Puneet Varma (Editor)

Philips SAA1099

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Philips SAA1099

The Philips SAA1099 sound generator was a 6-voice sound chip used by some 1980s devices, notably:

  • The SAM Coupé British-made computer
  • The Creative Music System (C/MS) by Creative Labs, which was also marketed at RadioShack as the Game Blaster. They had 2 chips, for 12 voices.
  • The Creative Sound Blaster 1.0 card (also 1.5 and 2.0 as an optional addon). However those cards also had an OPL2 chip (aka YM3812), which became much more popular.
  • Silicon Graphics used it on the IO2 and IO3 board for sound generation. Although this feature was almost never documented or used, the SAA1099 is present and usable if addressed directly.

    • The chip could produce several different waveforms by locking the volume envelope generator to the frequency generator, and also had a noise generator with 3 pre-set frequencies which could also be locked to the frequency generator for greater range. Its outstanding feature was that it could output in fully independent stereo.

    References

    Philips SAA1099 Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA