Just curious. What chips are used in keyboards? Intel P1,P2,P3,P4, Motorola, Celerons?

This is just an educated guess, but I don't think you'll find a Pentium in your keyboard. Chances are they use custom-designed chips, or inexpensive generic processors.

Starkeeper,

In modern keyboards 'custom-made' chips are used. The processors are non-PC ones. As far as I know Wersi is the only brand that builds keyboards with (probably) an IBM-based processor. WINDOWS is used as operating system...... and guess what ? : They say it works solid and stable

Roel

The latest keyboards mostly employ RISC processors, and quite likely custom designs. The PSR730 (and 740) use a Motorola 16 bit microcontroller running at a few MHz, together with support ROM, PIO etc. Earlier equipment probably used 16 bit CPU's such as the 68000, and earliest 6800 or Z80. Top end keyboards such as the Tyros employ several custom CPU's, including a separate one to handle the vocal harmoniser. Everything including the effects are all done in software, then a Digital to Analog convertor converts it into the real world!

Simon




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________________________
Simon G.K. Williams
simon@svpworld.com
Creative Music & Multimedia
http://www.svpworld.com
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Thanks for the replies.
Kevin

"What chips are used in keyboards"

Just a wild guess here.....POTATO?

I'm not the most technically oriented person, so I could be wrong.
Terry

Doesn't the Wersi Abacus use a celeron processor?

Tap Tap Tap....is this thing on....man this is a tuff crowd.

Must be an oil painting of people I guess.
Terry

I think that chip shot never hit the green!

Grandpa Doug

Doug,
LOL.....so then there actually is someone out there. I was begining to think this was an automated forum....ya' post and it makes up an answer.
Terry

[This message has been edited by trtjazz (edited 10-15-2002).]

Terry,
glad to see that you are in such a cheerful mood.
Smile on!

Hi!
I havent seen the 'guts'of the latest Yamaha keyboards,but the Rolands use custom made chips for sound generation,along with so called 'one chip controllers'for control functions.
As for Wersi (as an'expert') I can give you the following info.
In the DMS series of th 80's was a card rack with a '8 bit 68000 master procesor' controling up to 'slaves' each one producing 4x2 voice components.No custom made chips yet.D/A resolution was 12bit for first series and 16bit for the second series called 'CD intruments'.Sound mixing was done by another board a 'digitaly controlled analog mixer'.
The Pegasus/Livestyle system of the 90s was using an 'Inmos Trasnputer' as a the main controller -also used for the blueish touch screen-while sound generation was carried out with 5 custom Wersi VLSI chips.A Motorola DSP was doing the reverb+effects,while a separate board attached to a 2.5'' hard disk allowed for immediate (0 loading time!!) access to 1024 styles and 1024 midi sequences.Final D/A conversion is 20bits
The latest Wersi OAS (Open Art System:Abacus et all)uses a standard PC board with a Celeron Processor which is used as the main controller of the system :
Separate controllers scan the keyboard,user switches and volume drawbars and two DSP cards -each with 6 32bit AMD SHARC DSPs-for audio generation (including the drumsets)and processing.A separate Motorola 5630 series DSP board generates the organ sounds-that's called the OX7.All audio processing is done in 32 bits digital including 6x6 channel mixer and there is only one 24bit conerter at the end of the chain.Standard models now have 512MB RAM and 50GB disks.
Yes,its very stable,and it is updated very easy by loading the new version from a CD.

Andrea,
"glad to see that you are in such a cheerful mood.
Smile on!"

This is a pretty serious forum here, I've noticed over the months. Not a whole lot of levity. Well this arranger chat is pretty serious stuff after all I guess.
Terry

Don't know about the chip, but I can tell you a lot about the fish!

Ric,
You're a real chip of the old block. And there's nothing fishy about that either.
Terry

I've had the apportonity to look inside a Roland Xp-60,E-500,E-40 and E-36.The main boards have Intel on them and in each one of them have a single processor that also have Intel on it.

[This message has been edited by vic83 (edited 10-16-2002).]

Hope everyone is feeling chiper. I am!!

Grandpa Doug