Paula
The MOS Technology 8364, better known as Paula, is the four-channel audio chip that is used in every Amiga model, including the CDTV and the CD³². Besides audio playback, the 8364 also includes logic for floppy disk drive control and serial port input/output.
Functional blocks
Digital-to-analog converters
The four 8-bit audio channels each have a DMA pointer register, a data register, a frequency register, and a 6-bit volume register. Each channel has a digital-to-analog converter on the output. The four channels are grouped into a left and right audio output.
Disk control
The disk controller has registers for data read, data write and control. It also contains a precompensation output circuit, and a data separator input circuit.
UART control
The serial port universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter has registers for data receive, data transmit and control.
Pot control
There are four "pot ports" which are general purpose I/O pins which have counters for simple analog-to-digital conversion. They can be used to read out the position of analog joysticks.
Interrupt controller
The interrupt controller handles internal and external interrupts.
DMA request logic
The DMA request logic requests DMA cycles from Agnus (on an OCS/ECS Amiga) or Alice (on an AGA Amiga) for the audio and disk controllers.
External links
- Paula on Wikipedia
