upon that already!

I do like the chip though, I accidentally loaded it up instead of ay-3-8910 once long ago

Agh, what a shame. I suppose it is time to host an AY8930 series via Furnace, then. :)

hey, i need the badge, so i might as well :)

Come on and join on Saturday for some AY8930 music making! :)

also i'm pretty sure all of the other formats that allow .fur (except for the furnace format itself, of course) also have other filetypes that are allowed (opl2 even has mptm). afaict, this chip kind of doesn't, which is why there was probably some pushback against making it a format (considering furnace modules aren't hardware playable)