Old Motifator threads are available in the Archive.
TheShineNZ
Total Posts: 116
Joined 08-07-2005 status: Pro |
Is the motif XF pretty much identical inside as the XS, eg sound chips, circuitry, power supplies etc? |
lbundle
Total Posts: 6
Joined 08-02-2010 status: Newcomer |
From the decriptions I’m guessing yes. And quite possibly a little simpler because of the lack of expandable RAM. Out of curiosity, what processor does the XS run on? |
delirium
Total Posts: 2441
Joined 11-16-2006 status: Guru |
intel 80286 processor with 8MHz clock. |
jan bruijn
Total Posts: 4952
Joined 04-30-2005 status: Guru |
Delirium. Funny! Jan |
DmitryKo
Total Posts: 1483
Joined 07-25-2002 status: Guru |
Hitachi/Renesas SuperH family I believe.
PS. Oops, that should have been the Classic and the ES; the XS and XF use a MIPS architecture processor, not sure which one exactly.
|
lbundle
Total Posts: 6
Joined 08-02-2010 status: Newcomer |
Okay, I read the source. This is the chip: http://www.toshiba.com/taec/components/docs/ProdBrief/05B08_TX4939.pdf From the patch file kbw_k2x-config.patch.
+config YAMAHA_KBWK2X
This machine is very impressive considering that the processor runs at only 400MHz (please correct me here). |
DmitryKo
Total Posts: 1483
Joined 07-25-2002 status: Guru |
http://www.toshiba.com/taec/Catalog/Line.do?familyid=5&lineid=132
BTW, Cortex-A9 MPCore processors like Nvidia Tegra 250 and Qualcomm SnapDragon QSD8672X now reach 1.2-1.5 GHz and feature hardware acceleration of graphics. |
bsmart
Total Posts: 225
Joined 01-12-2005 status: Enthusiast |
The main CPU doesn’t have to do the heavy lifting. The tone generator and effects are handled by separate hardware. |
DmitryKo
Total Posts: 1483
Joined 07-25-2002 status: Guru |
I wouldn’t say that. The tone generator chip basically handles voice processing and effects, but actual notes coming from the physical keyboard or MIDI events with their Element, LFO, filter, EG and controller parameters are processed by the CPU in realtime and converted to internal tone generator commands. CPU also does compute-intensive tasks like the graphical UI and data processing Jobs like sample editing and slicing, where more power is always a good thing. |
lbundle
Total Posts: 6
Joined 08-02-2010 status: Newcomer |
Look at the PDF of the CPU I am now wondering several things:
1. The block diagram suggests that video might be handled by something other than the main chip?
Is there really only one such chip in the whole machine? I don’t have one to look inside, but has anyone ever looked inside their motif? |
DmitryKo
Total Posts: 1483
Joined 07-25-2002 status: Guru |
It’s a digital PAL/NTSC video out (ITU-R BT.656) to external composite/component/HDMI transmitters, so no use for this in the Motif. There’s probably a separate TDMS transmitter chip for connecting the display. I guess this bus is not used. Flash memory needs to feature read speed of 60 Mbyte/s to be able to sustain sample data for 128 voices at 8 bit 44100 Hz; this can’t be achieved with 16 bit bus. Writes will be slow anyway, they are not really limited by bus speed. They mean just that, the chip has built-in ADC. I don’t think it’s used in any way, since Yamaha uses much more expensive external ADC/DAC chips for analog ports. Yes, there is only one CPU chip. There are other Yamaha proprietary ASICs onboard, such as the two tone generator chips (they are coupled to double the number of FX units I believe). I’m not aware of any attempts to disassemble the Motif XS and and photograph its internals. |
lbundle
Total Posts: 6
Joined 08-02-2010 status: Newcomer |
I guess I’ll have to do it then. |